Welcome!

This blog is intended to look at how the Web — in all its different forms — is affecting traditional print journalism. I would argue that the advent of the Web is the single biggest issue facing newspapers and magazines today, both from an editorial and business standpoint.

On the editorial front, the world simply does not operate on a 24-hours news cycle any more. By the time we get the newspaper in the morning, chances are we’ve already read about much of the “news” online. This seems to have produced two shifts: one, more newspaper content is “news analysis” — pieces that try to lend another layer to the traditiona. who, what, when, where, why and how of a story; and two, newspapers have ramped up their online content to be continuously updated. Case in point: even the staid New York Times, which didn’t even print a color photograph (too racy!) on its front page until 1997, now has a variety of blogs on its Web site. (Its blog City Room even covered the death of Heath Ledger with minute-by-minute updates — a huge departure for a newspaper that has always been above the fray of celebrity journalism — but that’s another topic).

From an advertising standpoint, newspapers are dying. Their main revenue stream — classified advertising — has been almost wholly usurped by searchable, real-time and often free Web sites like Craig’s List. This crisis is affecting newspaper in different ways, which I’ll explore on this blog. To read about a recent example, check out this video and article about the departure of L.A. Times editor James O’Shea, who quit out of a refusal to make the budget cuts he was asked to implement by the publisher.

More to come …