Long Live the New York Times--Online?

Posted by Marci Hotsenpiller Jan 29, 2009

In our ongoing look at the shift in traditional newspapers, we’ve been curiously watching the New York Times. Long considered a news institution around the world, the Times has joined other media companies in recently announcing significant revenue declines.

The idea that the Times as we know it—the newsprint edition—could disappear altogether has recently been mentioned. Michael Hirschorn, contributing editor at The Atlantic magazine provided the starkest look yet at this possibility in the January issue.

Hirschorn suggests that the Times could live on in an online-only format but laments that this would mean the loss of the “civilized ritual” of going out to get the Sunday morning edition of the paper.

"It will also mean the end of a certain kind of quasi-bohemian urban existence for the thousands of smart middle-class writers, journalists, and public intellectuals who have, until now, lived semi-charmed kinds of lives of the mind."

To equate the loss of a newsprint edition with the loss of opportunities for writers shows a gap in an understanding of the Internet. At Suite101 and other online publishers, we see the possibilities for online writing expanding, not contracting. We see the gates to entry opening rather than closing. And while we applaud citizen journalism sites and blogging, we see that most online readers are still interested in knowing that certain sites maintain editorial standards and publish writers that follow journalistic principles in their work.

While I can join Hirschorn in lamenting the possible loss of the paper (though not in the airport, where I might celebrate NOT having to carry around the 4lb/2kg Sunday edition) I can’t join him in worrying about the future of news. Not while great options exist for writers to keep publishing their best work online, where it can be easily found and respectfully read by millions.