This week Minnesota Public Radio began another membership drive — you may have heard. 

Those of us who are members of MPR are used to these fundraiser/bake sales, which are pretty successful. Each year they contribute more than $40 million to MPR's annual $70 million budget. We pony up annual memberships for the good of the community — some of us anyway. Given how much I listen to MPR, I'm personally happy to send in my donation.

Credit has to be given to Bill Kling and the rest of the management of MPR and American Public Media, the nonprofit owners of MPR. They've built a jewel of a public network on top of the success Garrison Keillor brought to MPR. Now they have created in MPR the model for how a regional public radio network should be run.

Now notice that at the very same time Minnesota Public Radio has grown into this strong public radio network, Minneapolis' Star Tribune and the St. Paul Pioneer Press have been careening down the highway to hell. 

Both in serious trouble
The decline and fall of the newspaper business in the United States is big news these days. Both the Star Tribune and the Pioneer Press are in serious financial trouble, with advertising declining nearly 30 percent just in the past year. The Star Tribune is in bankruptcy court, and the Pioneer Press could be shut down by owner MediaNews Group within a year. Avista Capital Partners, the owners of the Star Tribune, owe perhaps as much as $500 million in debt.

So here's my immodest proposal to save the daily newspaper here in the Twin Cities: 

Minnesota Public Radio should buy the Star Tribune and go into the newspaper business.

Ha! Kidding, right?

Why would anyone in their right mind want to get into the newspaper business?  And why screw up something as good as Minnesota Public Radio by buying a financial black hole like the Star Tribune?  Let me try to explain why.

We really need a daily newspaper in the Twin Cities — but maybe not for the reason you're thinking. 

Newspaper's most critical service
It's true that journalism as it's practiced in newsroom of the Star Tribune is a valuable, critical eye and voice in our community. But I'll argue the most critical service the Star Tribune provides isn't journalism — it's advertising, a platform of effective commercial programming. That advertising channel is essential for the survival of many local and regional businesses. Everyone wrings their hands about losing the journalism, but listen up: The real story is that the Twin Cities desperately needs at least one daily newspaper just for the advertising.

Big retailers and grocery chains continue to rely on the newspaper for much of their advertising.  The Star Tribune still sells 500,000 papers on Sunday, and between the two daily newspapers in the Twin Cities, they sell about 500,000 papers on a weekday. That's respectable reach and frequency — and to a decent demographic of older, more affluent buyers. Where do restaurants, car dealerships and department stores advertise and drive customers to their businesses? 

Understand this: If the two daily newspapers were to crater in the Twin Cities, the Internet, television, radio and direct mail channels simply could not offer enough acceptable advertising opportunities to replace the gaping void left by the Star Tribune and Pioneer Press.

Eventual death of newspapers is inevitable
At the same time, we all can see that the death of newspapers is inevitable.  Classified advertising — the cash cow for newspapers in the 20th century — has been sucked out by Monster, HotJobs and Craigslist. No one under 30 reads a newspaper anymore, and people in their 30s and 40s read newspapers at half the rate of their parents. Newspapers kill trees and burn gasoline.

So my suggestion is that given the economic importance of the daily newspaper, our job isn't to save newspapers. Our job is to help newspapers die a graceful death. 

We need to just prop up a daily newspaper in the Twin Cities for five to 10 years, and then allow it to die slowly — after we have invented the new news and advertising alternatives our local and regional economy needs. We need to buy some time for the Star Tribune.

Without MPR as a buyer, there are only two ugly options for the Star Tribune. The most probable is that a new investor merges the Star Tribune and Pioneer Press together and tries to somehow chop enough flesh and bone off to make a profit without killing it entirely. This will fail because the owners will be managing the newspaper as an investment, not because they believe in the news business.

The other ugly option is that these two dinosaurs just go out of business entirely.

So here's the plan
The deal I'm proposing would work this way: Minnesota Public Radio (American Public Media, actually) buys the right to publish the Star Tribune for $1 a year, plus a split of revenues. MPR hires the reporters needed and runs separate newsrooms that slowly merge over time.  

Avista and the banks will go for this deal because they would get five or 10 years to write off their $500 million in debt instead of facing all the music today. They would also continue to own the plant and property, leasing it to MPR for a modest sum. MediaNews Group, owner of the Pioneer Press, would be offered the same deal, or face quick extinction from a revitalized Star Tribune.  

The idea of operating the daily newspaper as a nonprofit foundation has been put forward and discussed a lot lately. Sen. Benjamin Cardin, D-Md., introduced a bill recently that would allow daily newspapers to operate as nonprofits.  But exactly how does a dying daily newspaper actually become nonprofit?

In the Twin Cities only Minnesota Public Radio has the credibility to rally us — subscribers, advertisers and foundations — around the Star Tribune to turn it into a nonprofit community institution that can survive for the next 10 years. As MPR says in its own "Ten Tenets" for its news operation:

Public service as the soul of journalism
"We believe news is a public service, and not a profit center. Public service is the very soul of the journalism profession. To us, news is not just a business; it is also part citizen education, part moral enterprise."  

Hear, hear! I'd buy a membership in that.

Sadly, I think the truth is the Star Tribune and perhaps the Pioneer Press each are headed for liquidation within two years. OK, it might be possible to salvage half of a daily newspaper from the wreckage. But really, who would finance that deal today?  Who buys a couple of newspapers that just keep going broke? And who could run them any better?

The whole for-profit business model for newspapers is dying. Building websites has only made things worse. Slimming down pages and sections, and re-negotiating union contracts will eventually kill the value of the news product. It's almost too late to solve the problem.

But someone good should try.

With our Minnesota Public Media — the first integrated radio, newspaper and Internet network — we could, as a community, invent a nonprofit model for preserving this critical channel of journalism and commerce, in a business model that actually works.

Think about it, Bill Kling.

Rohn Jay Miller was senior vice president for product and technology for Knight Ridder Newspapers in San Jose, Calif.  He is a former newspaper reporter and editor in Minnesota, and is now strategic director for IconNicholson, a digital agency in New York City.