Having grown up professionally in daily newspapers, as a reporter, editor and editorial writer, I’ve got a soft spot in my heart for what may be a dying medium. Over the past year, we’ve seen great newspapers die – the Rocky Mountain News, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Christian Science Monitor, even The Baltimore Sun overnight became a shell of itself, H.L. Mencken’s seat of punditry. Good journalists have been bought out or sent out to pasture, and a few ink-stained wretches hang on. Every newspaper staff has felt the ax, and is producing more with less every day. 
Can daily newspapers survive in a New Media world of 24/7 digital communication, with video and instant interaction and participation? Probably not – at least, not in the form we have known and loved over the years, and I speak for myself. But the great newspaper organizations still have an important product to sell, if they can figure out how to package it.
The New York Times recently announced that it would begin charging for its Web content in 2011, joining The Wall Street Journal in setting a price for its reporting online. If this keeps these great publications afloat, I’m all for it, although I don’t think charging readers is their best moneymaker. They could do better with a smart advertising program that uses multimedia to sell products around the news.
Perhaps an even more promising avenue for the evolution of the journalism that newspapers have represented in our nation since the days of Zenger and Pulitzer and Citizen Kane is advocating for good journalism – putting their money where their principles are. Print and broadcast media increasingly are joining forces for special projects, such as election polling and investigative reports.
I was reminded of the power of this partnership watching a recent CBS-USA Today report on airline safety, marveling at the exhaustive research and reporting that went into the piece. That’s where the great newspaper and multimedia publishing giants can play their most valuable role – ensuring good journalism does not become passé in the era of drive-by blogging. Put your resources into preserving what is good and just in American journalism. It will sell.
Also by this AUTHOR
By the STAFF of...
