Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Many people managing and working in the newspaper world are focused on the transition from old to new media -- from print to digital delivery of news. But Tim Crews, editor and publisher of the Sacramento Valley Mirror, a twice-weekly paper serving an area he describes as a "relatively impoverished rural California country," suggests that the urgency felt by many publishers isn't universal, even in the U.S. He wrote in an e-mail message to me:

"I spend a good deal of time in the schools and around town -- little news actually occurs in the newsroom, of course -- and I can tell you I have never, ever seen an iPod, in use or not.

"The Glenn County Board of Supervisors is justifying slashing library budgets saying: 'Everyone has a computer and buys their books online anyway.' Yet, in surveys that we've done, however informal, we find that online ability here is, at best, 10 percent.

"As small papers concentrate their energy from print to digital, I think we are cutting off our collective noses to spite the face of community journalism -- and not fighting for the attention of readers. While the big metro areas may be awash with digital use and dependence, the idea that the entire world is digitally tuned in is, we think, a digital mirage."

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