I speak as a former print journalist who works almost exclusively online these days. But I was among the pulp ‘n’ inkers–small-town variety–from 1991 to 2000, so I was definitely around for the initial Internet buzz. Our office was finally hooked up around 1996 (on one machine, mind you!), when I was about 24 years old. I was already in love with it, as were many of my peers. Yes, we did meet resistance in the newsroom among older editors and reporters. But truly, the rot went a lot higher than that.

Nevertheless, I’m curious about and excited for the future of news, and despite my often snarky disposition, I will be watching this space with interest.

Amen to having the discussion. That’s just my goal.

I don’t buy your starting shot, that this “stuff” is “going away” and that I’m just “justifying” it. Nowhere in my post do I talk about crying or throwing up hands for the incumbents (which will get me in trouble in other ways). My point is that some organizations may or may not but the functions are often still needed and I believe there will be a market demand and fulfillment of that need.

Also agree about plan B. I set forth one plan in my scenario for news, linked above. But it’s just one. I’d like to see many more and, more important, see them not just presented but tried with people sharing lessons and best practices. That comes way down from the meta.

In that scenario, I didn’t propose the end of the NYTimes (the grand exception to all rules) but the Philadelphia Inquirer or equivalent. That needs more discussion, more alternatives, more work and I’ll be digging into that via CUNY.

As for the blame question, I really got hell for my view holding journalists to account for the state as well as the fate of journalism and news. One could argue that blame for what is past is irrelevant, as some argue. I think there is a role for that discussion as well and I’m girding my loins for it.

I do see people in the business trying to move to the next level. I see people out of the business doing that. I think we need to be open to both camps/tribes rather than excluding either – that has long been my primary point.

An analogy — imagine a group of doctors knew that all hospitals and pharmacies were about to shut down. What would they do? Might they do *something* to make sure their client’s health needs were at least partially attended to?

We’re always asked to believe how noble the profession of news is — now that is about to be tested in a whole new way. Are we just supposed to cry for this industry and throw our hands up and wait for the collapse before starting to put it back together, or would they like to help while they’re still here?

Here’s a question I ask people privately to help focus their thinking…

Suppose there were no NY Times tomorrow, and you heard somewhere, maybe on Politco or Huffpost or Memeorandum that it had gone out of business and was never going to publish again.

1. How would you feel?

2. What would you do?

3. What should the Times have done but didn’t do before they shut down?

Food for thought.

It’s time to have this conversation Jeff. Imho.

Guaranteed that does not describe the real audience for news other than the uber-nerds that read blogs like this (myself included) and who maybe blog and twitter themselves. The real world, even the so-called Internet generation, doesn’t have much time for that. That’s why the biggest sites in terms of traffic remain the BBC, Guardian, Times, NY Times, WPost etc. — people know they can go there and get a compilation of stuff that gives them a good idea of what’s going on.

In what you describe above, where is the idea that these readers will be better served by the info age? In the UK when I was growing up, you had the intellectual papers and then the tabloids which (no surprise) were the best read of the lot. They may have been lurid and sensational, but they provided good snapshots of the bigger stories of the day along with the crappy stuff. How is anything that you propose going to address this audience — or is journalism not bothered with them anymore?

Finally, where in all of the stuff you say is the word story? You speak of links and opinion and organization and blah, blah, but where is the discussion about what story means in the current scenarios for news? People don’t read links, they read stories. And for the great mass of readers — outside of the nerds — that still holds true. What I see here is the fracturing of story, not a way to tell a better one. Or do I have that wrong?