I have a bachelor's degree in journalism, having matriculated from the Arkansas State University Bicentennial class of 1976, an institution currently dismantling its four-year degree program for reporters.

After this dozen or so knot of students have passed through the program, it seems no more professional writers will emerge from ASU to ask who, what, when, where, why and how our history will unfold. From now on, your news will come from the electronic ether, filtered and monitored by the platforms' owners.

So much for a "free press," right?

Well, the "free press" has never been free. From the beginning, movable type was the first mass medium to attempt earning a profit. It allowed new works to be mass-produced on an industrial scale (for the times) compared to the previous methods of storing and distributing the written word. Before type, a plodding procession of scriveners painstakingly copied holy script and the classics for the next generation, but that all changed with the birth of Gutenberg's baby.

Almost overnight, a trickle of pamphlets, religious screeds and books began to flow into Western civilization, a trickle that soon turned into a chaotic flood of new and dangerous ideas. It's no coincidence that Martin Luther's Reformation came shortly after printing presses. Printed versions of his "95 Theses" rampaged across Europe, igniting a religious firestorm we're still dealing with today. A literate population also emerged with a voracious appetite for any printed material, putting printers in high demand.

It also meant the entrenched powers of the Three Estates (clergy, nobility and commoners) were combined in their suspicious and outright hostility to any expressions of independent thought. Presses were heavily taxed and licensed, many times requiring pre-approval of what was to be printed. You could literally lose your head if the local nobility or clergy took a disliking to your product.

Paper and ink have dominated mass media for about 700 years, but that's ending now. Electronic media will dominate as long as we have a civilization capable of generating and distributing reliable electricity everywhere except the Third World where ink and paper will still exist.

Tablets, iPhones and laptops all need to charge and, once charged, require an uplink to the Web to be functional; a book requires sunlight and eyesight. And if you want to curl up with a copy of "Story of O," "Mein Kampf" or "Huckleberry Finn," that's between you, God and the guy who sold you that subversive tome.

Still, it's hard to accept that newspapers are beginning their fade to black. Newspapers are wasteful; chop down a forest, pulp it and print on it and toss it in the trash 24 hours later and repeat the cycle endlessly.

Maybe it's for the best, but I'll still follow this world through paper and ink for as long as I can.

Patrick Keck lives in Maumelle.

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