The Inevitable Demise of the Newspaper, Pt. II

New York Times columnist Frank Rich weighs in on the demise of “old media” in today’s Times Sunday edition.

Rich even cites the Clay Shirk piece that I discuss below. Rich is in firm agreement with Shirky’s main point; namely, that nobody knows the form which journalism will take next.

He, however, makes a tenuous connection between the media’s complacency (“weapons of mass destruction,” etc) during the Bush era and its coming demise. In his finale, he implies that the death of the old media not be so bad after all:

By all means let’s mock the old mainstream media as they preen and party on in a Washington ballroom. Let’s deplore the tabloid journalism that, like the cockroach, will always be with us. But if a comprehensive array of real news is to be part of the picture as well, the time will soon arrive for us to put up or shut up. Whatever shape journalism ultimately takes in America, make no mistake that in the end we will get what we pay for.

Rich, in the end, is making a call for journalism not just to change, but to improve.