This is the last week of sending the Weekly News to every address in the La Conner School District. This annual subscription drive is an economic venture: La Conner News Publishing, LLC is a single person corporation, owned by its publisher. The Weekly News is a business, aiming to be profit-making. It is not its owner’s “boat,” not a hobby business.

What an odd duck industry newspapers are. Back in 1789 newspapers were so essential, so vital to the fabric of the nation that our Founding Fathers wove them into the Constitution, the only private, profit-making capitalistic enterprise n...