newspapers

On an industry email listserve, someone commented that "the thing that best distinguishes us from the guys trying to start online publications in their basements (besides the really big presses out back and the staff of professional journalists in our newsrooms) is that we have our reader's trust." Here's my response:

That's the official religion of the newsroom. I think it's a dangerous delusion and part of the culture of arrogance that is rotting the foundations of journalism.

Yes, there are people who trust us.

I am not foolish enough to don a flight suit and land on an aircraft carrier under a banner proclaiming "mission accomplished," but I think it's time we recognized that things have changed in the newspaper industry. The events of the last year or so -- the undeniable impact of blogging on civic life, the collapse of Knight-Ridder, the troubles at Tribune, the painful series of layoffs and "redundancies" at U.S. and U.K. newspapers -- have finally pushed just about everyone in a position of power to admit we simply can't continue to party like it's 1999.

Writing for editorsweblog.org, Rory Satran makes "A Case for Measured Integration" of print and online newsrooms.

Last week I attended the yearlong NewspaperNext project's unveiling of the final report. Not surprisingly, it's getting mixed reviews, depending on expectations and predispositions. Jeff Jarvis and Susan Mernit go negative.

Awhile back a team of Rich Gordon's whiz kids from Northwestern University worked with Davenport's Quad-City Times on a combo print-online youth product called Your Mom.

Last year the paper pulled the plug on the printed product but kept the website. Now Will Sullivan notes that the Lee Enterprises newspaper has killed Your Mom online as well.

(Here's something I posted to a mailing list. It's a tangent from discussion of low newspaper website traffic on Sundays.)

Newspaper readership has been declining steadily since 1970. Confronted with the Internet, newspapers generally have responded by creating "online newspapers," transporting a failing product model from dead trees to electrons.

We're always looking for easy answers to complex questions. Tom Mohr's piece in E&P strikes me as a case of that.

There is no magic bullet, and binding together the newspaper industry's generally misdirected online efforts into a single effort is unlikely to provide one. Bigger is not better.

There's no question in my mind that the newspaper industry ought to be working together constructively.