Judge Jones just barred Intelligent Design from Pennsylvania classrooms, and I'm reminded of a piece on the trial from last month's New Yorker. According to that article, the town of Dover, where the classroom debate originates, is a politically and economically heterogeneous place. But it's not split down the middle by these obvious differences. Margret Talbot reported:

In some ways, the clearest line of demarcation was between those who avidly read the local newspapers (virtually all the plaintiffs) and those who scorned them (virtually all the pro-intelligent-design school-board members). Unusually for a small American city these days, York, Pennsylvania, which is eight miles from Dover, has two vigorous newspapers: a morning paper called the York Daily Record and an afternoon paper called the York Dispatch. (Dover itself does not have a newspaper.)... Long before the intelligent-design crisis, there were clearly people in Dover who relished the York papers and others who despised them.

One guess which side, pro- or anti-Intelligent Design, reads the local papers every morning.

Local papers in nearly every city are currently hemorrhaging money, and cutting staff to the marrow. For a small city to have two newspapers is a minor, and likely unsustainable, miracle. That clear line of demarcation will likely be either wiped clean or Google-ized over the next decade or so.