“The death and life of the American newspaper”

“The death and life of the American newspaper”

 

Mal vi este artigo percebi logo que iria causar reacções pela blogosfera. Eric Alterman escreve sobre a os efeitos da web nos jornais, e das possíveis soluções para a sua sobrevivência. Vem mesmo a calhar logo a seguir ao meu post que aborda a nossa relação com os jornais. O artigo é extenso mas não é tempo perdido,e deverá ser um dos mais discutidos deste ano.

The minute i read this article i knew it would raise havoc in the blogsphere. Eric Alterman writes about the effects of the web on newspapers, and the possible solutions for their survival. It comes eactly right on time, after my post that talks about our relationship with newspapers. It’s a long article, but it’s not time wasted, and it will probably be one of the most discussed this year.

Only nineteen per cent of Americans between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four claim even to look at a daily newspaper. The average age of the American newspaper reader is fifty-five and rising.

Philip Meyer, in his book “The Vanishing Newspaper” (2004), predicts that the final copy of the final newspaper will appear on somebody’s doorstep one day in 2043.

Today’s consumers “want news on demand, continuously updated. They want a point of view about not just what happened but why it happened. . . . And finally, they want to be able to use the information in a larger community—to talk about, to debate, to question, and even to meet people who think about the world in similar or different ways.”

On the Huffington Post, Peretti explains, news is not something handed down from above but “a shared enterprise between its producer and its consumer.” Echoing Murdoch, he says that the Internet offers editors “immediate information” about which stories interest readers, provoke comments, are shared with friends, and generate the greatest number of Web searches. An Internet-based news site, Peretti contends, is therefore “alive in a way that is impossible for paper and ink.”

Arianna Huffington and her partners believe that their model points to where the news business is heading. “People love to talk about the death of newspapers, as if it’s a foregone conclusion. I think that’s ridiculous,” she says. “Traditional media just need to realize that the online world isn’t the enemy. In fact, it’s the thing that will save them, if they fully embrace it.”

The death and life of the American newspaper

O nosso romance com os jornais | Our romance with newspapers

The New Yorker on the history and future of newspapers and blogs