Last week in "
The Trouble
with Print," fellow
E-Media Tidbits contributor
Steve
Yelvington pointed to
Will Bunch's excellent October 24 essay
in his weblog
Attytood: "
The
New Philadelphia Experiment: Saving the Daily News."
Steve focused on an intriguing critique on the perceived value (or lack
thereof) of the printed newspaper. That was fun, and worth reading.
However, there was far, far more to Bunch's essay than that quip in the
reader comments.
In short, I suspect this essay could become known as one of the seminal
essays on the evolution of media.
Bunch isn't simply railing against the shortcomings of print. He's
looking ahead to a vision of the future. In particular, he's looking
ahead to
where the news audience appears to want to go. From
there, he considers how newspapers (which he envisions morphing into
"norgs," short for "news organizations," a delightfully
media-neutral term) might survive and thrive -- minus the print.
This essay is definitely worth reading, saving, and discussing. I think
Bunch is really on to something here. The only significant omission I
see in his vision is that he didn't mention the role that citizen
journalism might play in the evolution of "norgs." I asked him about
that in a comment, and I discussed it a bit today at
I,
Reporter. We'll see if he picks up on that.
