Do young people still become old people?

In an interview with the Economist, New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen explains the dilemma all newspaper face as succinctly as I've ever heard :

The cost of changing settled routines seems too high, but the cost of not changing is, in the long term, even higher. A good example is the predicament of the newspaper press: the print edition provides most of the revenues, but it cannot provide a future. I know of no evidence to show that young people are picking up the print habit. So if the cost of abandoning print is too high, the cost of sticking with it may be even higher, though slower to reveal itself. That's a problem.

Currently, old people keep print alive. Yet, young people inevitably turn into older people. I wonder if there is any evidence to show young will pick up the print habit when they gray? Or has too much changed? Perhaps our massive technological revolution has made it impossible to predict what younger generations will do. Maybe we'll return to print as a way to ground ourselves in the tangible; or maybe print is simply too inflexible to carry the news in way we'll want to ingest it.

On another note, Rosen is asked to list media outlets that are practicing journalism the right way. Here's his answer:

Particularly good at what they do: Advertising Age. Gawker. Wired. Voice of San Diego. The New Yorker. The Economist. (Disclosure: You're The Economist!) Rachel Maddow. Frontline. The New York Times. West Seattle Blog. Texas Tribune (Disclosure: I'm an advisor there). "To the Point" with Warren Olney. The Atlantic. "This American Life". The Guardian. Jon Stewart. There are probably some regional newspapers doing a great job that I simply don't read, but fewer than before.

Wedged in between the Texas Tribune and The Atlantic... annoyed to follow Rachel Maddow, gratified to proceed "This American Life."

Lonely (maybe) , but not alone

The Economist photoshopped a picture of President Obama to make him look like a lonely man on an oil-tainted beach.

Four in the morning

1. Ezra Klein consider the success of NPR and the Economist. WaPo

2. Tribune Co. takes a step closer to finishing bankruptcy proceedings. Chi Trib

3. Will the iPad deliver another blow to journalistic standards? Newspaper Death Watch

4. Over at Bitter Lemons, there's a lot of chattering/rationalizing/explaining/parsing going on about getting a story completely wrong. fishbowlLA and Bitter Lemons

Information warehouse

The Economist takes a turn analyzing the decline of newspapers and speculating about what comes next. The British magazine argues that newspapers, as a news delivery system, are going through an evolution something like what happened to retail outlets - from mom & pop, to city department stores, to national chains, to Wal-Martization. Alongside the information warehouses, there are the boutique aggregator sites, specializing in specialized content and providing a higher level of curating, as editorial content control is now called.

From the Economist:

The main victim of this trend is not so much the newspaper (although it is certainly declining) as the conventional news package. Open almost any leading metropolitan newspaper, or look at its website, and you will find the same things. There will be a mixture of local, national, international, business and sports news. There will be weather forecasts. There will be display and classified advertisements. There will be leaders, letters from readers, and probably a crossword.

This package, which was emulated first by broadcasters and then by internet pioneers such as AOL.com and MSN.com, works rather like an old-fashioned department store. It provides a fair selection of useful information of dependable quality in a single place. And the fate of the news package is similar to that of the department store. Some customers have been lured away by discount chains; others have been drawn to boutiques.

The Wal-Marts of the news world are online portals like Yahoo! and Google News, which collect tens of thousands of stories. Some are licensed from wire services like Reuters and the Associated Press. But most consist simply of a headline, a sentence and a link to a newspaper or television website where the full story can be read. The aggregators make money by funnelling readers past advertisements, which may be tailored to their presumed interests. They are cheap to run: Google News does not even employ an editor.

If the model is true, then we'd be seeing depressed wages (check), cheaper production values (check), increased outsourcing (check), less local control despite calls for more (check), a push to lower quality and standards (check), and mass consolidation, bankruptcies and layoffs (check, check, check).

Readers digest

Information may want to be free, but food doesn't. At least that's the theory behind US Ink's strategy for helping save newspapers: Let the readers digest the news and then let the readers digest the news.

US Ink has invented something called Taste It Notes, which it says could be used to enhance the experience of reading the printed newspaper. The Note works sort of like a breath mint strip, only these little pleasure packets can be flavored to match an advertisement, or maybe a particularly juicy nut graf. From the Economist:

The company says they could be paired with ads for food to give consumers a taste of the products. US Ink says that could be a boon for newspapers at a time when they're losing ground to online news sources.

Excuse me, but you have some Krugman stuck between your teeth.

Business is going to hell

The Economist lays out some dire predictions about the American economy:

CAPITALISM without bankruptcy, it is said, is like Christianity without hell. With recession looming, the air in America's bankruptcy courts is thick with brimstone and the coals are being heated in readiness for the many sad souls whose sin was to borrow too much. After several heavenly years, in which bankruptcies fell to record lows, going bust is back. How bad will things get?

Best blog of the night

Funniest comments on tonight's election results come from The Economist. Click here: "Caucus blocked."

Also, this: 11:06 : I should note, incidentally, that I'm at a small party with a gaggle of bloggers, and a New York Times reporter has just shown up to cover us covering the cable networks covering the returns. I've now covered her coverage of our coverage of their coverage, and this sentence is reflexive coverage of my coverage. If I recall correctly from my skimming of Godel, Escher, Bach and religious viewing of Doctor Who, this will create a strange loop that rends the fabric of the universe asunder.

Also, Ron Reagan is on Larry King and he somehow looks older than the host.