While We're on the Subject: Whither "Newspapers"?

I'm a newspaper junkie (my idea of a fun vacation is one where I get to spend two hours reading newspapers while I eat breakfast).

No surprise, I've devoted more brain-time that I should the past six months pondering the future of "newspapers." I intended to post a series of entries about this but -- you know how that goes. (Blame Carlos Brito. The A-B InBev deal took over my life for awhile).

Anyway -- unless you're living under a rock, you know that newspapers are in trouble: Circulations are declining. Some companies have declared bankruptcy. A Detroit newspaper is limiting home delivery to just a few days a week. The newspapers that my husband and I have delivered to our home are, well. . . . let's just say those weigh less now than they did a year ago. Everyone and her mother has an opinion about why this is happening, but as far as I'm concerned, the bottom dropped out when newspapers decided to give it away for free.

Example: I've been reading the New York Times for about twenty years. First, I bought a copy every day (back in the pre-internet days). Then the paper went online. There was a nominal subscription fee ($49.00 a year, if I remember right). I happily paid.

But then --- maybe three years ago? Four years? All of a sudden --the whole thing was free.

"Wait a second," I thought to myself. "How the HELL can they just give this stuff away? This is insane!"

The insanity has caught up with the Times and every other newspaper in the country. One of two things will happen: Either newspapers will go bust and there won't be any more "newspapers," paper or electronic; or, newspaper owners will wise up and start charging again. (As far as I know, the Wall Street Journal is the only newspaper that still charges. And it's doing okay. Yes, it gets thinner by the day, but it's okay. Or as about "okay" as a newspaper can be.)

Anyway, there's an assessment of some alternatives by David Carr in yesterday's Times.

For two other cogent analyses, see this piece at Scholars & Rogues, and this from American Journalism Review.

Thinking About Writing and Reading

As I've noted here before, I'm working on a new book, a history of meat in modern America (meaning roughly 1870 to the present). (*1) That project takes up most of my time -- the research, the writing, the banging my head on my desk, etc.

But this particular project is also weighted with more uncertainty than usual because it's clear that the nature of "reading" and "writing" and even the meaning of the word "book" are changing at an extraordinary rate. So part of my brain is plagued -- and distracted -- by questions I didn't ask or think about when I wrote my first three books: What will a "book" look like in, say, 2011, which is when I expect this new one of mine to land in bookstores. Will there still be "bookstores" in 2011? Will the book have a cover and pages? Or will it be "published" only in digital form? And who will publish it?

Nearly every publishing house in the U.S. is in a financial swamp, including the one that holds the contract to publish my next book (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).

So although the book has been sold to a publisher, I have no idea which publishing houses will still be standing in two years. Or which one will own my contract. Or, well, anything. And even if the book is published, it's unclear to me what that will mean.

In any case, these questions are not new to me -- they've been at the front of my mind for months. I'd been planning to blog more about the new book and will start doing so over the next few days.

Meantime, for more all on this, check out David Nygren's thoughts at his blog, The Urban Elitist.

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*1: Although I plan to start blogging more about my work-in-progress, at the moment, there's not much here. Weirdly enough, my most coherent public statement about that project is a blog entry I wrote for Powells.com back in 2006.

"Generativity," the Future, and the Internet

Absolutely worth reading. Start with this essay by Alan Jacobs at Text Patterns (part of Culture 11), and then, as he suggests, read the Tim Wu's New Republic review of Zittrain's book. Fascinating stuff, but I'm especially grateful that Wu is thinking about Zittrain's book in a historical context.

Reading In A Wired World

In July, the New York Times began a series that examines reading in a wired world -- how/why/if reading is changing, and the implications of those changes. Part Two in the series ran today. You can read it here. Here's Part One. And here's my comment on Part One.

As I noted in my first piece, I'm a reader and have been since I was four. But it's not lost on me that what constitutes "reading" is changing and that people who grew up with computers and the internet think about reading differently than someone my age. (Old.)

Reading in a "Wired" World

Here's a trusim: People who have grown up in a wired world view books and reading differently than people like me, whose initial encounter with the wired world came in adulthood. (*1) Put another way, childhood exposure to the internet is having a profound impact on the way human beings learn and how they use reading to learn.

The debate about this generation gap and what it means for the future is fascinating and important. I've been following it for a long time, probably because of my experience as a grad student and then as a professor:

I started teaching college undergrads in the late 1980s. Back then, almost none of my students used computers (Often I was the only person in the classroom who owned and used a computer.) By the late 1990s, however, nearly all of my students were using computers and most had tapped into a mysterious entity known as "the internet." (Mysterious to me because I had no idea what it was or how to use it.)

By the time I left academia in 1999, I was just barely figuring out how to use email -- but I knew that the "wired" world had already provoked a distinct generation gap between people like me, who encountered it first as an adult, and people who'd grown up with it.

Anyway, the New York Times is running a series on this topic and the debate about it. The first part provides an excellent summary of the issues involved. Check out the "Related" sidebar, which contains links to more information. Absolutely worth reading.

It's worth reading just to ponder David McCullough's comment that "learning" is "acquired mainly from books." Huh?? What the FUCK did he think all those Greeks, to name one example, were doing back then? Ya know... Back when there wasn't a Barnes and Noble on every corner and the printing press was still more than a millenia away. When "books" were accessible only to a tiny, and I mean minuscule, portion of the earth's people. No one learned anything? The hell, you say..........

Anyway, in my opinion, not entirely formed from books and therefore possibly a dumbass opinion, is that the debate over the meaning and nature of learning, reading, and books is one of the most important topics of our time. And this Times series provides a good entree into the issues.

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*1: I'm in my fifties. I started using a PC in 1984, but I was already 32. I was in my early forties when I first encountered the "world wide web" and the internet. My experience, I know, is very very different than someone who has always known the "wired" world. But then, I'm so old that I grew up with only three TV stations. Hell, I still remember when my family got its first TV set!