Post-Paper Journalism
March 16th, 2009 — Chris Van BurenEveryone these days is penning jeremiads on the death of newspapers. See Michael Hirschorn’s piece in the Jan/Feb Atlantic, as well as my post about a NYT endowment. So it was refreshing to read blogger Clay Shirky speculate about a future to journalism that isn’t so dark. Money quote:
Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism. For a century, the imperatives to strengthen journalism and to strengthen newspapers have been so tightly wound as to be indistinguishable. That’s been a fine accident to have, but when that accident stops, as it is stopping before our eyes, we’re going to need lots of other ways to strengthen journalism instead.
Shirky doesn’t claim to know the path forward. Maybe it’s in blogs, voluntary investigative work or endowments like universities. Regardless, just as the transition from manuscript to printed book turned out well in the end, so will declining printed sources — facing down an internet as lethal as any dinosaur-killing meteor — eventually make peace with our digital age.
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March 16th, 2009 at 9:55 pm
its not up to anyone to save a mismanaged, overleveraged FORMER cash cow.
let it go.
let journalism take a few steps back to get on sure footing and then proceed without the albatross of legacy main stream media. they averaged 20% profit WITH those horrendous union contracts and milked evreylast dime away from planning for their fututre.
they do not deserve our pity, dollars or attention.
March 16th, 2009 at 9:56 pm
its not up to anyone to save a mismanaged, overleveraged FORMER cash cow.
let it go.
let journalism take a few steps back to get on sure footing and then proceed without the albatross of legacy main stream media. they averaged 20% profit WITH those horrendous union contracts and milked evreylast dime away from planning for their fututre.
they do not deserve our pity, dollars or attention.
March 17th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
[…] know this sounds like flip-flopping (see my last piece on post-paper journalism), but after 145 years the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has ceased to be a print newspaper today, and […]