Iyow - in your own words

This is hardly news but flagship newspapers all over the country have been downsizing staffs and slimming down publication costs, attempting to keep up with the rapidly changing media landscape.

This includes my hometown paper – and first professional publisher – The Chicago Tribune, as well as the other big five or six: The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, and many more regional papers. In the above-cited article, Slate columnist Jack Shafer’s analysis is blunt, yet optimistic that newspapers can retain profitability over the long-term even as their audience share shrinks, especially those serving ‘the chattering classes’ (media, government, consultants). Newspaper companies can also stay afloat by co-opting the new technologies. (For example, Slate was bought out from Microsoft by The Washington Post Co. a year and a half ago.) Shafer’s right that papers have been challenged ever since radio, then TV – really, anything that takes people’s attention and time – came on the scene.

Yet, will it ever be as pleasurable to receive large amounts of information over computer/TV screen, rather than through tangible printed media that we can thumb through, skim over, bring to the breakfast table, or the bathroom? Probably not, but it sure is faster. The printed word and image is an artifact that’s both treasurable and perishable. But the news and media world is all about Information Now, and the Web has brought us so much closer to that.