Back to Carr for a moment: Demise of Newspapers

Anyone still interested in considering the future of newspapers should check out this New Yorker article from their March 31st issue. I wish I had noticed it before my post. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/03/31/080331fa_fact_alterman

After reading the article, one reader sent in this skeptical response:
"Alterman’s predicted demise of the newspaper is premature. Newspapers are still making good money while firing staffers or offering them buyouts. An industry that has garnered profit margins of twenty-five to thirty per cent—figures that other businesses could only dream about—flies into a panic when the margin dips to seventeen per cent. Do newspaper executives really believe that they can cure their ills by reducing their news holes and closing bureaus? In my view, as someone who has spent many years as a newspaperman and as a journalism professor at New York University and at California State University, Long Beach, a glaring failure of newspapers is in not making their importance known to the public. While the television, movie, and other industries inundate us with information about their exploits, newspapers are mostly silent about themselves. The newspaper industry and individual newspapers could well benefit today from the assistance of public-relations firms that are able to tell the story of newspapers that they themselves unfortunately don’t—that they produce news coverage unlike any other medium."

I'll let you decide for yourself which argument about the future of newspapers you find more convincing, but I will note that when an industry's business model shifts, there is often unjustified panic that the industry cannot continue, whereas time often shows that the industry must simply change its business model to survive.