By John McGrath

Paul Farhi has an interesting piece in the American Journalism Review:

When the obituaries are written for America's newspapers, count on journalists to indict themselves in their own demise. You've heard it before, from a thousand bloggers and roundtable know-it-alls: We were too slow to adapt, too complacent, too yoked to our tried-and-true editorial traditions and formulas. We could have saved ourselves, goes the refrain, if only we had been more creative and aggressive and less risk averse.

To which I can only reply: Oh, please.

As newspapers shuffle toward the twilight, I'm increasingly convinced that the news has been the least of the newspaper industry's problems. Newspapers are in trouble for reasons that have almost nothing to do with newspaper journalism, and everything to do with the newspaper business. Even a paper stocked with the world's finest editorial minds wouldn't have a fighting chance against the economic and technological forces arrayed against the business. The critics have it exactly backward: Journalists and journalism are the victims, not the cause, of the industry's shaken state.

Well, speaking as a blogger and (aspiring) journalist, why not blame both? Farhi makes as strong a case as anyone can that the problems that challenge the newspaper industry are economic and technological, not professional. But one set of problems for journalism is the immediate, acute illness, while the professional woes have been chronic and long-term.

Farhi's argument takes the form of a defense of journalism: "..a paper stocked with the world's finest editorial minds..." Farhi isn't being fair to the critics. Everyone recognizes that the economics and technology of journalism have made the newspaper business more difficult. But there have always been technological challenges to the newspaper, since the advent of radio. There has not always been quite the same level of disgust with the major news media as there are today. (Those numbers are from 2006, so let's hope this year journalists beat out bankers.)

But in one sense, Farhi is absolutely correct: even if people had always loathed reporters, technology has given them a choice to find other media they prefer. I don't think newspapermen and women get very far by railing against greater choice.

Photo by inju used with Creative Commons license.