Brains: Small Print Edition

[elfs]

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer Will Close Up Shop Tomorrow

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which has chronicled the news of the city since logs slid down its steep streets to the harbor and miners caroused in its bars before heading north to Alaska's gold fields, will print its final edition Tuesday.

Hearst Corp., which owns the 146-year-old P-I, said Monday that it failed to find a buyer for the newspaper, which it put up for a 60-day sale in January after years of losing money. Now the P-I will shift entirely to the Web.

Clay Shirky on why newspapers are doomed

If you want to know what happened to the P-I, and what will happen to the Seattle Times soon enough, Clay Shirky gives us an obituary.

When reality is labeled unthinkable, it creates a kind of sickness in an industry. Leadership becomes faith-based, while employees who have the temerity to suggest that what seems to be happening is in fact happening are herded into Innovation Departments, where they can be ignored en masse. This shunting aside of the realists in favor of the fabulists has different effects on different industries at different times. One of the effects on the newspapers is that many of their most passionate defenders are unable, even now, to plan for a world in which the industry they knew is visibly going away.

It's long, but I recommend you read it all. Novelists are more threatened by the time pressures (and ADHD inducement) of other media than they are by the price of copying, and they don't suffer from the spatial amortization effect the Internet has on newspapers (why would so much local newsprint be dedicated to national and international news? We can get better sources on-line; what we need is local news, local sports, local weather), but it's still got a lot to think about for those of us who write.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

http://www.minnpost.com/stories/2009/03/16/7391/while_major_metros_struggle_many_newspapers_still_thriving_in_smaller_towns

[sianmink.livejournal.com]

why would so much local newsprint be dedicated to national and international news? We can get better sources on-line; what we need is local news, local sports, local weather

Because the main holdout consumers of newspapers now are old and/or technophobic, and have yet to replace their top-loading VCR that constantly flashes 12:00.

I simply can not come up with a reason to pick up a paper when everything that it has is available online, on-demand. I guess I may have a different opinion if this "new-fangled intertubes" was beyond my understanding, but that's about it.

[sianmink.livejournal.com]

I'm more interested in what effect the death of the newspaper will have on the lives of Clark Kent and Peter Parker, really. Faith in Marvel and DCs editorial staff is waning, however.

[sianmink.livejournal.com]

Have you tried getting a fast internet connection in the boonies?

I'm not shocked or surprised. Broadband penetration seems to be inversely proportional to newspaper health.

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

Paper isn't cheap. Neither are printing presses and delivery vans. Time to bring this fossil into the 21st century and have it online. simple. Fast. Less costly and doesn't fill landfills with those expensive dead trees.

[tagryn]

Exactly. For newspapers to survive, they need to start charging for what they're providing for free. Not sure what a reasonable fee would be - perhaps 1-5 cents to access a story? - but the costs of running a news service has to come from somewhere. Newspapers haven't figured out a way to make money from their online services, hence their decline. Online ads as a source of revenue haven't worked.

I personally still find a lot of value in reading something in print - hard to catch a wireless connection riding the bus to work, for example, while the paper is right there - and I happen to like technology fine, thank you very much.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

McClatchy's recently rated its property, the Seattle Times, the other newspaper in Seattle, as being worth zero dollars. Apparently, nobody in their right mind would want to buy the presses, and the Times is in hock for a failed expansion program. Can't even give the damn thing away.