Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable

"There are several things. Clay shows how the basic outlines of what was to come were visible way before 2004 and 2005 when they dawned on the news industry. He says there is no general model for the news business to replace the one that the Internet broke. That’s key. And he points to the need to experiment with his wonderful line, “Nothing will work but everything might”. He is trying to show that there is hope even when every illusion the news business had about itself is shattered. And even when the crisis – a broken business model – is upon us. Take a look at how many links that article has [listed at the bottom of the page]. It’s unheard of. How does 1,219 links to a single blogpost happen? It happens when a writer captures a few big truths and pulls them into language everyone can hear. So we have a 10-year arc – 1999 to 2009 – and five stopping places, inflection points, along that arc. I finished my book What Are Journalists For ? which was in many ways a pre-web book, in 1999, and I turned my attention to the web and what it was doing to the ideas and practices I cared about. 1999 was the start of something for me. These are the key inflection points in my own work that correspond to the others we have talked about: 2005 , 2006 and 2009 . Do you now know why I chose these five articles? True. But what I meant is, do you see what each adds to the story? Beginning: Winer and Leonard – new world. Middle: Curley – puzzling through the changes. End: Arthur and Shirky – realism and hope. The more you know, the better off you are, but I think it’s wrong to say that every journalist has to become a technologist. Rather, journalists have to de-couple their essential practices from the particular forms of production and distribution to which they had become artificially attached. They have to come to terms with the power shift. They have to make use of new tools that give them more power, and open up creativity. And they have to create a more open professional culture, because their world is going to be disrupted again and again. Much more of the world is within reach of the working journalist today. But it’s still important to hit the streets, see for yourself and talk to people face to face. Yes, it’s a report card on digital journalism ."