At yesterday’s Guardian meetings (blogged below), editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger said, “Everybody now gets it.”
A few days ago, a blogger (whose link I can’t find now) took me to task for saying that mainstream media people “don’t get it.”
Does everybody get it now? Well, I’m not sure. But I do think it’s time to give up accusations of not getting it. I’ll plead guilty to using the phrase too often. And I’ll admit that it was pretty self-important. So I’ll try to get rid of not getting it. That won’t be easy; I have to confess that as I read some news stories about the news business in the last 36 hours, the phrase came to mind two or three times. I bit my tongue.
I think that – especially after the last year’s cold reality checks and volcanic change in the newspaper, radio, TV, and magazine businesses – everybody does get that the past cannot be preserved. Everybody knows now that change is inevitable. And everybody – which includes me – is searching for the right moves to make next. Is everybody innovating enough, fast enough? No, but I think everybody realizes they have to.
Got that?
