My ongoing education faithfully teaches the concept that I am not responsible for the ignorance of others. Sure helps when you're in the newspaper business.

Few, if any, other endeavors elicit such conclusive opinions about our craft from outside its borders. Everyone else knows what to cover, whom to cover and when to cover it better than we do, all while authoritatively harrumphing about how newspapers are swirling the bowl, world without end, amen.

It's the classic bandwagon argument, Argumentum ad populum, suggesting that something must be true if it's repeated often enough.

Let me just say this about our business: We ain't dead yet.

And our significance to the state of Connecticut has grown in recent days, belying what had been crushing news.

The Connecticut Post, a daily serving mostly Fairfield County, decided to yank its UConn coverage last week, laying off beat writers Rich Elliott and Bill Paxton, friends to us all. Not all that surprising, given this entity's track record of institutional hypocrisy.

The fateful night in Houston the Huskies won the national championship in 2011, Ben Gordon, Charlie Villanueva and Rip Hamilton posed for photos, holding mock front pages from the Connecticut Post, whose headlines read "CHAMPS!" with the words "Extra! Extra!" over the Post masthead.

So the Post's mother ship, Hearst Newspapers, thought enough of this accomplishment to send mock headlines 2,000 miles south, but kept beat writer Neill Ostrout home, after he covered the team all year. They opted for staffers at the Houston Chronicle, also a newspaper in the chain, as a means to save money. No word whether the Houstoners thought "Enosch Wolf" was the given name of the carnivore who threatened Little Red Riding Hood or a really tall UConn player.

Now comes this.

Turns out, though, UConn officials were not happy with the Post's decision. Here is why: No other newspaper in Connecticut is more important right now to UConn. The university, in addition to playing more games in Bridgeport to showcase its product to the deep-pocketed gold coasters, is also in the midst of expanding its Stamford campus.

Fairfield County has been an untapped resource for some time now. UConn had been making progress. Except now its primary means to trumpet its message to the people who live there decided to go dark on its coverage.

One university source said Monday that UConn officials and Post management have had "professional and productive" conversations about a potential remedy. Will it happen? Hard to say. But UConn's concern fortifies the idea of the Post's significance.

And many other newspapers, too.

Mark Cuban, the gazillionaire who owns the Dallas Mavericks, gets it. He wrote once, "Despite the huge volume of sports coverage (on the Internet), the local coverage of teams for the most part sucks. There is little depth and certainly not the consistent coverage of a newspaper with a beatwriter. That's a bad scenario for sports leagues."

I'm assuming Cuban got to be a gazillionaire by understanding what's good for business and what's not. And newspapers are good for business. I've always thought that the best way to show our worth would be to boycott covering anything for a week. Locals would get nothing, while bigger beats would be served by fan boy bloggers whose breathlessness is matched only by their hideous grammar and lack of insight.

We are supposed to serve readers earnestly. They care about their teams. They spend money on them. We are the liaison. We need to take that job seriously, responsibly. I understand newspapers don't have the resources they once did. But if you're not going to cover the biggest sports story in Connecticut with evidence everywhere that UConn wants a bigger presence in your backyard, how can your readers trust your judgment anymore?

I ache for Elliott and Paxton, two of the good guys. All they did was try hard. Every day. And while the monolith they covered grew its footprint in their region, their tone-deaf employer pulled a Lucy on Charlie Brown.

Note to the Post: UConn needs you. Wake up. Your decision perpetuates all the wrong things about our business.

This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro.

Twitter: @BCgenius