Won't You Just Die Already!!

picture from the dallas observer

Tonight there was a "Seattle as a No Newspaper Town?" panel and town hall to discuss the future of print media in Seattle..... Sounds absolutely boring and about 10 years too late. I can't even remember the last time I picked up a newspaper. You can't turn back the clock and unfortunately the time for change for most newspapers has passed.

Here are some tweets from the town hall tonight:

dont want print media to disappear though. so hoping the solution involves saving actual papers made from paper.

cannot sit idly by and watch newspapers die.

what upsets me is the classism of the discussion. not everyone has high-speed internet. (gets applause)

Why in the world would professionalism and ethics be lost due to change in MEDIUM?

I am amazed by the confusion and how the discussion can be very similar to the "We must save the auto industry" discussion. It's not like we have to re-invent the wheel, there are plenty of online new sites that are flourishing online and I recommend that we look to the political arena which has really been the leader in online news.

Here are two great examples
The Huffington Post - probably the closest thing to an online newspaper. Its format is newspaperish and it's content comes from a core group of staff writers and guest contributors which in the past has included Hillary Clinton, President Obama and John Cusack just to name a few. It's a model I could easily see implemented locally. Core staff of writers and guest contributors from the community.

Real Clear Politics - is more of an aggregator and it has been so successful that it has launched many spin offs. They aggregate what they consider to be the best news from the web and contribute original articles and commentary from a small group of core writers. Another great model I could see being implemented locally, pull in some great local blog content, pull some national news from the AP and have a core group of writers that can contribute some local newspapers.

So this brings me back to... what will we do with one newspaper in Seattle or none.. gasp! The answer is...we will survive. The time for discussion has long past and it's time for action and I have my money on someone like Patrick from WestSeattleBlog.com and Justin from CapitolHillSeattle.com to bring us the future in Seattle news.

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