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<\/a><\/center><\/p>\nBusy busy busy night at work. Lots of news, lots of news meetings and meetings about news. We’re trying to plan for our inauguration coverage and get the daily paper out and all the while, the entire newspaper industry is collapsing around us. It’s, if I may coin a rather vulgar phrase, a clusterfuck of epic clusterfuckitude. <\/p>\n
We’ve got Hearst trying to sell the Seattle P-I<\/i><\/a> (where my former art director works) and now the Minneapolis Star Tribune<\/i> has filed for bankruptcy<\/a>. And Gannett, for whom several of my friends work, is ordering a weeklong furlough<\/a> among its employees this quarter. This is among the ongoing abysmal and well-documented problems at other papers (Google “newspaper crisis” for a real pick-me-up some time; try not to get distracted by Google’s hideous new favicon) industrywide. <\/p>\n Things are bad. Real, real bad. And they’re not going to get better. Things are changing, slowly but getting faster and faster, and it’s going to be painful for people who are used to the traditional way things have been, people who lived through the heyday of newspapers when there was such a thing as a news cycle. We are drenched in free information now, and there is no putting that cap back on the toothpaste tube now. Nor should there be. I love the internet and its capacity for not only entertaining but for getting more people up to speed on more things than ever before. I want newspapers to embrace the potential of the web and get out in front of trends and bring their hefty institutional weight to the online newsgathering process. I want newspapers \u2014 printed or no \u2014\u00a0to continue to be the publications of record. It’s a civic duty that I take seriously, despite my irreverent, profane blatherings to the contrary. I want us to be useful. No, not useful: indipensible<\/i>. Aggressive and badass. Telling and<\/i> showing. All that. I have high hopes for the types of journalism that will survive and thrive once the immediacy of the web is fully embraced. I want to see how much more careful and meticulous and accountable reporters and editors will have to be once they understand that their words carry fast and far on these tubes. <\/p>\n I’m in a weird spot because my job \u2014 the person who arranges stories and art on the page that will be printed \u2014 isn’t going to exist forever. My friends’ and co-workers’ jobs aren’t going to exist forever. What we can actively hope for is that we can grow and change and withstand the labor pains and find a niche for ourselves in the emerging media landscape. Learn how to do web design. Learn how to edit videos and audio and photos. Learn how to create content. How to aggregate content. All that and more. <\/p>\n We’re willing, I assure you. The average journo worth his weight in newsprint wants to do whatever it takes to maintain his relevance to the community. But a complete overhaul of everything you know and everything you are and ever have been is easier said than done. We don’t have the luxury of time to sit around and solve our existential and philosophical problems; we’ve got to get the paper out. We still have deadlines to hit every night. Every<\/i> night. It would be nice if we could look to industry leaders to do some heavy lifting to shake up the status quo and get out ahead for once. But so far there’s been little but crickets chirping. But the overhaul has to be done. It needs to be done. It’s happening and we can’t slow this thing down. Some people find it easier to get off this janky ride right now and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think about it every day. But others will tell you that once this stuff gets in your blood, it’ll take much more than a transfusion to get it out. <\/p>\n Still, the nostalgia and wonder attached to the big ol’ printing press won’t die easily. Just think about all the movies that feature that iconic spinning newspaper, or the camera panning past a bulletin board of news clippings. The printed newspaper has had such a fantastic run in our culture that it’s gut-wrenching to imagine that some day it won’t exist at all. I have no idea if that’s true; I’m as successful a soothsayer as Sam Zell. But newspapers will at most be just a ghost of their former selves, and that’s sad enough on its own. I still stand in awe as our presses run. There’s just something so damn substantial<\/i> about it. <\/p>\n So here’s to evolving. Whatever the hell that means.<\/p>\n Anyway, that’s some heavy shit. I invite you to wash it out of your mouth with this<\/a>.<\/p>\n