So yes, you should find the nearest journalist and give her a great big bear hug and say “thanks for fighting the good fight.” And then go out and buy a newspaper – one of those harbingers of aged news still sold in every convenience store.

 C’mon now. Thank a journo, buy a paper. Just for this week. Then you can go back to simultaneously ignoring and bashing us.

Curious thing about the print product. Yes, sometimes it’s just yesterday’s news. But without the people behind it, there couldn’t be that breaking blog, whose author, more often than not, got the info from a newspaper website.

Yeah. We’re doing this all wrong, we newspapers. Giving the milk away and all that. But we’ll figure it out.

An even more curious thing about the print product: it makes all the money! The survival of journalism -- so far -- depends on print advertising for its revenue stream; web ads don’t even cover the cost of maintaining an oft-updated, interactive multimedia site. And that’s what the public demands: hourly updates, interactivity and multimedia, all the time, without pause.

Give the people what they want; it’s the journalist’s way. That’s all journalists want – all media wants to deliver – what the people want. Give the people what they want in the format they desire.

Perhaps it’s too much of “give them what they want” and that’s the explanation for dancing and singing reality TV, and articles about celebrities and addiction and politicians who are sexually naughty.

People blame the media. But we’re just trying to please. And sell papers, which ups our numbers and gets us more advertising, so we can keep our websites afloat … yes, it’s come to that, us wanting to keep our websites afloat for you. Our websites are popular. And we so love being loved, even when we’re hated.

We know you don’t really want the printed edition, except on the subway, where 8 out of 10 people reading have an actual old-school newspaper in their hands... go figure.

We are a business after all, not at all like the media in Europe, where journalism is a nonprofit that stands in line for government handouts. We’re not NPR, brilliant as it is, tripping over itself for sponsors.

Absence of brilliance or not, we newspapers in the U.S. don’t have to cater to our sponsors, the reporters rehashing long monotone statements about the supposed glory of Chase Bank. There's an advertising-editorial line that daily newspapers have not crossed, a thick line that's still honored.

Perhaps there’s a place for nonprofit newspapers in the United States. Perhaps paid news reporters, passionate bloggers, citizen journalists and council meeting crazies can intersect at the crossroads of information dissemination, and profitability won’t matter. I think we can all get along, can share … but it’s the money card that trips me.

But for now, just for this week – National Newspaper Week – put aside the vitriol -- and indifference -- and hug a journalist. And buy a paper. And I’ll stop thinking about the money card and print versus web, and giving you what you want versus what you need.

I know if you’re reading this – and have read this far – it’s because you’re a reader more so than a reality TV watcher. Though I suppose newspapers  are at times a readers' form of reality television …