newspapers

I was struck by Susan Elliott Sim's posting on Slashdot titled "No more coding from Scratch?" To me, the responses seemed to scatter far from the mark. We are reaching a point where the rules of technology development shift at a fundamental level.

This has a direct bearing on those of us working in media, as technology and media are now deeply interconnected. I'll illustrate some of the implications of that.

Some of the coverage of Friday's announcement from Gannett that things will be different misses the most important points. This is not about putting breaking news online all day long, which -- as I observed the other day -- is hardly a new idea. Nor is it about equipping reporters with video cameras.

There's been quite a bit of negative reaction to Lauren Rich Fine's reported claim that print will continue to dominate online revenues for newspapers until 2036. It seems to me that the only thing such predictions are good for is to stimulate conversation, and I say that because I performed similar calculations a couple of years ago.

As newspapers once again report declines in circulation, there's a natural tendancy to view it as yet more evidence that print is faltering in the face of the Internet. But that's not quite right. There's another story at work here: the collapse of the too-big, but not quite national, newspapers. That's a story of content and its relationship with a changing marketplace.

Writing for the American Journalism Review, Carl Sessions Stepp takes the pulse of American newspapers and declares:

"It is easy to imagine the time, coming soon, when the 24-hour Web cycle dominates the newsroom tempo, work flow and culture. ... As for tomorrow's journalists, they will more likely be identified by their function than by their medium."

Yes, but ... what about this wasn't utterly apparent 12 years ago?

Barry Parr suggests that Los Angeles presents a great opportunity to a disruptive innovator who can see that it's really a patchwork of neighborhoods, each underserved by the troubled Los Angeles Times. And he suggests the answer is Web first, print second, with the Web a primary news platform and print the primary advertising/marketing vehicle.

The nation's second largest newspaper is in one hell of a mess, and as Jeff Jarvis says, it's become something of a parlor game to answer the question, "What would you do with ...?"

Los Angeles Times Editor John Carroll quit last year in protest of budget cuts. Publisher Jeffrey Johnson defied corporate instructions to cut expenses this year, and was shown the door as his reward.