I wholeheartedly agree with your larger sentiment (irrespective of the details of the lawsuit, as I see there’s some disagreement here about its exact contents).

As someone who started out in traditional journalism and then moved to Silicon Valley, worked in tech, and learned a thing or two about technological evolution and innovation, it’s sometimes frustrating to listen to folks in the news business blame the larger shifts on the likes of folks like Sam Zell.

While Zell (and others) are certainly playing a role, the fact is that the business is irrevocably morphing, due to a whole spectrum of factors. As a result, everyone in the business has to be part of efforts to find the new ways forward. Anyone whose only response is to pine for the good old days is part of the problem. (It’s OK to mourn, but then you have to move on.)

As I wrote recently, paraphrasing Martin Luther King:
“The problems of today are not the vitriolic words and the evil actions of the bad people, but the appalling silence and *inaction* of the good people.”

http://future-of-news.blogspot.com/2008/08/in-recent-esquire-article-newark-mayor.html

The only way the news business has a chance of surviving is if every single person working in it accepts that the old days are gone, faces the reality of the new environment, and dedicates themselves to exploring new–and effective–ways of executing their mission.

If so, this would warrant a lawsuit and a possible stay in a federal prison.

-Joseph Pulitzer

http://www.splicetoday.com/politics-and-media/things-i-must-i-be-okay

That is the most refreshing and to-the-point article (OK, blog entry) I’ve read in the midst of these endless months of hand-wringing, tear-jerking and self-serving twaddle. It’s strong stuff, but exactly what needed to be said. Sure, some folks can take some small issue with parts of it. But they should read the entire indictment and respond to that. You’ve finally said what needed to be said. For this I thank you. I’m going to send my readers to it from my blog.

After reading this post, I thought of Palin’s weird populism in her convention speech. It’s also an infection of half truths.

She said:

>>A writer observed: “We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty, sincerity, and dignity.” I know just the kind of people that writer had in mind when he praised Harry Truman.

I grew up with those people.

They are the ones who do some of the hardest work in America … who grow our food, run our factories, and fight our wars.

They love their country, in good times and bad, and they’re always proud of America. I had the privilege of living most of my life in a small town.

I was just your average hockey mom, and signed up for the PTA because I wanted to make my kids’ public education better.<<

Palin’s speech was so a anti-urban, anti-intellectual and straw man, that it actually hurt to listen to it.

and your analysis of the LA Times is cut from it.

To write that the LA Times “had the hubris to think that they should turn the Times into a national – even international – paper” is new populism of this industry.

Let’s put aside the standard canards about how covering Encino is important and look at what the Times aspired to do. It tried to help its readers understand the important issues of its day by investing in foreign coverage. What a noble, lost thing.

But you don’t have a path to save newspapers.

Your idea that newspapers must work cooperatively assumes local bloggers want to work with local newspapers:

You wrote: “Did you immediately hatch new ways to work collaboratively with the vast public of bloggers able and willing to join in local journalism? Not that I saw.”

What makes you think that local bloggers want to cooperate with with their local newspapers? Based on what?

Local bloggers, the really good ones, have that same independent streak that once made great newspaper publishers. They treasure it. They don’t want to risk it. They don’t need cooperation. If they want advertising, local independent networks will arise soon enough. Some go direct for revenue and don’t need the revenue share. Local advertisers find them.

And in some cases local bloggers can do a better job of keeping people informed about Encino than a newspaper can so let’s end this pretense as well. The cooperative relationship you believe will naturally happen won’t necessarily improve this.

This post by you is as deep and flawed as Palin’s view of people who live in urban areas; she’s not aspiring for wisdom and neither are you.

She said:

>A writer observed: “We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty, sincerity, and dignity.” I know just the kind of people that writer had in mind when he praised Harry Truman.

I grew up with those people.

They are the ones who do some of the hardest work in America … who grow our food, run our factories, and fight our wars.

They love their country, in good times and bad, and they’re always proud of America. I had the privilege of living most of my life in a small town.

I was just your average hockey mom, and signed up for the PTA because I wanted to make my kids’ public education better.<Did you immediately hatch new ways to work collaboratively with the vast public of bloggers able and willing to join in local journalism? Not that I saw.<

What makes you think that local bloggers want to cooperate with with their local newspapers? Based on what?

Local bloggers, the really good ones, have that same independent streak that once made great newspaper publishers. They treasure it. They don’t want to risk it. They don’t need cooperation. If they want advertising, local independent networks will arise soon enough. Some go direct for revenue and don’t need the revenue share. Local advertisers find them.

And in some cases local bloggers can do a better job of keeping people informed about Encino than a newspaper can so let’s end this pretense as well. The cooperative relationship you believe will naturally happen won’t necessarily improve this.

This post by you is as deep and flawed as Palin’s view of people who live in urban areas; she’s not aspiring for wisdom and neither are you.

Yeah, some of us have figured out the Internet, video and actually doing it. Big whoop.

At the very least, when such papers get caught up in the turmoil now facing the MSM, particularly the print part of it, they won’t have as far to fall.

It will be interesting to see Trudeau’s take on the topic. Sometimes the best social criticism comes from the most unlikely places.