A brief counterweight to my Debbie Downer post of yesterday. In Phoenix last week I played golf with Writing Boots' Hong Kong correspondent Lorne Christensen, a Canadian expat speechwriter.

(The U.S. beat Canada, and the Star Spangled Banner was warbled on the 18th green.)

As good luck would have it, we were paired with another couple of Canucks, one of whom is the editor and publisher of an ancient family daily newspaper that serves the surrounding community of a Quebec town of 1,300.

So he's a dead man walking, right?

Nope. He's got four writers and he writes himself. His circulation is growing by leaps and bounds and he's having a blast.

The corporate chain papers suck and their readers are flocking to the independent paper.

"I love competing against the corporates!" he said, adding that if he was 35 instead of 55, he'd start launching more small-town newspapers.

Too much attention had to be paid to the golf—I prevailed over Christensen by only a single stroke—to afford me time to grill this guy further.

So I'm left to gasp: Is it possible that, after the media catastrophe shakes out, there might be a return to the (always suspect) romantic age of the family-owned small-town daily?

Is it possible?