kick-start

After much thought I am starting back up again.

Until newspapers are able to answer some vital questions about their purpose as news gathering organizations or how they will fit into the future, it doesn't do me much good to write, review and think about multimedia.

So with that in mind I offer up Ryan Sholin's 10 obvious things about the future of newspapers you need to get through your head
and its folo One Year Later.

The basic outline is:
1. It’s not Google’s fault. Get over it, professor.
2. It’s not Craig’s fault.
3. Your major metro newspaper could probably use some staff cuts.
4. It’s time to stop handwringing and start training.
5. You don’t get to charge people for archives and you certainly don’t want to charge people for daily news content. Pulling your copy behind walls where it can’t be seen by readers on the wider Web. Search rules. Don’t hide from it.
6. Reporters need to do more than write. The new world calls for a new skillset, and you and Mr. Notebook need to make some new friends, like Mr. Microphone and Mr. Point & Shoot.
7. Bloggers aren’t an uneducated lynch mob unconcerned by facts.
8. You ignore new delivery systems at your own peril. RSS, SMS, iPhone, e-paper, Blackberry, widgets, podcasts, vlogs, Facebook, Twitter — these aren’t the competition, these are your new carriers.
9. J-schools can either play a critical role in training the next generation of journalists, or they can fade into irrelevancy.
10. Okay, here comes the big one: THE GLASS IS HALF FULL. There is excellent work being done in the new world of online journalism and it’s being done at newspapers like the Washington Post and the Lawrence Journal-World and the San Jose Mercury News and the St. Petersburg Times and the Bakersfield Californian and all sorts of papers of all sizes.

By all means read the post and the folo.

The central element to all of this is that the web is moving forward faster than papers are able to understand or are willing to address.

So, how will we move forward as new gathering orgainzations recognizing the list and how management is approaching the future?