According to New York Magazine, when addressing his Reporting and Writing I class, Columbia journalism professor Ari Goldman is reported to have said, "Fuck new media!" and to have described online media training as "playing with toys." His print-centric approach to journalism joins a chorus of practicing news gatherers contemplating the end of the newspaper business as we know it.
It might appear a bit self-serving or conflicted when bastions of the mainstream media publish article after article bemoaning the death of newspapers, or claiming that only their business model for the collection and dissemination of information will save the American republic. Thus there are Walter Isaacson over at Time Magazine, David Lazarus of the LA Times, and David Carr of the New York Times (among many others) who insist that readers pay for their news or suffer an increase in corruption or the end of the republic. According to these sources, if news dissemination moves to the Internet, we must adopt a new, lucrative business model that will generate revenue sufficient to support their extensive news operations.
At least L. Gordon Crovitz over at the Wall Street Journal is up front about his perceived need to feather journalists' nests. Under the heading "Information Wants to Be Expensive" he writes:
People are happy to pay for news and information however it's delivered, but only if it has real, differentiated value. Traders must have their Bloomberg or Thomson Reuters terminal. Lawyers wouldn't go to court without accessing the Lexis or West online service.
I wouldn't say I'm happy to pay for my news, especially when the traditional news-gathering operations set much of the agenda of what is worth investigating and knowing about and what isn't.
What traditionalists contemplating the future of news on the Internet don't mention is that the need to charge their readers is a result of the hyperlink structure of the World Wide Web itself where banner ads have not yet (and may never) replace the revenue generated by print advertising.
Under the current business model in newspapers, the amount of news that is "fit to print" is determined by the number of column inches of advertising sold. The money I pay for my personal copy of the paper largely goes to support the newsstand where I make my purchase.
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