Each morning when I head out to the driveway to pick up the morning newspapers, I can’t help but wonder how much longer they will continue to arrive. The P-I is up for sale with no buyer in sight. The Times continues to lay off employees and may be terminal, as well.

Let’s fast forward 20 years to election year 2028. Vice President Caroline Kennedy is facing a party primary challenge from Arnold Schwarzenegger-Shriver-Kennedy Jr. for the presidential nomination.

You are following campaign developments on a fast, fast hover-train commute through the Cascades to your hi-hi-tech job near Leavenworth. You remove the headphones, flip closed your Q-Mode device and turn to your seat mate to ask, “Whatever happened to the P-I? You know, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.”

Clearly you, like so many others, have tired of the never-ending electronic frontier and pine for a day when you could once again rustle through the pages of a collection of newsprint and read what’s interesting and important in the life of you, your family and your community.

Your much younger seat mate responds, “Never heard of it.” A full generation of Puget Sounders will never have heard of it, regrettably.

Lost in all this rush to the Internet is the core of the once-valuable professional newsrooms so vital to the public’s ability to absorb and rely upon massive amounts of “information” being spread across TV and computer screens, over the airwaves, into hand-held electronic devices — even ink on paper. The search continues for those who uphold the ethics and standards once found in the newspaper newsroom.

Now return to 2009 and my correspondence with Art Thiel, the P-I’s sports columnist who has a unique grasp of his profession that goes well beyond the sports pages:

J.B.H. e-mail to Thiel: “I have been groping for words to express my sadness over the state of journalism and the fate of either the P-I or the Times. You nailed it in your column today. I, too, have grave concern for the death of the “professional newsroom,” an irreplaceable foundation for public discourse and communication. I shudder to think of a life without the Art Thiels, Dave Horseys, Joel Connellys — rich with experience, an ability to lay out well-researched arguments in precise, articulate manner. 

“Who at the grassroots will ever be able to make a living at this craft again? Who and how will the “bloggers” of the future be trained in the true tradition of journalistic values so essential to society — those idealists with the desire to question, to feel a need to represent the public’s right and need to know.  

“I entered the news field with (to use your description) a large “dollop of do-goodism” 48 years ago and published a community newspaper in Seattle’s northern suburbs for nearly 30 years — losing out for business reasons brought on by the emergence of the (Times-P-I) joint operating agreement. We may face losing news presentation via “newsprint,” but we simply cannot afford to lose the professional newsroom.”

Thiel responded to me: “Belatedly, thank you for your insightful message. It’s so good to hear from readers who get it. You’re helping my inbox become therapeutic.

“Ideas are flying about keeping the P-I alive. I hope to be part of it, and I hope you get to enjoy it.”

In a Jan. 11 column lamenting Seattle being relegated to a one-newspaper town, Thiel wrote, “a no-newspaper town is an assault on democracy and civic well-being … Hard truths scream to be told loudly, and there is virtually only one instrument in our culture for the job — the professional newsroom.”