Saturday, September 30, 2006

First post

The slow death of the newspaper saddens me. I majored in journalism in the latter half of the 1990s, a time when journalists were still quite unsure of how all this technology could or would change everything. Many were quite skeptical that newspapers would become extinct. I include myself among those, as being a newspaper writer was a childhood ambition of mine. The people who taught journalism in the 1990s did journalism in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, and that's how they taught us. Those journalism teachers, and the journalists I worked with early in my career at the turn of the last century, provided a solid foundation with a heavy emphasis on ethics, investigative reporting, and freedom of the press. But when I got my first newspaper job, our basic journalistic tools were a pen, a pad, a microcassette recorder, and a computer. The newsroom used the Atex computer system to write stories on black screens with glowing text housed in a clunky white terminal. Only a few PCs in the office were available with Internet access. It seemed most newspapers were behind the times, resistant to technological change and not anticipating the effect new media would have on the way people get their news.

This blog is a space for me to offer my thoughts on traditional and new journalism and highlight news that indicates the direction of newspapers, whether they are continuing their struggle or perhaps becoming innovative and begin to mount a real fight. I don't look forward to the death of the newspaper, but I accept it.