I don’t usually pay much attention to newspapers-are-dying stories. Yes, they are, and it’s a bummer, but whining about it is typically more part of the problem than the solution.
This elegy by Timothy Egan, though, is worth reading.
Author Archives: John McGrath
Capitol Words
Capitol Words, a project of the Sunlight Foundation, is an amusing and nuance-free look at what our elected representatives are bloviating about at any given moment.
It might be better named “Capitol Word,” because that’s all it actually provides: the single word most frequently used by the U.S. Congress on any given day, determined by having a computer plow through the text of the Congressional Record. It goes back to January 2000, and they even have an API.
Thanks to Derek for the link.
Times People: Another Social Network for Adults
The New York Times* just soft-launched “Times People,” a simple and compelling social networking tool. By following other Times People users you can see stories they recommend, their ratings of movies and restaurants, and their comments on stories and blog posts. In turn people following you can see your Times activity. I’ve been using it for a few weeks, and I love it.
It’s available right now as a Firefox plugin; support for other browsers may come later. There’s also a Facebook app, which ties Times People into your mini-feed.
While I applaud the decision to keep this first release dead simple, I hope it evolves into a proper profile system for the Times, and replaces the existing “member center,” which needs to be put out to pasture.
The Times has launched some cool stuff lately, and this is by far my favorite. It’s elegantly straightforward and truly useful. Unlike most social networks, where adding to your contact list doesn’t give you much more than the queasy sense of being an acquisitive stalker**, your Times People network gives you something immediately useful, in the form of great stuff to read.
*I work at the Times, but wasn’t involved with this, other than as fanboy. The project was lead by Derek Gottfrid, the same guy who wrote TimesMachine.
** One reason Wordie doesn’t have ‘friends.’ Everybody stalks everybody.
75 Years Later, Joyce Obscene Again
Every Bloomsday for the past 27 years Symphony Space has done a program of readings from James Joyce’s Ulysses, and every year those performances have been broadcast on WBAI, 99.5 FM in New York.
Tonight, though, according to The New York Times, WBAI will be parting ways with Symphony Space due to “apprehension about obscenity and government regulation.” Symphony Space will be reading the racy* “Ithica” episode, while WBAI will be playing it safe with other passages.
This immediately got my Irish up: how dare our government censor great literature! Then I read the article more closely, and it doesn’t actually say anything about government censorship. Symphony Space and WBAI censored themselves “to avoid concerns at the radio station about some of Joyce’s words and descriptions.”
How gutless! In 1933 a federal judge ruled that Ulysses was safe for public consumption, and what was deemed acceptable then has to be infinitely more so in this lurid age, when hair-palmed teenagers have so many better options for making themselves blind. It’s disappointing that Symphony Space and WBAI lack the courage of their convictions. The government rarely displays either**, but you expect more of great cultural institutions.
That said, I bet they both put on a good show. Genteel readers can listen to the family-friendly WBAI production, while you pornographers out there can enjoy the Symphony Space slimefest.
* Kidding. It’s not half as racy as this.
** Though it makes me think maybe the Bush administration might be right after all that industry can regulate its own CO2 emissions. If the culture industry can do such a good job regulating itself, why not coal-fired power plants?
Peak Paper
Last week three separate people asked me, synchronicitously and with varying degrees of panic in their voices, if I thought newspapers would some day stop publishing in print. One suggested a wager.
My non-answer was that I don’t care, because it doesn’t matter. What matters is that newspapers* find a sustainable online business model. Thinking about that keeps me up at night; fear mongering about delivery methods puts me to sleep.
The question of an end to print presupposes a day when the last newspaper rolls off the last press. The long slow fade of newsprint is accelerating, but we’re unlikely to ever witness the Last Newspaper. Like poetry, newsprint will become increasingly irrelevant to most people, until it comes to rest in a permanent but minor niche.
A good analogy is peak oil, the point at which maximum oil production has been reached and begins to decline, precipitously in some models. After peak oil there’s still oil in the ground, but it becomes increasingly difficult and expensive to get out. Cost and convenience force us to switch to other forms of energy, with predictable dislocations and disruptions. Just so with peak paper, the point of maximum print newspaper circulation.
It’s an open question when peak oil will occur (some think it already has), but peak paper almost certainly happened decades ago**. If I had to hazard a date, I’d say it was the day before the New York newspaper strike of 1962. Prior to the strike, New York had 9 major daily newspapers. The months-long strike sent circulations sharply down, killed at least one newspaper outright***, and gave television news an enormous boost.
I’m not immune to the nostalgia of ink on paper. And I don’t have any silver bullets for supporting post-print journalism, though I’m optimistic that solutions will be found. But speculating about the End of Print is a red herring, a cheap shock tactic to startle those unsettled by a period of difficult transition.
What matters is quality writing and reporting; flapping our arms over how it’s delivered is a distraction. Peak paper has come and gone. Newspapers need to accept that, and focus on what we need to do to make quality journalism possible in a post-print world.
* By which I mean news organizations. I also call a collection of mp3s released by the same person at the same time a “record.”
** I’m talking strictly about newspapers and newsprint. As my friend Arik notes, office paper doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. The closest thing to statistics I could find for historic newspaper circulation was this report. If anyone can point to better stats in the comments, that would be appreciated.
*** The Daily Mirror; the Journal American and the Herald Tribune would be gone by 1966.
Congratulations Sameer!
Sameer Mishra, an eight-grader from West Lafayette, Indiana, won the Scripps National Spelling Bee last Friday with Guerdon, which means “a reward or payment.” Sameer, we salute you.
Requiem for the print OED
My overlord, the Times (actually, Virginia Heffernan, who I’ve never met), has a nice bit in this Sunday’s Magazine about the end of the printed OED, her discomfort over that, and her chagrined realization that most of her dictionary use has been electronic for some time.
As has mine, but it doesn’t make me love my 1934 Webster’s Second any less. But it illustrates the fact that ginormous printed dictionaries are now fetish objects, as often as not. For practical day-to-day use, the Interblag wins.
Heffernan closes with a few suggested lexicographic resources. One too few, as she omits Wordie. Otherwise a great piece.