Another good read: Jack Shafer of Slate, once again, reaches back into history to draw parallels with today. This time, he revisits the Great New York Newspaper Strike of 1962-63.
Journalists and publishers improvised, and readers, parched for news, features, entertainment, and advertising, experimented with finding new sources. Giving up the daily newspaper habit proved easy for many New Yorkers.
Shafer's trip into the early '60s finds that, in a world without newspapers—possibly coming soon to a city near you—it turned out that there were available alternatives, even a generation or two before the Internet. And when the strike was over, circulation was off 10 percent and several of New York papers were on the verge of extinction—over the next couple of years, the city went from seven dailies to the three we know now. Traditional newspapers just may not be as essential to life as journalists and publishers hope.
Over and over again, we continue to find new media in which to consume our information. The iterations just happen at a much faster pace now.
Posted by: Jeremy Porter | May 22, 2009 at 10:45 AM