Tim McGuire, ever the genteel former editor of the Star Tribune, weighs in today from the chitlins circuit of academic punditry with yet another defense of the newspaper industry’s prospects for the future. (Yes, officially everyone now has had his or her say; no, newspapers will not die. They have survived TV, radio, telephones, palm pilots, fax machines, XY-Write, sliced bread, the internal combustion engine, homebrewing, and even the internet. We expect they’ll survive a while longer. For the record, we think Tim is basically right about one salient fact–newspapers still enjoy massive profit margins, and they should stop whining about doing what any other industry would do–reinvest some of that margin into evolving the product. Our approach would be to hire more and better reporters and expand the breadth and depth of–ready for this?–the reporting.) We only met McGuire once, and merely noticed that he is a snappy dresser. We also noticed that he spent much of his career trying to evolve the newspaper to his own somewhat quirky specss–if we recall correctly, wasn’t he the guy who reorganized the newsroom into “teams,” installed mood-enhancing medititative bubblers, and implemented a pro-active plan to stop using Native American names for professional sports teams? These sorts of “investments” in the future of newspapering seemed alike a good idea at the time, but most would say they are now safely obsoleted in the past.
Leave a Reply