What with the departure of Mad Magazine and the Chicago Defender, this has been a depressing passage in the long decline and fall of the Empire of Paper. The loss of any publication represents the loss of a voice, and in their separate ways, Mad and the Defender were unique and distinctive American voices.The Defender is going online and the back issues of Mad are being repackaged for the specialty market, which means those voices won’t disappear entirely. It’s always important to remember, when speaking of these hard times in print media, that it’s paper, specifically, which has come into hard times.