Earlier this year, I wrote a post on my personal experience leaving print newspapers behind.
In it, I wrote:
“When my Wall Street Journal subscription was up for renewal recently, I chose to let it expire. And yesterday, when a bill arrived for renewal of my San Jose Mercury News subscription, I called up and cancelled. And so, this morning, I did not have a pile of newsprint wrapped in a plastic bag awaiting me on my front step.”
For anyone who liked that post, which generated a lot of discussion inside my inner circle in Plaxo Pulse, I highly recommend this lengthy piece in the New Yorker, which actually manages to breeze through in some detail 300 years of the history of American newspapers.
My favorite quote in it is Arriana Huffington’s response to Bill Keller:
In October, 2005, at an advertisers’ conference in Phoenix, Bill Keller complained that bloggers merely “recycle and chew on the news,” contrasting that with the Times’ emphasis on what he called “a ‘journalism of verification,’ ” rather than mere “assertion.”
“Bloggers are not chewing on the news. They are spitting it out,” Arianna Huffington protested in a Huffington Post blog.
Additional color/commentary on Gawker. And Rafat Ali adds to the discussion on paidcontent.org, calling the New Yorker piece “long and ponderous.”
The Real McCrea 