Here’s an interesting NYT story about a little newspaper in New Jersey that simply refuses to go online. If people want to read what this paper has to say, they have to buy the dead tree product and look at all the ads along with the content. There is nothing on this newspaper’s website except ad rates, editorial guidelines and masthead.

And so far, it appears to be doing OK, in a spunky little way.

Hm.

Could newspapers save themselves by simply stonewalling the Internet?

I mean, just because the Internet is the wave of the future for some things, is it necessarily the way for everything? If credible information cannot be supported by the online model, maybe the producers of that information should withdraw and start calling the shots themselves.

To kill off newspapers and the serious practice of journalism is to destroy one of the girders of Democracy. True journalism is more important than the frothy infotainment that is the cornerstone of the Web, yet newspapers are shuffling about, hat in hand, begging the market to support them.

Screw that.

The credible news we want and need is provided by newspapers and no other institution. If the public is not willing to pay for this information online, then why should it be provided free? No, really. Why is the newspaper competing on an unprofitable playing field when they are producing a product so integral to the health of our nation that people don’t even know how much they need it?

Do you think your local TV news shows are doing the shoe leather reporting that print journalists do? Haven’t you heard your local radio hosts quote directly from the local paper? From where would the pipeline of news originate if not from the institutions that have, throughout the life of our country, provided that information?

Newspapers are in great danger and we are grossly negligent if we allow them to perish.

What would happen if newspapers shut down their online operations and re-invested in the paper product? Or simply firewalled their online versions to all but subscribers? (Aside from the fact that I would no longer be able to link to stories online.) Wouldn’t we all, ultimately, as we have in the past (cable TV), adjust, cough up and accept this free-market reality? Or, done as we always have and gone to the library? (Or library database?) Other online models might develop—aggregators of some kind, multi-subscription models—but the newspapers themselves would no longer be held responsible for keeping the nation informed without recompense.

Who do we think we are, demanding such a thing?

Who is John Galt? (Google it.)

Labels: economy, newspapers