Shirky on the impending death of newspapers

[unixronin]

When reality is labeled unthinkable, it creates a kind of sickness in an industry.  Leadership becomes faith-based, while employees who have the temerity to suggest that what seems to be happening is in fact happening are herded into Innovation Departments, where they can be ignored en masse.  This shunting aside of the realists in favor of the fabulists has different effects on different industries at different times.  One of the effects on the newspapers is that many of their most passionate defenders are unable, even now, to plan for a world in which the industry they knew is visibly going away.

You can't solve any problem until you first both recognize that you have a problem, and identify what it is.  The traditional print media's complete unwillingness to accept that the world has changed leaves them utterly unable to respond in a meaningful or effective way to that change.  By clinging to the idea that they can preserve the world before the Internet if they can just find the right way to do it, they are actively and yet unknowingly complicit in their own demise.

Comments

[freetrav.livejournal.com]

And your comment would seem to apply equally to the recording industry, as well.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Actually, now that you mention it, I'd to make that observation myself, but got — Ooooh! Look! Shiny!

;)