Paul Greenberg of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette offers a well-reasoned assessment of the newspaper business. It’s far more articulate than John Brummett’s “God I love newspapers. Y’all gonna miss ‘em when they’re gone” and it’s far less angry than Gene Lyons’ piece that appeared in the Dem-Gaz last week.
He writes,
There is some intangible but irreplaceable quality about any well-rooted newspaper of long standing: a sense of place, of tradition, of community. It’s not just the feel of print-on-paper, however sentimental we wax about it, but what the print says and how it says it. We grow attached to our newspaper. If it’s “my country, right or wrong,” it’s also “my newspaper, good or bad.” We come to know both its sterling qualities and glaring faults, where to look for each, what to hunt for and what to skip. What would life be without being able to complain about the paper?
Exactly. But Mr. Greenberg also recognizes that the world of journalism is changing and that market forces, powerful as they are, will be the final arbiter of what succeeds and what fails.
He argues,
Note that in Seattle the old Post-Intelligencer is still around, only online. Actually, there are two P-Is online (at last count) since reporters and columnists who didn’t make the official one have organized a second, freelance website. How long before free weeklies, community bulletins, and counter-cultural broadsides begin popping up? Like grass after a forest fire.
Doesn’t anybody read Schumpeter any more on capitalism as The Process of Creative Destruction? Innovations and entrepreneurs, he explained, are its most powerful forces, like cataclysms in geology. The world we know changes; it doesn’t end.
Yes, it does. In fact, it’s changing before our eyes. I’ve argued on many occassions that the change facing newspapers is good and papers that adapt accordingly will survive. Much of that adaptation will require new thinking about how to use the online space, of course.