I hear a lot of talk lately — I hate to admit more often and with a hint of satisfaction around circles of magazine and new media people — about the impending demise of the printed newspaper.
Back Talk‘s Jeff Siegel, on the contrary, has issued several thoughtful posts on this blog about plunging stock prices at Belo and McClatchy (companies that own The Dallas Morning News and Star Telegram, respectively) with a sense of concern. But that’s because he is (in his own words) "an old newspaper guy" who gets it.
A lot of us bloggers, web writers, and hyper-local news/ human interest story-centric magazine editors tend to forget (or take for granted) what newspapers and their relatively enormous staffs do for us. This blog alone must have a thousand links to Morning News articles. And then there’s the gobs of information (some life changing) they seek out and deliver to the community and society as a whole — the ones who do the real, deep-digging work, I mean.
What got me pondering on this subject? Yesterday evening on my drive home I heard an interview (thanks Ben and Skin filling in for the Hardline) with former Morning News man Manny Mendoza whose documentary Stop the Presses recently premiered at the AFI Dallas Festival. It’s what Manny had to say that got me thinking. The movie has provided ample food for thought, and that it has prompted many an online discussion is not surprising. It’s interesting and frightening stuff that’s happening to the "beast" that is the Newspaper Industry.
Check out StopThePressesdoc.com for more from Manny and a glimpse at the movie trailer. The film itself is actually geared toward educational audiences, i.e. it’s meant for teachers to show their students, so it’s a bit pricey to get your hands on, although if you purchase the film through the film company’s site, amspictures.com, you can buy it for half price by entering the code STP, at least that’s what Manny said on the radio.
