This Luddite attitude that so many in the newspaper community have is nearly sickening to me as a journalist. It is NOT the medium, but the message. Wake up and smell the 21st Century. You can still do great journalism on the web. Words are still words, images are still images, and wow – on the net you can actually do some new things too. Interactive things we could only dream about when I was in J-School.

Embrace the technology – because it will be the only thing that will save journalism. Keep insisting on dead trees and journalism will go the way of the telegraph and the dodo.

Here’s the deal: Don’t listen to Pat. Don’t listen to the 20-somethings. Don’t listen to the old guard editors. Don’t listen to the consultants. Don’t listen to any of us. But do yourself a favor, listen to the readers. They are the only opinion whose really matters.

The problem is, too many people like the editor referenced in Pat’s post aren’t listening to them either. They’re selling Windows 95 in a Vista world. (Forgive my MS references and the idea of the OS themselves. I’m a Mac user.) Sure, it still works. You can still do the things you always did quite capably. But whether you move on or not, the other people will eventually upgrade. Unless you adapt to the new environment, you probably won’t be compatible with their upgrade.

The question is whether you will make the move quick enough to grab their attention on the new platform — or whether some start-up by a “kid” like Pat or some other member of the group formerly known as your readers will have seen the opening and seized your marketshare.

You can keep doing things the way you always have and become irrelevant. Or you can catch the hell up with the 21st Century and become even better at what you always did by using all this new technology to distribute more content, more efficiently, across more platforms. Those are your options.

LOL

I, unlike old-guard media members, let your posts go. I’m not here to silence anyone. I just wish your posts would be about something — anything — substantive.

Is there something you disagree with about my post? Or am I simply not worth listening to because the biggest paper I work for had a 120,000 circulation? I’ve got news for you, many of the publications making the biggest waves on the Web aren’t that big.

The Lawrence Journal-World is a great example of that. They have a circulation under 30,000 and have a better Web product than just about any other newspaper in the country. I guess their opinions don’t matter either. I mean, it’s just some paper in Lawrence, Kansas, right?

Also, I’m nervous if you ever listened to the “Internet.” You know it’s not some giant Linksys router a la South Park, right?

How can they say they serve one group of readers (the Web-savvy ones) by cutting the Web product? Assuming they actually believe there are two markets, how would a stronger Web site hurt the print product?

Sure, there’s the possibility that you create an economy of scale where your print readers flock to the Web site because it’s cheaper. You might get a segment of your print readers to make the switch, but not so much it will collapse your entire business model. (And if you properly monetize your Web-offerings, you should see gains).

But we all should know by now that price isn’t the only factor as to why people don’t read the paper. There are countless studies that show time and time again the number one reason people don’t read the paper because they don’t have the time. It isn’t instant and it doesn’t necessarily have information relevant to individual needs at the moment.

So, when you start cutting off a segment that wants something from you in a particular way, you cut off potential profit. You open the door for some guy with a laptop, low overhead and a few connections to start gobbling up that market you’ve blown off to protect the “core” product (without any evidence that it needs protecting from the Internet). That, my friends, is cutting off your nose to spite your face.

ha.

One thing I worry about with these operations (and, in fact, my own) is their continued relevance in an increasingly web-savvy world. I mean, sure, we have to find ways to better monetize web content but the time will come when all the current 20-somethings with their new-fangled iDealies (talkin’ at you Pat) will be the core readers and those outlets with weak digital offerings — monetized or not — will be left out.

That editor has as good as killed that paper, not today, not tomorrow, but I doubt that when or if they finally wake up they’ll be able to recover.

Oh wait.