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It's no coincidence that the artist who created the cover of the 50th anniversary edition of Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" didn't choose to show books burning, but a Burning Man made of newspapers.

Newspapers are, indeed, on a very hot seat.

Newspaper circulation in America, where more than half of the papers are community papers with circulations of less than 25,000, like us, has been declining for some 20 years.

With so many cable channels and radio stations, however, newspapers still command the largest audiences, and news in print is still the media of preference for the majority of people who want to stay informed.

Would the death of newspapers mark the end of our culture as we know it? Absolutely.

You don't have to look any further than low voter turnouts in the Attleboro area and across the country.

People don't know when to vote, or if they do, they don't know who to vote for.

Mostly because they don't bother to get that crucial information from newspapers, sometimes the only source for it.

A failure of civic consciousness will sink this country faster than any boatload of suicide bombers.

We're in the business of providing a public service by giving you the information you need to make democracy work.

Sure, newspaper organizations will migrate to the Web, and we are - we'll have more than 4 million visitors this year at thesunchronicle.com - but there you run into another factor destroying our culture: the Internet itself.

If you want to see the future, pick up a copy of "The Cult of the Amateur," in which Andrew Keen writes that blogs above all have "undermined our sense of what is true and what is false, what is real and what is imaginary."

Keen says a new blog is created every second of every minute of every hour of every day.

Some may argue that the Internet's lure is that it's free. That's far from the truth. In addition to the loss of community connectivity and the loss of a valuable source for important and useful information, if The Sun Chronicle closed its doors today the downtown would lose its largest single employer, more than 100 fulltime jobs and some 50 more part-time jobs.

And then think about the charitable donations companies like us provide, the civic volunteers we muster, the contribution to the economy we provide through our advertisers.

What does the Internet - or many free newspapers for that matter - contribute to our community?

And about 80 percent of the news that is on the Internet comes from newspapers in the first place.

If newspapers fail, how will you find out what is going on in Congress, in Iraq, in your city and in your neighborhood.

Who will tell you? And who will you believe?

In "451," the protagonist is told that, yes, books can be useful if three things are in place: 1) quality of information, 2) leisure time to digest it and 3) the right to carry out actions based on what we learned from the interaction of the first two.

Bradbury got it right. The existence of all three is being threatened.

See you next week.

ORESTE P. D'ARCONTE is publisher of The Sun Chronicle and The Silver City Bulletin. Reach him at 508.236.0394 or at darconte@thesunchronicle.com.

See you next week.

Fahrenheit 451

"When even one American - who has done nothing wrong - is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth, then all Americans are in Peril." - Harry S. Truman, 33rd president of the United States, 1950.

The Big Read/Attleboro's 1 ABC project, has selected "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury as this year's book for the community to read and discuss.

Thanks for the cuddlers

Thanks to the person who dropped off two bears anonymously. That brings our bear total to date to 5,038.

The bears, new please, go to Bears on Board, a program of the Greater Attleboro Area Council for Children.

They are given to local police officers, firefighters and ambulance drivers to give to children in crises.

Thanks for the papers

"Celebrated our 60th wedding anniversary by going on a cruise in the state of Alaska," write Natalie and Bob Bell in a note left with an Anchorage newspaper at the Taunton Public Library. "It was a wonderful experience for us."

"Brought back two papers from a recent trip to Ephrata, Pa., and Rehoboth Beach, Delaware," write R. and L. Wade, who also left papers at the library for me. "They are lovely areas and we go back often."

"Just came back from a wonderful five-day trip to Chicago - my first trip there. What a people-froiendly city!" writes Nancy Manning of Attleboro. "I took the architectural boat tour down the river through the city. After that, I was ab;le to recognize many buildings from the top of the Sears Tower. A free trolley system takes you to most of the museums, the aquarium, shopping on the Magnificent Mile and the Navy Pier. Inexpesnive bus service gets you quickly to the zoo and the Museum of Science and Industry. Millenium Park has a pair of founbtains with moving faces on them. One can cool off sdplashing around between them. The gardens were colorful. The bean-shaped Cloud Gate reflects a slightly distorted view of the city and yoiurself - fascinating."

"Picked up one paper while on vacation in Gordonsville, Va. Got copy of the Hartforfd Courant on way back. The Page 1 story on spam poetry is amusing," writes Peter Noll, a news editor at The Sun Chronicle.

Thanks to Phil and Susan Daniels who brought me back papers from a vacation trip to St. John, New Brunswick.

"Just returned from a trip up the coast of Maine," writes Charles Smith. "Spent a few days enjoying the warm sun and cool ocean breezes at Boothbay. Brought back some newspapers from the state of Maine fer ya."

Thanks to Ted Nesi, one of our reporters, for a copy of The Sun Journal from New Bern, N.C.

Steve Brasier of the Attleboro Water Department brought me papers from Chicago and Hawaii he brought back from a "family vacation on Maui. Lived there in 1975-1978, went back for the first time since then. Chicago was just a stop at airport," he adds."

ORESTE P. D'ARCONTE is publisher of The Silver City Bulletin and The Sun Chronicle. Reach him at 508.236.0394 or at darconte@thesunchronicle.com.