Stuck in Philly yesterday waiting for a flight. I’m a loyal consumer and I try to buy/fly local, but the economics of the airline industry are such that it was still considerably cheaper to drive to RDU, fly to Philly and rent a car and go to NYC then to fly out of PTI to LaGuardia ... Anyway, during my stay, I read the Inquirer, once one of the great metro papers in America, and now on the auction block looking for a buyer.
But there was an interesting collection of pieces in their Insight section that attempted to answer the question: Can we live without newspapers? Not surprisingly, the three answers were yes, no and maybe.
The yes and no answers are a bit simplistic in my book. Maybe recognizes the profound opportunities and perils of the digital age and also the unique properties of a newspaper, which are these: The organizational clout and resources to tackle big issues, and a way to distribute the material in a way that gets people’s attention. It’s true we lack a monopoly on either of those attributes, but we have clout.
Take our Sunday story on the economics and numbers behind the proposal to build a trolley in Winston-Salem. A pretty good piece of public-service journalism. Could a blogger do that same story? Of course. But how would he or she tell 100,000 people that they had done it. That’s a lot trickier. At least for now.
Your host is Ken Otterbourg, the managing editor at the Winston-Salem Journal. It's a forum to discuss the media, from
A web site that is an extension of a newspaper might reach 100,00 people. But a blog is not a web site. And if anyone thinks a large number of people care what a given blogger has to say, he/ she is kidding himself. Blogging is a fine way to make friends by expressing opinions, even “breathless” ones, Ken. But I’d hate to think anyone gets his/her news from blogs alone. I hate to think of a world without newspapers. We need some “factual reporting” before the rest of us chime in with our opinions. The newspaper (print and on-line) makes an attempt to separate reporting from editorializing, although the difference is “grayer” than some might admit.
Post a comment
Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.