Dead paper walking
: My friend Merrill Brown just wrote an excellent report for Carnegie on the future of news.
It finally brings together so much of what we’re all talking — and in some quarters, wailing — about these days: young people finding their news in new places and leaving newspapers, new competition from citizens’ media, new expectations of transparency, new financial pressures.
But what Merrill makes clear — to people in the news business, I hope — is that the change is irreversible: There’s no going back. This isn’t just a wake-up call. It’s a two-by-four over the head: Change now. Change fast. Or die.
I’ll write about the piece more later; I’ll be out at meetings all day today and not blogging so I wanted to link to it now.
For the report, Carnegie commissioned a survey; the provocative results are here.