Circle the wagons. Start bailing water. Omigod, run for your lives!

Yes, the world as we know it is coming to an end. And there’s a small band of wayward wanderers whose livelihood is in serious jeopardy. I’m talking about the rapidly diminishing prospects of the lowly Wine Writer.

And it’s not just yours truly. (Sidebar -I just read that Gannett papers, which runs my old playground, the Salem Statesman Journal, is imposing a ‘furlough’ on most of its employees for one week. Unpaid. What is USA Today going to do? Publish re-runs for a week? The Greatest Hits? Hey, look, the Yankees won the World Series...Hahaha.)

The Columbian hasn’t had a wine columnist since I fired them (they weren’t living up to my expectations) back in 1999. And readers of the Oregonian may have noticed last Sunday, no Matt Kramer column. And that person who writes for Fooday –not there this week. Furloughs? Axe? I don’t know. But it doesn’t look good.

And who’s suffering most, writers or readers? The Oregonian has already eliminated its Wednesday Science section, and the Monday paper is as slim as a paper clip. Okay, so on the one hand you get through the paper a lot faster every morning, but on the other hand, where’s our well-rounded world and cultural coverage? Where are we going to get our daily dose of information?

Well, I do have a solution for my own brethren and cistern. Form a wine writers consortium, SOWW (Society of Wine Writers). Just like AP, us SOWWs will develop, produce and distribute wine columns. Cheaper for the papers, we still have a voice, and make no more money than we ever did.

Because without your friendly wine writer, how would you know that La Vieille Ferme is now available in a box? You wouldn’t. And you wouldn’t know what it tastes like…and I won’t either, until I sample it, and report back in my next Blog.