Clinamen

My good friend Doug Freeman at the Austin Chronicle has posted what I think is a dead on assessment of how print journalism (in this case, music journalism) is missing the boat:

"The continued waning of print publications’ resources and influence is undoubtedly due to the rise of the Internet, in much the same way the CD-based music business has been felled by online capabilities. This loss of influence is not due to the rise of blogs, however, but rather the inability of print publications to largely adjust to the Web, to transform either their content, style, or influence to a new medium, much to detriment of [music] criticism itself."

Amen. Mark Cuban has made virtually the same argument as Doug (which in my estimation puts Doug in good company), saying that newspapers are in the midst of an identity crisis:

"I don't care how Internet savvy you are or whether you're in ninth grade or college, you're not going to read twenty-five pages of text online. In newspapers, you read more pages, you read more words. There's no way around it. But newspapers don't see their own value. They just don't get it. So they do dumb-ass shit, like they can't figure out who their customer is, they can't figure out what business they're in. They have all these news-wire reports, these breaking stories, but anyone who's Internet savvy knows that breaking stories, sports events, all that stuff is available on the Internet thirty seconds after it happens. The people who are in tune to wanting stuff immediately are going to get it online. But when you read the New York Times or you read the L.A. Times, you read the Chicago Trib or The Dallas Morning News, when they break a story that is unique, not just first, but unique, a story that you can't just pick up on the wire, you have to read it. And if it's geared toward different demographics, fine. Like, businesspeople have to read the New York Times business section -- even though from personal experience I know they're wrong a certain percentage of the time. You still have to read it, just in
case something clicks. Like for me. If I want to keep up with what's going on in Dallas, I have to read the local paper. So newspapers aren't dying; they're just undergoing an identity crisis. They don't know who they want to be."

Currently, this identity crisis is playing out this way: "Waaaah! These amateurs are ruining it for us." At some point, someone smart (like Cuban...or Freeman) is going to get a chance to test out some new ideas. This will be a good thing.