He was only half joking. Last Tuesday, when the news officially broke that Wednesday would be the last print edition of the P-I, I sat at my desk reading article after article about the paper's demise. It was not a surprise, but it still was hard to swallow.
Sunday, an editorial ran in The Chronicle - conceivably the next big paper to fold - about the outpouring of ideas for how the save newspapers. John Diaz, the article's author and editor of the opinion page, wrote about how many conflicting ideas people have for what will save print media. On a daily basis, people email and write to tell him they have the answer for how to save the Chron. If the paper leans more to the right it will be saved; if it becomes a vocally liberal progressive paper it will be saved. If it stops publishing/starts publishing news on controversial subject matter...First big-city gay daily! one Gawker commenter suggested. The newspaper also gets its fair share of people writing to extrapolate on the solitary reason the Chron will fail. Diaz writes:
If we fail to run their favorite syndicated columnist or continue to run one they loathe ... "that's why you're losing money." If we are perceived as favoring the Giants over the A's or one political philosophy over the other or give too little or too much space to celebrity gossip ... "that's why you're losing money." My favorite link between personal interest and our financial predicament was the freelance writer who, after having his opinion-piece submission rejected, wrote: "That's why this newspaper is failing."
As much as these letters are amusing and, at times, frustrating, it's good to know that people - not exclusively journalists, editors, and publishers - are brainstorming on how to fix the current and predicament of print media. And that they care. I know many people have thought little about the impact of 'the end of days' for daily newspapers on their lives. And maybe it wouldn't affect them. I think my college journalism professor instilled and particularly romantic view of journalism in me, so I fall hard onto the belief that it will be truly detrimental to society. As a writer at salon.com advised a journalism professor struggling with the guilt at teaching students in a seemingly hopeless profession:
Journalists exercise power. Ideally, they exercise that power on behalf of the powerless...leave it to your students to create new modes for the buying and selling of this information. Their generation will do this. I feel confident about that. Teach them how to find out what is true and what is hidden, and how to say it so others can understand what it means and why it is important. Then you will have done your job and given them the gift of a lifetime.
But then, I've taken a lot of cold medicine tonight so maybe that's why I find that particularly stirring.
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