Suzanne Dvells, Publish and Perish, Are Newspapers History?
What’s black-and-white and not read all over?
Sadly, the daily newspaper. With the Internet’s ascendancy, print-on-paper journalism is disintegrating; reduced to what some characterize as troubled technology that’s as outmoded as chiseled tablets or scrolls of papyrus. Yes, The Times (as well as the Journal, the Chronicle, the Examiner and the Post) are a changin’…gentlemen start your eulogies. Where once the dove-like rustle of broadsheets cooed the news, the icy stare of LCD screens now command. Where once the union of writers and editors presented stories with perspective and focus, bloggers and “citizen journalists” now vie for bandwidth via bilious screeds and narcissistic eruptions. As paper-thin profits slice through newsrooms, knifing the careers of journeymen reporters, a new class of commentator arises: every man a tetchy muckraker, every woman a malodorous correspondent. The ticks and the quirks, the petty irritations and nasty annoyances of millions are now compulsively posted and social-networked. And as this sludgy electronic sea of inconsequentialities pushes further, actual news is subsumed and relegated to endangered species.