Every time I see stories like this I begin to wonder whether or not the author is still Sane. Admittedly those thoughts, disappear a little more quickly when James Joyner is involved, but I have to tell you that I’m getting really, really tired of .the whining about the supposed demise of journalism.
Nobody making any of these arguments seems to understand what Matt Drudge understood so very clearly when he started his website, back in the day;
Here’s the thing; Journalism, as such, is merely a way to sell printed pages, regardless of what they’re printed on, including photons, hopefully being a way to attract attention to advertisers within the pages, so that the owners of the printing press can make some money. That’s it. Period, end of story. Any higher aspirations for journalism is naught but pretense. anyone who thinks otherwise will doubtless respond to me here with a long diatribe about journalistic ethics, which I have always considered to be a contradiction in terms.
As for the current demise of newspapers, and the supposedly attendant demise of journalism, I am reminded of someone and frankly I’ve forgotten who now, saying that the owners of railroads forgot that they were in the transportation business, and instead thought they were in the train business, instead. That non- thinking, (along with governmental regulation to that effect, which set the whole thing in stone) spelled the demise of passenger railroads in this country. I submit to you that what there is of the demise of journalism is from the same non-thinking. so, yes, businesses change. Then again, a living things always do change.
There is something that we call things that don’t change: Dead.
Dead tree journalism, is thereby as apt a name as any, for the businesses under discussion.
