Now that I’ve had a chance to digest some heavy reading, I’d like to direct readers to a series of thought-provoking essays on free press and its fundamental role in preserving our democracy. In a four-part series that concluded on April 4, MiniMediaGuy and part-time blogger Tom Abate laid out a series of steps that mainstream media (MSM) needs to take in order to regain the trust and readership of the American people.

I’m sure that at least some of it was self-serving. You see, Tom Abate is a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. In his spare time, he thinks. Perhaps that’s something of a cheap shot from me about MSM, but not entirely undeserved. While writing these essays, Tom expressed to me, a desire for a win-win situation for both the Chronicle and himself. Yet, as many of my whistleblower readers know, he feared that his honest opinion – designed to save both his career and the future of his employer – would be met with retribution.

These days, I rarely read the Chronicle. I subscribe, but only for the Sunday ads and coupons. I do read portions of it, namely Tom’s articles and anything to do with federal government workers. Here’s the clincher – I read Tom’s articles because they are well-written, carefully researched, and add more value to the subject than other writers’. I know that what I read is salient. Tom’s writing is the entrée in a world where many editorials and articles are written as the side dish to a meal of advertising. So that his head does not swell over the praise, he may be rare, but he is not the only journalist with this quality.

There are others; some are from up-and-coming independent websites, and some are from MSM. It is my personal opinion that some of the up-and-coming websites will soon become MSM, and some MSM will become – well, nothing. This too is Tom’s point. When newspaper – and I use the word newspaper lightly, much of what we will read in the future will be electronic — articles fail to be the draw, advertising will become less valuable. Indeed, this is already happening. The heft of my Sunday paper remains the same, but newspaper revenue is much lighter.

Tom’s point, however, goes beyond the business model that surrounds print media. Rather, it expresses a sorrow over what occurred when the press bought the weapons of mass destruction argument. It questions whether it dropped the ball on other issues; it asks if it was also partially to blame for our loss of liberties. It asserts that Americans cannot be concerned about freedom-stripping acts that they do not know about.

On this point, Tom’s erudite commenters pick up the story. In addition to reading Tom’s essays, read the comments surrounding them. In particular, read the comments of Ted Shelton and Doug Milison, both of whom pick up the drama of trying to balance the world of large publishers with that of independent writers. Both use the New York Times’ Eric Lichtblau as an example.

Eric Lichtblau is the Pulitzer Prize winning author of “Bush’s Law: The Remaking of American Justice,” a book on the NSA’s wiretapping program. He fought a long and hard internal battle to have the New York Times publish it, and the release was delayed by a year because of lobbying from the Bush Administration. For more on Lichtblau and his inside fight to have this book published, see the transcript from Democracy Now!

I urge readers to read Tom’s series of essays. With each and every piece of prose, writers like Tom will once again begin to surface and spread American truth and accountability. And it will be a good fit not just for justice, but for business as well.