Everybody please take extra caution when on our roadways in these parts. Among the collateral consequences of the Trump slash-and-burn approach to federal worker and contractor layoffs that are disproportionately hitting this Northern Virginia region now are manifestations of rage and frustration that probably are leading to erratic and dangerous behavior.

Arlington County experienced a 100 percent increase in DUI deaths, and Fairfax County averages a DUI crash every 13 hours. And last Saturday night, there was a multi-jurisdictional high-speed chase down Route 7 in Falls Church involving police, state police and more. On Sunday afternoon a citizen observed a car flying down West Broad at possibly 70 miles per hour or more. 

The News-Press is striving to continue its weekly print editions, available at more than 140 locations in and around the Little City (see the comprehensive list at fcnp.com), because we contend that a tactile, print product is vastly superior in a wide variety of ways to online versions (notwithstanding that we have an amazing and active website as well).

Here are just some of the reasons why we believe print is superior and why access to it continues to be important:

1. One in four seniors don’t use the internet, even as a lot of the news and notifications may be of particular value to them.

2. Numerous studies have shown that information is retained far better by reading something on a printed page that the reader can mark up and refer back to than by reading it online.  

3. Recent events are causing many to be wary about how secure the Internet is in the face of an authoritarian regime that wants to limit public access to information. It’s already been seen where a despot orders a switch be flipped to turn it all into darkness. Do you really think that couldn’t or won’t happen here?

4. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, the famous astrophysicist, has predicted that only too soon, AI will have advanced to the point that the Internet will be useless for anything but the sharing of pet photos, because it will be impossible to differentiate between what’s true and what’s not.

There are more good reasons, too. Just watch TV and pay attention to how often a reference to a newspaper comes up.

On the subject of Mr. Tyson, note that there are more neurons in the human mind than there are stars in the Milky Way (400 million), which is one of over two trillion galaxies.

So, the human mind is pretty darned important, for anyone who hasn’t already figured that out. And the shared discourse through newspapers has been an indispensable component of the ongoing struggle for democracy and freedom.