Point-Counterpoint on Newspapers. Rinse. Repeat. Endlessly

There seems to be no end these days to the bloviation about the past, present and future of the newspaper business (yes, I do my share). Three good examples today, of varying quality:

From the dinosaur dept., Mark Morford on SFGate rails against the dying of the (printed) light, gripes about post-newspaper visionaries like Clay Shirky and basically argues that only journalists—especially newspaper journalists—can be and should be allowed to commit journalism:

Maybe the revolution won't be so bad. Maybe in the next few years (or rather, months, at the current rate) we'll all come to realize the enormous value of having established editorial voices in the community and a semblance of cohesiveness to this madcap storyline, and maybe we'll come to appreciate the true value of pro journalism and journalists alike, in whatever medium they appear on.

Sigh. Fortunately, this brings a smart response from Fernsehtek:

The playing field changed and newspapers arrogantly stood on their laurels and reminded us all that they are in fact meaningful and that we really ought to remember to read them.  Don’t be mad at the geeks, be mad at the newspapers.

But trumping them both, in a much more constructive fashion,  is an even smarter look forward by Dan Conover in the Xark blog at what may come to be, replete with an excellent laundry list of predictions, and concluding:

"What's next?" is a decade of experimentation, opportunity and chaos. Some of the funding sources may appear exotic, but most of the “successful” business models (in this instance, "successful" means capable of sustaining a journalistic enterprise) from the coming decade will be little more than smart outfits that figure out how to accomplish their mission while keeping their costs down. Doing this will require a great deal of cooperation, plus a willingness to enter into relationships that our Old Media ancestors wouldn't consider.

Old Media executives don't recognize many of these alternatives as valid, but that's likely because they're looking at media business models from the perspective of “What can save my company?” But that's not the question we're asking.

And finally, I think we can safely expect that this diverse, open-source, networked-media future is going to be radically reorganized within the decade by the rise of information technologies that many news-media competitors will not be able to replicate. It is possible, if not likely, that many of the “successes” of 2012 will be swept away before 2020.

So when people ask me, “What should I do to prepare for the future?” I suggest they just wrap their brains around this idea: The current meltdown is just a warm-up act.

Maybe if we could harness all of the energy being spent arguing about whether professional journalists are still relevant (they are, but not in the ways we currently know them), whether newspapers are doomed (they are, at least the larger ones) and whether they can be replaced (yes, but the replacements will be much more complicated and sophisticated, as Conover hints), we could spend more time trying to bring the good ideas of Conover, Jeff Jarvis and others to life.

Comments

[Chuck Peters]

Mark -

Absolutely! on "spend more time trying to bring the good ideas of Conover, Jeff Jarvis and others to life"

Jeff Jarvis's What Would Google Do gives a comprehensive overview of the drivers of the individualized relationship economy.

Dan Conover's Xark piece of yesterday gives us the intellectual framework, activities and technical infrastructure necessary for us to succeed with our C3-Complete Community Connection efforts.

We are way behind, and have to get going.

We will try to report progress at http://cpetersia.wordpress.com

Chuck

[Fernsehtek]

Thank you for finding and mentioning my thoughts on http://fernsehtek.wordpress.com

I am closely watching the http://indenvertimes.com folks gain momentum but shaking my head at their still thinking like school kids selling lemonade from a stand on the street corner. The last line from your exerpt of Conover says it all, "The current meltdown is just a warm-up act." Until their thinking changes to a goal other than keeping papers alive then they are only rough drafts of the future answer. I wish I had the answer, I love good story telling and would hate to see everything boiled down to 140 characters.