Newsweek Thinks Newspapers Should Die, Already

According to weekly magazine Newsweek no one in their “right mind” thinks newspapers will or should survive in their current state. Unless, of course, you belong to the group who thinks President Obama should legislate their survival, in which case you are part of the problem, and merely prolonging the agony. Here’s what Newsweek‘s Daniel Lyons has to say on the subject in a blog post over at Newsweek.com:

That truth has been laid bare in recent years. As soon as papers got desperate for cash, they dropped their “sacred principles” as readily as a call girl sheds her clothes. Ads on the front page? Reporters assigned to write sponsored content? No problem.

Now, new companies with names like Politico and Huffington Post and The Daily Beast and Gawker are beating newspapers at their own game. The new guys are faster, and often better. They’re leading, with newspapers chasing behind. If the old guys really want to retain their chokehold on the news business, they should consider buying up the new guys. Problem is, the old guys waited too long, and now they’re too broke to make acquisitions. Whoops.

So yes, he has a point (and a nice metaphor!), even if the idea that a mainstream media organization should consider purchasing Gawker is not necessarily new, print is mostly way behind the times. Though, there is a certain irony to a Newsweek writer pointing this out when it only occurred to Newsweek to overhaul its own website with original online content a little more than six months ago…right after they decided to print the magazine on more expensive stock. Also, while I am a regular reader of all four of the websites Lyons mentions, and think there are aspects of each that the ‘traditional media’ would do well to pick up on, I’m not sure I want Gawker to be my most trusted source of news (I’m not sure Gawker wants to be my most trusted source of news, for that matter…HuffPo is another ballgame).

One more thing. It bears mentioning that when Newsweek editor Jon Meacham needed a space to advocate for his own reporter’s release from an Iranian prison he did not choose to utilize HuffPo, Gawker, Politico, or The Daily Beast, or even Newsweek for that matter! He went straight to the op-ed pages of the New York Times, because the Times still has the most clout, and that has nothing to do with whether you read it on paper or online. Which leads to the observation that, unlike, say, the Washington Post (which as a reader points out owns Newsweek) the New York Times is arguably setting the standard for what newspapers should look like online. That said, yes, most newspapers have a lot of catching up to do and much of that is due to a misguided sense of infallibility.

The solution, according to Lyons, is to get over “this pious notion about the sanctity of the newspaper” and let the newspaper business as we know it die, already!

The weak papers need to die. The strong newspapers need to go into bankruptcy and restructure their businesses with smaller staffs and lower cost structures. Yes, it will be painful. But journalists will find jobs—and they’ll be working in a better, faster medium.

Actually, I’m not sure this is so much a solution as a description of what is currently happening.