But it always strikes me as weird when bloggers, whose primary task is to comment on news articles, cheer that newspapers are dying. It’s a bit like cheering that you’ve just set fire to the corn fields of your small village. But blog triumphalism has always been a phenomenon of people who couldn’t live without this technology crowing about the demise of everything that’s brought them there.
A commenter on Ezra Klein’s recent piece on the decline of newspapers. (via erin)
If anyone hasn’t read Ezra Klein’s takedown of Jeff Jarvis, they really should. Slate tried to recently, but they kind of missed the bullseye. Ezra Klein really nails it here. Yes, props to Jeff Jarvis and the cluetrain doofuses for putting in writing what a lot of people realized a little bit earlier. But if they actually had an answer for the newspaper industry, they’d be a lot wealtheir than what they get from lecturing us and attending conferences and advising foundering new media startups.
The newspapers are screwed for all kinds of reasons, yes, like the buggy makers befores. Does anyone think that a Jeff Jarvis of the early 1900s could’ve somehow saved buggy makers from the dustbin.
Sure, maybe some enterprising online editor could’ve come up with Digg before Digg did. Whoop-te-do! Another site that loses money on $5 million in revenue.
(via josephweisenthal)
