SF Chronicle columnist on "death" of newspapers

Pretty good read. Nothing ground-breaking, but a mostly optimistic piece with some equal opportunity tweaks at bean counters and bloggers:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/10/DDJG10207R.DTL

Of course, the Internet is very cheap. Start a blog that supports your business; spend next to nothing. But "cheap" is not the same as "profitable." If the problem with newspapers is that they're not profitable, then Web sites have the same problem. The Internet is dying!

Of course newspapers will change; newspapers have always changed. At the moment, the idea seems to be to change newspapers by making them less useful and more stupid.

 

Not that impressed with the column. There are a couple decent points in there about the shedding of staff and quality, but much of it strikes me as symptoms of the "ostrich with its head in the sand" syndrome. And this graf just makes the writer seem ignorant of technology how it is changing people's consumption habits:

"The news is going to be all digital; that's what we hear. If current trends continue ... but current trends never continue. That is their nature. (That's fine, but what are your reasons that the news won't be all digital in the future?) Newspapers still have all the advantages they used to have. They're portable (umm ... iPhone, anyone?), and if someone steals a newspaper, so what? If someone steals your laptop, not so good. (I know that's certainly the reason I've been reluctant to read news on a laptop) Each copy of a newspaper contains an enormous amount of information; (right, and the Internet pales in comparison) no links of dubious authenticity to follow. (are links on CNN.com dubious? Besides, with RSS, people don't even have to click through links on a site to get to the content) Plus: no viruses! (yes, and people are getting viruses left and right from reading online news sites)"

 

I agree with you. I wasn't that impressed either. The column makes some points that don't make any sense, trying to bad mouth the Internet compared the the print edition.