I wonder if the bar soap industry is as skittish about the future as the journalism industry.
The American Journal Review, one of the journalism industry’s leading self-analysis magazines, recently ran a story about a study showing journalists worry that their jobs will not exist in five years and that readership will continue to decline.

The reason I bring up the bar soap industry is because I’ve noticed that, around my house, I’m the only one who uses bar soap anymore. The baby has his baby shampoo, which doubles as whole-body wash. The older boys have bubble bath and liquid soaps. My wife has “cleansers,” and something called “exfoliant,” which sounds like a part on the space shuttle but looks like soap and feels like sandpaper.

So maybe there’s a magazine out there called American Bar Soap Review, doing articles on how the marching staff of Lever, Dove and Irish Spring are concerned that they’ll be squeezed out of their jobs by a 60-ounce jug of orange antibacterial liquid soap.

AJR’s article is not the first one I’ve seen. Similar articles have appeared in newspapers read by people who don’t have a job in newspapers, like the Iowa City Press-Citizen, the Cedar Rapids Gazette and the Des Moines Register. If editors think it’s important that their newspaper tell readers that journalists worry about their jobs, one would think they would run stories about the bar soap industry worries, too. However, I haven’t seen any.

Maybe that’s the same reason why we see Hollywood produce movies about people producing movies, like “Get Shorty” or “The Producers.” Reporters find it interesting to talk about themselves, so they figure readers must think it’s interesting, too.

But what’s the worry? Readership is declining in many big cities, but it’s going up or holding steady in the smaller towns. Small-town newspapers, like the West Branch Times, usually are the only regular source of news for the town they occupy and reach 60 to 70 percent of readers. Bigger towns can support two or more newspapers, but what’s worse for newspapers is that those towns can also support radio and television. Maybe that’s why the Press-Citizen and the Register are curtailing home delivery in Tipton.

Then there’s the Internet. That’s what’s really got reporters worried. In the same way cable took away the dominance of the Big Three Networks — NBC, CBS and ABC — anybody can post information on the Internet. Matt Drudge’s Drudge Report is produced solely on the Internet — there’s no print edition. And yet his Web site gets millions of hits, enough to land big-name advertisers like Chevy, NetFlix and AT&T.

In big cities, it’s less likely readers will see newspaper stories about their children’s particular school. You’re not going to see the Des Moines Register do a series of stories on eCybermission groups. It just doesn’t have the space or resources. The school may post something on its Web site, or send home a newsletter about such items.

So readers in bigger cities have more resources — and newspapers have more competition.

But there’s one thing we in the newspaper industry must remember — something the bar soap industry seems to have a grip on: People still need news, just like people still need soap.

Even though there are hundreds of thousands of news Web sites, how many of them have a reputation for being fair and balanced? How many of the stories are written by trained journalists who can be trusted to get the best sources of information? Readers want to know they can trust what they are reading, that it’s not coming with a spin by someone with an axe to grind or a stake in the outcome.

Radio and television were both thought to be the death knell for newspapers. It didn’t happen. The same is being predicted in regard to the Internet. I don’t think so. There’s something about being able to carry around this wireless, non-electronic device. People like clipping out photos of their teen-ager scoring a basket, or a couple announcing their engagement. They even find it important to save a record of the passing of a loved one. Newspapers, as frail and fragile as the newsprint may be, have a feel of permanency. They still work when the power goes out, or the hard drive crashes, or a power surge fries the CPU. And maybe it’s not the competition that matters, but whether the residents care about their communities.

Sure, newspapers have to adapt. Most of them have an online version nowadays. But I don’t see the print edition going away just yet.

And as long as the ink rubs off the paper and onto your fingers, you’ll still need that soap, too. Even if it’s liquid.