On May 24, 2012, with the assassination of The Times-Picayune by the coward S.I. Newshouse, Jr., the American capitalist formally declared war on the American journalist, a move “necessitated by revolutionary upheaval in the newspaper industry,” as was announced by nola.com, the Picayune’s embattled cyber-bastard.

“Newspaper to move focus to digital” was the capitalist’s battle cry, and “Save the Picayune” was his opponent’s.

It’s the American way of life in conflict with itself, and it’s nothing short of tragic, at that: the nation’s brain at odds with its heart, the impossibility of a well-informed republic and its having well-lined pockets. American journalism is enduring the 40-days-in-the-desert temptations of the capitalistic devil offering the proverbial easy way out in exchange for journalistic incompetence on a biblical scale.

Times-Picayune reporter Kari Dequine Harden nutshelled the modern American journalist’s frustrations in a July email to the paper’s top brass.

“I go to nola.com this morning so I know what I need to follow up on today, and neither [the previous night’s homicide nor murder-suicide] are anywhere to be found on the home page,” she wrote. “I finally find the murder-suicide. Buried, of course. The homicide isn’t anywhere on the page. But a whole lot of other stupid fluff shit is. … And yet we are focused on digital now? Enhanced? Who is buying this crap?”

Not the paper’s — or website’s — readership, assuredly. But the fire sale of the Fourth Estate nevertheless continues.

“Our product is suffering. Big time,” Harden said. “[That] means losing respect in the community and losing readers.”

But it’s not simply the Times-Picayune’s product that’s suffering. It’s the journalistic quality of newspapers and print media everywhere — and nowhere more horrifyingly than in Athens, Ga., at The Red & Black (R&B), the University of Georgia’s allegedly independent student newspaper.

A corps of R&B student employees — the entire editorial board and nearly all the paper’s staff — walked out last Wednesday in defense of their editorial authority, which they’d perceived to be threatened by the paper’s supervisory board.

Prior review, or approval of the paper’s content before it’s printed, was their biggest concern, according to former R&B chief photographer and UGA senior Evan Stichler.

“We’re being told what to do,” he said. “Write this [story], make sure everyone’s smiling in photographs.”

The above stipulation is part of the board’s strategy to emphasize — laughably — “GO0D” journalistic content as opposed to “BAD,” in an effort to apparently increase the paper’s financial viability.

A necessary evil, perhaps, but journalism,“isn’t in it for the money,” as Stichler said. The strategy was detailed in a draft memo authored by board member Ed Stamper, which the R&B walkouts obtained and published on redanddead.com, where they continue to publish independent student-focused content.

Of a bad nature, presumably.

Good content is “about [the R&B] audience doing something unique, helpful, outstanding, new, dramatic, i.e. scholarships for freshmen,” explained Stamper in the memo.

Bad content, of which this column is perhaps an epitome, “catches people or organizations doing bad things,” he continued. “I guess this is journalism,” Stamper moronically assumed.

Whatever journalism actually is, it’s not what’s being professed — and taught, presumably — to these UGA students.

“It just goes back to that basic principle,” said Chuck Reece, who served as R&B’s editor-in-chief in 1982. “Every society, every city, every nation can’t function without free press. That’s why you have to maintain the separation.”

Reece said the board’s memo was “difficult to interpret as anything but prior review” and “concerning.”

But since we spoke, the board has caved to the exiled students’ demands, one of which was the resignation of Ed Stamper — who unforgivably likened watchdog and investigative reporting to bad journalism.

And Athens, Ga., as it turns out, isn’t where journalism goes to die. Rather, the intrepid former R&B employees — the majority of whom have since been invited to reapply for their positions — have in no small way reclaimed journalism from the clutches of American capitalism.

While it’s far too early to tell if the line they’ve drawn in Georgia’s red clay soil is a turning point in the war for American journalism, their courage is inspiring.

Today, then — and only for today — let the battle cry be “Go Dawgs.”

Phil Sweeney is a 26-year-old English senior from New Orleans.