Friday marked the one week anniversary of the death of the Rocky Mountain News, a newspaper I never read in a state I have never visited. On the other end of the media spectrum, the recently-launched The New Ledger featured a relevant rumination by Francis Cianfrocca this week, which notes:
There’s a tremendous amount of value to news collection: generating basic data, and massaging it with taste and with an informed editorial viewpoint, into information. A big part of this is cultivating sources. But a big part of it is constructing a narrative out of the data, boiling it down into bite-sized pieces.
Which reminds me of the RMN’s association with one of the most blackly comic examples of old media employees’ new media ineptitude, perhaps one of the worst media moments all of last year:
One could say the same thing for the Rocky Mountain News, if not just yet the mid-size, second-tier city newspaper as a genre. But we may get there soon enough.
Nice one – pithy.
I wrote about this recently as well, albeit from a different perspective:
http://itsnotalecture.blogspot.com/2009/03/i-come-to-praise-newspapers-not-to-bury.html
The age of printed newspapers is over, too bad none of the dinosaurs know it. The only way a local paper can even hope to survive is by going online slashing their budget and draw from local bloggers willing to support the paper as a means of traffic generation.
I learn faster and more about what is going on in the world from twitter than I ever will from reading my local newspaper to which i subscribe only because once a week a really cute girl comes to deliver it in the afternoon.
BTW those who twitter and have a wordpress blog should check out these tools:
http://bradstinyworld.com/blogging-tips/brads-top-wordpress-twitter-crossovers/