Naked fish, bare chips!

December 18, 2008 by Jeff Jarvis

The LA Times says that puppies are suffering with the decline and demise of newspapers: no place to take a poop. I am reminded of the opening of Lou Grant, where newspaper was used to line a bird’s cage until it was revealed that newspapers are poisonous to birds. Papers are doomed.

  • Darren M.

    You can only say “papers are doomed” so many times before you start to sound like a broken record. http://publishing2.com/2008/12/08/why-not-writing-a-story-is-innovation/

  • http://www.patrickyen.com Patrick Yen

    Anarchy Jeff.. pure anarchy..
    I love your anarchy!

  • http://www.ukfree.tv Briantist

    Darren M.: It doesn’t stop it being true.

  • Mike G

    When I worked at big ad agencies in Chicago, one of the accounts we always wanted to land was Sears. Agencies took smaller pieces at a loss (eg Discover) in hopes of winning the big fish someday. And I always asked: why? What good is Sears? Sears was the mall before the mall was invented, but now it’s just one store, and not that great a one. Who wants it? And if I were Sears, instead of trying to prop up slowly shrinking stores, wouldn’t it be better to close every store that wasn’t making money hand over fist (some still did) and take that capital and invest it in a bunch of smaller store concepts, one of which will turn out to be this year’s Gap or Body Shop or (name hot store of the moment).

    I feel like newspapers are in the same place. They’re still committed to offering everything from lingerie to lawn mowers, and so they get beaten on any one subject by the expert in that area. For instance, even though the Chicago Tribune was part of the Blagojevich story, for updates I read the Capitol Fax Blog, it’s faster, edgier, and more comprehensive (even though much of its reporting– though not all– is simply condensing what’s in the Trib and such places). Maybe it’s time for newspapers to give up the big department store and pick a bunch of boutiques to run semi-independently, but with some behind the scenes infrastructure and ad support they share.

  • http://www.attentionmax.com Max Kalehoff

    Jeff,
    Another casualty: quick-start fires. I don’t cancel all those dead-tree magazines and newspapers (which I didn’t opt into in the first place) because they’re great for getting the fireplace going. Sitting on my coffee table in front of the fireplace, I suppose they also give the impression that I’m well-read, whatever that means.

    And what will my kids (now in diapers) use to economically craft their paper-mache projects? Kindergarten starts in three years.

    I could go on and on….

  • Darren M.

    Briantist: No it doesn’t. But it does make it bo-ring.

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