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.

The Inevitable Demise of the Newspaper

Newsies in Newark, 1909. Image via Shorpy.

That old stalwart of the American public sphere, the daily printed newspaper, is going by the wayside – fast.

At least, according to Clay Shirky, a professor at New York University, writer, and expert on the internet, networks, and e-business models. (Evgeny Morozov mentions Shirky in his recent Boston Review article, “Texting Toward Utopia.”)

In a provocative recent essay posted to his weblog, Shirky argues that newspapers were doomed from the first days of the internet.

During the 1990′s, a new, vastly more efficient, and completely free model for distributing the news emerged. As a result, the old profit-making schemes never stood a chance. His best quotes after the jump.

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Charismatic Conservatism

William F. Buckley, Jr (AP Photos)

Christopher Buckley’s cover piece, “Mum and Pup and Me,” for last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, explores the writer’s complicated relationship with his legendary father, conservative writer William F. Buckley, Jr.

Bill Buckley, even to his own son, was larger-than-life, making him a first rate political leader and writer but an emotionally elusive father. Indeed, William Buckley’s intellectual charisma and personal charm energized conservatism from the mid-1950′s until the mid-2000′s.

Today’s conservative movement misses Buckley’s charisma dearly. Under Buckley’s stewardship, conservatism was intellectually dynamic – bookish, even – and socially acceptable in elite Eastern circles. (With his help, for example, William’s older brother, James L. Buckley, was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1970 as a member of the Conservative Party of New York. Imagine that happening today!)

For an interesting -albeit rather negative – discussion of Buckley’s place in our modern imagination, check out William Hogeland’s Boston Review article from last year. A book based on the article is here.

Also, be on the lookout for a biography of Buckley within the next year from New York Times Book Review Editor and author of controversial essay “Conservatism is Dead,” Sam Tanenhaus.