What happens when a newspaper disappears?

economist.com

6 points·pj··5 comments

By coincidence, I just watched this lecture by David Simon on the same topic. David Simon is the creator of the TV series The Wire and a former print journalist.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8E8xBXFLKE

He discusses a recurring theme on The Wire about the decline of a town's main newspaper, and how this results in blatant corruption going unnoticed. Simon doesn't think bloggers offer a true replacement. Personally I'm more optimistic about the Internet, but his opinion is worth your time.

Simon's testimony before congress a few months back was easily one of the most powerful speeches I have heard in a long time. They will chronicle it in future editions of "Great American Speeches".

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/5/7/david_simon_creator_of_...

Nicely written article, but no deep insights here.

Basically points out that older folks will suffer most from the loss of local newspapers, but that people can find another way to spread information if they need to.

It's time to bring back the town crier: http://www.londontowncrier.com/ :)

Newspaper's time has come (and gone) - its not the concept that's going away, its just the media it appears on. There will always be news 'organizations' - they might morph into a much more diverse and distributed form, but that's just progress. Any sufficiently complex system evolves. Think of this as de-urbanization. Rather than central metropolitan news organizations the news is going rural.

There is a school of thought (that I don't disagree with) that says that a free press is a tenet of democracy, so if that's true there will always be free news reporting. It just wont come to us on dead trees.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com