The Net, The News and the Medium

I just read a story on News Busters that suggests that the New York Times, arguably the greatest newspaper in the world, is likely to go bankrupt in the first half of 2009. When the Times emerges from bankruptcy, it won't look like it does today. It is likely that the daily printed edition of the newspaper will be gone, while the Sunday edition will survive.

The Times currently boasts about 20 million on-line readers per day, and about a million and a half print edition readers. The print edition readership numbers are steadily declining. The revenue stream created by the print edition readers is substantial on a per reader basis. The income stream created by the on-line readership is not nearly as strong.

As a result, the post-bankruptcy version of The Times will not be able to financially support the staff that has previously been supported by the print version. This means jobs will be eliminated. Writers, and the information and ideas and nuance that they convey, will go away. Content will come from co-op sources.

The New York Times, the greatest newspaper in the world, will be a commodity depository with some home grown content included to distinguish it from...USA Today?

Now, the Sunday New York Times is one of the greatest pleasures in which you can selfishly indulge. Mi esposa would buy me one from time to time, not lately though, as the paper isn't easy to find here near Stately PFOS Manor and there aren't too many empty Sundays, though winter is a great opportunity.

I don't know what the end result of the Times bankruptcy will be, and surely the people who run the great newspaper will offer something that will make it continue to be distinctive. I do know that technology has once again commodity-ized a product that we have been accustomed to enjoying in a highly customized form.

In this case there is a rather incisive irony. The internet, the medium that has advanced the dissemination of knowledge at a greater pace than anything in the history of the world, is the primary instrument forcing the reconstruction of the great newspaper, and the end result will be something less than that with which we began.

Nobody's fault, no one to blame. Less is more, sometimes, but not in this case.