The plight of print journalism, as told with meat
Here’s a nightmare scenario that won’t be decided in three weeks: what if newspapers have been doing it wrong, all this time? What if the move to digital was for the worst, not the best? So poses Politico Magazine in this slightly panicked piece: “What if the newspaper industry made a colossal mistake?”
It’s a weird premise to take, bc we’ve all been conditioned at this point that of course digital was the move to make. Look at all the cool Snowfalls and scrollsperiences and live-blogs and videos and clickable thingies we’ve been able to make ever since, and look at all the ways outlets are reinventing themselves across formats and platforms to reach readers, who can now read just about whatever they want, instantly. Of course digital was the way to go. We’ve probably saved like all the trees, right??
And yet...
Anyway. Read for the heart palpitations, but also this helluva analogy:
“Newspaper had been running the equivalent of a very nice high-end steakhouse,” she says. Then McDonald’s moved to town and started selling untold numbers of cheap hamburgers. Newspaper thought, “Let’s compete with that,” and dropped the steak for hamburger, even though it had no real expertise in producing hamburgers. “What they should have done is improve the steak product.”
In other links: The (Fashion) Bible endorses Hillary, the crowd-sourced project that your local nonagenarian should join (h/t Mal!), and a fun Bloomberg piece looking at the ~business~ of Halloween costumes (it has to do with Santa outfit taxes!).
Like Deez Links? Forward to an improved steak product.