About

Newspapers, as a busi­ness, are in trou­ble. Since the late 1990s, when the Web really became pop­u­lar, their strength and author­ity has been sapped by the fact that the papers offer most of their con­tent for free online.

While this has ruined the busi­ness side of news, it has cre­ated a rev­o­lu­tion in the way peo­ple con­sume, cre­ate, use and remix news. I think the change is a pos­i­tive thing, but I also think that something’s going to have to be done to make sure that news out­lets can make enough money to keep it up.

In com­ing up with ideas about how to “save news­pa­pers,” which is more or less what this blog is about, we have to remem­ber to sep­a­rate the con­cepts of “news­pa­per” and “jour­nal­ism.” They are not the same thing. Journalism is not in dan­ger. Journalism, in the sense of report­ing facts to read­ers who need to know those facts, will con­tinue regard­less of what medium car­ries it. Newspapers, how­ever, are an endan­gered species.

Are news­pa­pers, as in the newsprint paper with rub-off, hand-blackening ink, worth sav­ing, or do we need to be look­ing for new ideas to carry us into the future? Big questions.

I’m glad I don’t have to answer them all at once. Read the blog. Read other blogs. Let’s get to work.

Internet. Serious Business.