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I finally went to see the movie "No Country for Old Men," filmed largely in New Mexico. Magnifico. If you haven't seen it, go.

Without spoiling the ending, one of the key story lines winding throughout the movie is the rapidly changing nature of crime racing past Sheriff Bell, a man from a long line of men who pledged to combat it. Bell was sadly and brilliantly played by Tommy Lee Jones.

Set in 1980, Bell is honest, decent and polite. He fights fairly. He is, in essence, a dinosaur, as dated as a rotary phone, as out of fashion as a powder-blue leisure suit.

At one point in the movie, Bell is seated in a coffee shop reading a newspaper. No cell phone, no flat screen TVs, no laptops. Nothing but a cup of coffee and the previous day's events afforded in cold black-and-white.

Just 28 years ago. The Stone Age.

For the past 28 years, and longer, The Tribune has been running up stairwells as journalists began taking elevators. Sure, it's an afternoon paper, and the changes came sooner and harder to that element of the business.

But by and large, the bell tolling for The Tribune — and all of print journalism — sounds a lot like theme music to Fox News Network. Or the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric.

In fact, it's easy to make a case that those nightly news themes, combined with the silent but deadly sounds coming from news sources on the Internet, have killed what was once considered not "fair and balanced" but rather objective and unbiased.

The task for a news reporter — not a columnist or editorial writer — was to report the facts and let the reader — how best to say it? — think for themselves.

Those days are long gone, of course.

So today Scripps is shutting The Trib down. Scripps, or rather Scripps-Howard, was a giant in print journalism when I was in J-school some 28 years ago. Today, not so much. Cajun cooking has trumped newspapering.

Fifty-two months ago, Editor Phill Casaus and Editorial Page Editor Jack Ehn opened the door for me to wax conservative. Left-leaning types blasted away at not only me but also at the editors who, in these readers' minds, allowed this gross injustice to appear weekly. I'm grateful they stuck with me.

But The Trib's local op-ed regulars added to the local flavor of this paper. The Trib's going to be missed, I suspect, because it had some sizzle, some fire that won't be found here after today.

Journalism is less journalism today than it is entertainment — across the board. Not just shows like "The O'Reilly Factor," but network news, as well. Katie Couric isn't Edward Murrow.

It's not a single thing that has changed the society, a perplexed, melancholy Bell tells a fellow lawman in the movie. "It's a tide." A tide that's sweeping away everything in its path, including this 86-year-old paper.

Vaya con dios.