It's not you, it's us

In his eight minute address to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newsroom, Steve Swartz, president of Hearst Newspapers, made several telling statements, but this one jumped out at me:

...I want to assure all of you that this is a business decision and it has absolutely no reflection on your work. Your work is spectacular...

Maybe Swartz was just trying to soften the blow to an already shell shocked office. After all, they'd learned the night before - from a competitor - that their paper was about to be sold (or possibly shuttered). But the statement signals an important, if dispiriting, shift in reality, to one in which newsrooms can no longer affect their own fate - good work and innovation be damned - and business, and business alone, is the reason to exist.