NY1 viewers too busy, or lazy, to peruse the local papers have been able to rely on Pat Kiernan's segment In the Papers to do the job for them: every morning, the affable anchor spends a few moments looking through the day's headlines. He comments on what story received the most coverage, compares the gag (or gag-inducing) headlines in the tabloids, and makes a side-trip or two to those quirky stories buried within, so you'll have some idea what people are talking about at the water cooler. 

Now Kiernan has gone national: Pat's Papers, which launched Monday, is a sort of simplified version ofSlate's popular Today's Papers column. It contains links to the papers in question and a YouTube webcast that has a homemade, Wayne's World feel to it that I like. And with any luck it will send folks to the papers. 
 
But what if there were no papers to send them to? The news of the site's launch came on the same week the New York Times Company threatened to close the Boston Globe unless the unions made concessions. Though the Times threatening the Globe brings to mind images of  ("The next man makes a move, the nigger gets it!"), and makes one wonder again why the NYT wasn't content with being the best paper in the country, and had to go around investing in other papers, new buildings and baseball teams (the BoSox no less!), it is yet another sign of the newspaper apocalypse. 
 
My wife keeps saying that the nation's newspapers should just not publish for a day, see how the rip-and-read news services, aggregators and "curators" alike, do without news to rip. (It would also be a massive blow to all bloggers, cable news vendors and talk-show radio hosts -- where is the outrage, Rush et al, when there is no liberal media to get outraged at?) Supposedly a fellow journalist in Arizona has proposed an Independence Week, much in the same spirit, asking papers to not publish online, giving all of the above nothing to link to, either. 
 
Personally, I like the idea of a blank paper landing on your front step, a mute Pat Kiernan coming into your bedroom to mime the nonexistent headlines. It reminds me of a story one of Frank Capra's screenwriters told about reading an interview in which the director kept talking about "the Capra touch" he put on all his films. The writer sent the director 120 blank pages and a note saying, "Put the Capra touch on this!"