I truly hope that newspapers can adapt and survive. As I leaf through my commonplace book, I note that newspaper articles are more numerous than any other source for the kind of contemporary thought and moving writing that I want to return to again and again — and thank you for the links to some of your favorites, which I will enjoy exploring in a moment.

I think the demise of newspapers would be a disaster for society as a whole, and for the blogging community. Most of what circulates on the blogs as news is really a spin on what the traditional press has uncovered. Without true journalists to uncover those stories and facts, blogs slide further into the mudpit of meaninglessness.

While the broadcast media may pick up the slack nationally, should newspapers vanish, I don’t know what there is to pick up the slack locally, which is really most important to the day-to-day lives of most of us. With the exception of a few national newspapers of record, I think newspapers should concentrate on local events and issues that we cannot get from any other source. I have a loyalty to my hometown papers for those local news stories, although I never read (inter)national stories in the paper anymore.

Anyway, thanks for this post.

Sadly, the New York Press is now only a shell of its former self, but Crispin Sartwell was certainly never one of its ornaments. It was obvious at the time that all his arguments applied with equal or greater force to the completely vacuous George W. Bush, whose inability to recognize or deal with reality infected large parts of the country.

The death of newspapers began well before the rise of the internet. Competition from internet sources is only a very partial explanation for newspapers’ current poor health; clicking hyperlinks while sitting at a desk is a slow, poor substitute for scanning whole sections while sitting on the couch or eating lunch. There was a time my family subscribed to three local papers (only one of which is still printing) and enjoyed aspects of all of them. Today for some reason, I often question whether subscribing to one is a waste of time and money. The problems of newspapers lie in themselves.

Much of the decline of newspapers has nothing to do with journalism per se or liberal/conservative content. Instead, it is tied into the rise of the internet — in part, because of the information sources online, but mostly because the ‘net has gutted the major sources of income that pay for newspapers, namely commercial (quarter-page, half-page, full-page) and classified advertising. Those were the cash cows that kept newspapers afloat, and they’ve been vanishing for some time now.

This is why moving online doesn’t necessarily help a newspaper; it still has to pay for itself, and it faces the same competition for commercial and classified advertising that it did before.

On top of all that, many of the consolidations and purchases in the newspaper industry involved assuming massive debt loads, so even those newspapers or newspaper chains that otherwise might be profitable are crushed under debt servicing.

’ve not yet heard any rumblings about the New York Times being shut down

Then you haven’t been following the news. The NYT is in serious financial trouble; its share price is in the tank (a share of NYT stock, once over $50, now costs less than a Sunday issue of the NYT itself); and it’s had to take such steps as seeking a massive loan from a Mexican business tycoon (at rather steep interest rates) and selling the Times building itself (but leasing back space) in order to keep things going. ..bruce..

I had a bad feeling about the stock price of the NYT when I saw construction begin on their new world headquarters. A fancy new building is often a contrary indicator. The same thing happened with AOL-Time Warner.

Mark Cuban has been writing a lot recently about newspapers.

Here is one thoughtful link: http://blogmaverick.com/2009/02/22/how-cable-satellite-can-save-the-newspaper-business/

So what does this have to do with newspapers ? They should be knocking on the doors of cable and satellite providers offering their subscribers exclusive access to the online versions of their newspapers. Thats right, the New York Times should be going to CableVision, Time Warner, Comcast, Charter, Directv, Verizon, ATT, Echostar et al, and offer to each that for 25c per month for those subscribers in the New York area, and for 5 c per month for those outside the immediate NYCity area, their subscribers will get exclusive access to the NY Times Online. Non subscribers will get what Wall Street Journal non subscribers get today, access to some content, but not the most timely or valuable content.

If the Times can convince these operators that their subscribers will find value in exclusive access to the content, particularly if they can become part of their basic or near basic service, then all of a sudden, the NY Times and any other newspaper finds themselves with a recurring source of revenue that can turn into real money, while at the same time offering differentiated value for the video distributors.

A few matters, like the Dan Rather thing, can be handled by bloggers, but they lack the ability to cover most national and nearly all local matters. There was an article that got a bit of attention “In Baltimore, No One Left to Press the Police.“

There is a lot of talk nowadays about what will replace the dinosaur that is the daily newspaper. So-called citizen journalists and bloggers and media pundits have lined up to tell us that newspapers are dying but that the news business will endure, that this moment is less tragic than it is transformational.

Well, sorry, but I didn’t trip over any blogger trying to find out McKissick’s identity and performance history. Nor were any citizen journalists at the City Council hearing in January when police officials inflated the nature and severity of the threats against officers. And there wasn’t anyone working sources in the police department to counterbalance all of the spin or omission.

I didn’t trip over a herd of hungry Sun reporters either, but that’s the point. In an American city, a police officer with the authority to take human life can now do so in the shadows, while his higher-ups can claim that this is necessary not to avoid public accountability, but to mitigate against a nonexistent wave of threats. And the last remaining daily newspaper in town no longer has the manpower, the expertise or the institutional memory to challenge any of it.

It seems that economies of scale winnowed out the several competing newspapers that cities used to have, and now the monopolists are failing in their jobs.

The newstand price for the Washington Post is now 75 cents, as of January. Only two years ago it was 35 cents. Doubling the price makes picking one up less of a trivial “sure, why not?” decision.

John Mansfield, the economy just won’t support a permanent underclass aimed at reporting local issues. I take this to mean that the news they report just isn’t very important to the locals who are supposedly impacted by the events.

Besides, I’d much rather have local police spinning things in their favor with impunity than major network anchors trying to sabotage a national election by publishing stories based on forged documents.

dkl, what are you talking about in 17? (did i miss something in the comments)