Dave Morgan has written some very definitive words on OnlineSPIN. Here’s the critical line from his piece:

“I am not going to write about newspapers anymore.”

Morgan doesn’t leave this drastic statement simply hanging there. Like any strong columnist, he explains why he’s going to these great lengths:

I no longer believe that the industry is very relevant to the future and things digital. Since I prefer to write about those topics, and am also becoming more interested lately in how the Internet will reshape the television and video industries, I plan to focus my attention there.

To all of which I say: Say it ain’t so, Dave Morgan. Dave Morgan, as you know, is founder of TACODA and Real Media, not to mention chairman of the Tennis Company, owner of TENNIS.com, plus TENNIS and SMASH Magazines. To have a mind like this simply bow out of the newspaper-commentary business is staggering.

Please join me in appealing to Dave Morgan to continue writing about newspapers. He brings fresh and genuine insight to the subject area, and the industry needs as many minds as possible trying to figure out a solution to its woes. The sort of insight we could be missing in perpetuam lies right here, in a few lines from Dave Morgan’s (hopefully not) last column on newspapers:

[T]he notion that the purity of newspaper journalism is the cornerstone upon which today’s great metropolitan newspapers were built is revisionist history. Most of today’s great newspapers were built through achieving dominant distribution in their markets, not through delivering better journalism. Most U.S. cities used to have two or more competitive newspapers. The eventual winner was almost always the one that won on the battle on distribution or advertising, almost never on journalism.

So please, go to Dave Morgan’s site and ask him to reconsider. To reverse this hasty and foolhardy decision to stop writing about newspapers.