Unspun

The Economist this week has an has an interesting cover piece on Who Killed The Newspaper. What is says resonate, especially, when one talks to print journalists, in spite of how even the most prestigious newspapers have been reducing their journalists and the revenue in all but a handful of publications are plummeting.
It is fair to say that few of us know how the industry would change, but change it must and the best way to face this is to have an open mind to the new technologies that have been bucking at the periphery of journalism. Hence blogs, wikis and other stuff.

I don’t think citizen journalism is the way to go. But then, the current offerings by even the established printed publications are meagre and unsatisfactory (don’t get me started on the Wall Street Journal’s coverage of Asia, just read an earlier post on this blog, Where have all the good reads gone?). Maybe something along the lines of Chris Anderson’s “Long Tail”?

It’s there out there and the publication that finds it will be on to the New New Thing of journalism/. In the meantime, less sanctimony on the part of printed journalists about the so called new media might help them be less bewildered when their jobs get harder and harder to maintain.