the modern guide...better lies
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
...the modern guide to newspapers
Suddenly it's everywhere, on TV last night, on the radio this morning, The end of regional newspapers the redundancies and lack of profits of national titles. A senator in the states suggesting local newspapers could assume not for profit status ( actually an interesting idea) certain cities in the US having no print newspaper at all.
But what bugs me is that this isn't something that just appeared out of the blue like an alien from a b-movie issuing adapt or die ultimatums to newspapers. This has been coming for years and anyone with even a passing interest in new technology and media could have made an educated guess well over ten years a go that this point was coming.
The fact is people were describing exactly this impact on print media local and national as far back as the mid nineties and probably beyond . But (in the UK at least) most editors and journalists chose at best to ignore it and at worst to snear and mock the internet and it's users and champions.. I remember Janet Street-Porter on a TV show called J'accuse - about 1996 maybe - likening the internet to CB radio and generally taking the piss out of the freaks and geeks and spotty kids who used it.
Now JSP is a rent a gob I know. But a few years later she was editing a national Sunday newspaper and I think what she was saying was what most of fleet street and regional journalists were thinking.
It's a great example of being in the water and not listening to the guy on the beach shouting about the waves.
Good local journalism and news will always find an outlet and an audience and that in itself is a worry to some. I think nostalgia is wasted on titles. It's a shame about jobs. But it's a case of history repeating. Just ask the town cryer.
But what bugs me is that this isn't something that just appeared out of the blue like an alien from a b-movie issuing adapt or die ultimatums to newspapers. This has been coming for years and anyone with even a passing interest in new technology and media could have made an educated guess well over ten years a go that this point was coming.
The fact is people were describing exactly this impact on print media local and national as far back as the mid nineties and probably beyond . But (in the UK at least) most editors and journalists chose at best to ignore it and at worst to snear and mock the internet and it's users and champions.. I remember Janet Street-Porter on a TV show called J'accuse - about 1996 maybe - likening the internet to CB radio and generally taking the piss out of the freaks and geeks and spotty kids who used it.
Now JSP is a rent a gob I know. But a few years later she was editing a national Sunday newspaper and I think what she was saying was what most of fleet street and regional journalists were thinking.
It's a great example of being in the water and not listening to the guy on the beach shouting about the waves.
Good local journalism and news will always find an outlet and an audience and that in itself is a worry to some. I think nostalgia is wasted on titles. It's a shame about jobs. But it's a case of history repeating. Just ask the town cryer.
posted by the modern guide # Tuesday, March 31, 2009 
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