Where is the NPR of Newspapers?

Molly Ivins has a great column in today's opinion section of the Seattle Times entitled "Understanding the Perils of Fewer Media Outlets." I do recommend that you read the column. For a day or so, it can probably be found at creators.com.

Molly's column made me think about NPR. There is no equivalent for NPR in the newspaper world. There is a lot of personal reporting and opinion in places like this - blogs and websites. This is good. But the professionalism varies widely (as Molly points out in her article). Wouldn't it be nice to have a publicly funded newspaper that's run as professionally as NPR? Reasonably advertisement free?

I'm not sure what to do about distribution, but that's the worst hurdle. I'm not from the industry, but I don't see any other showstoppers.

Maybe the good folks at NPR can contemplate this.