“All that is newspaper melts…” – Scott Rosenberg on the end of print newspapers:

… the same process that ate their classified income is going to affect [newspaper owners'] other revenue streams. Just as classifieds went from costly to free, the display advertising will begin to dry up, as youth-seeking national advertisers follow their targets to the online world. And the very core of the newspaper product, the professional news report, is under siege, thanks to a myriad of missteps in the newsrooms and the rise of amateur (in the best sense), free alternatives.

… the only kinds of reporting and writing that will survive are those that individual entrepreneurs can find sponsors for, or those done by people who are financially independent or who work for nothing in their spare time.

- Scott Rosenberg

It sounds like a mission impossible: set up a progressive publication, one which doesn’t shirk from flicking the comfortable and comforting the afflicted, and don’t worry if the money doesn’t immediately roll in.

Robert Scheer, former columnist at the LA Times, sacked, he says, because of his opposition to the Iraq War, is trying to do exactly this. Truthdig is “an attempt to put out a good solid magazine of substance that has a progressive point of view.” Rather than competing with old media, he aims to produce “evergreen” copy giving readers in-depth analyses on current news stories. How to keep the “webzine” financially afloat? No get rich scheme, Truthdig will eventually depend on ad revenue as well as sponsorship for specific projects.
- Online Journalism Review

Two further suggestions from Joe Mathewson, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, banker and corporate lawyer. Newspapers benefit our civic health in ways which far outstrip the profits they bring to their investors. Simple tax legislation could make it easier for newspaper owners to convert ailing businesses into not-for-profit companies, into tax deductible gifts. Or newspapers could follow the US real estate investment trust model: distribute all profits to shareholders and get an exemption from federal taxes.
- Editor and Publisher

Spurred on by Google’s “clever new products”, Washington Post chairman Don Graham sees an electronic future ahead for news:

This year for the first time I have come to believe that we will be able to tell you about certain subjects better on the Internet than we will be able to in print.

- Don Graham, Washingtonian

It’s a real dark night of the soul for journalists. Feel their pain. The open season on media professionals shows no sign of stopping. Three o’clock in the morning and what’s up with journalists?

Take these three takes:

First, their business values make little sense, according to Huntley Paton, publisher of the Dallas Business Journal. When daily newspapers obsess over celebs and junk TV, they may as well be shining a light on their competition. And their liberal bias does them little good: by mocking “community standards”, they may as well be waving goodbye to their small-town readers. The solution? Get back to providing local information and original reporting.
- Dallas Business Journal

Second, their skills set is full of holes, according to Dale Dougherty, editor and publisher of MAKE. He tracks the journalism mash-up, the positive feedback loop of modern journalism: how PR missives form the headlines which go on to form the common sense for reporters. There’s no conspiracy here. It’s just that too many journalists are sloppy and lazy and suffer from a herd mentality. They need a story to be either up or down; they can never just say that “nobody knows.” They swallow numbers in the hope of spraying their works with a crud of credibility.
- Boing Boing

At an in-house pow-wow last month looking at what’s next for the Guardian following its shrink from broadsheet to Berliner, editor Alan Rusbridger, chatting to blogger and Guardian Unlimited columnist Jeff Jarvis, downplayed the newspaper’s gleaming new printing presses.

They may be the last presses we ever own.
- Alan Rusbridger, Buzzmachine

Way to go, says Jarvis. While US newspapers fret about their problems – staff layoffs, increased competition, less revenue, lower stocks, general fear and loathing, European papers are reaching out to zeros and ones.

Like their European counterparts, US newspaper folk should seize the digital day. Newspapers need to become places rather than things. The trick is to create online communities which can then be tapped for oodles of advertising revenue.
- Buzzmachine