It's time we added the first 21st Century amendment to the Constitution -- an amendment that parallels the First Amendment but explicitly prohibits the government from ever shutting down the internet. Freedom of the internet in today's world is just as important as freedom of the press, religion or speech, as evidenced by the recent internet-driven series of revolutions that have challenged one dictator after another.

Afghanistan's small band of independent-minded media outlets is a little smaller with the demise of Kabul Weekly, a lively newspaper that claims it has been put out of business after daring to criticise Hamid Karzai. On Wednesday staff met with their editor, Mohammad Faheem Dashty, for the final time after producing the last edition of a newspaper that has been a regular sight on the streets of the capital since 2002.

Walking around Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, it’s hard to grasp that problems are roiling the newspaper business. Newsstands are filled with publications in Russian. Some of them are monthlies, others weeklies -- and now there's a daily, the Reporter, which started publishing Monday to fill the gap left by the demise in 2009 of Novoye Russkoye Slovo, which closed just shy of its 100th birthday.