Slate And The Myth Of Newspapers Haters
Cord Jefferson of The Awl takes exception to a recent article in Slate entitled “Paper Hangers: Newspapers aren’t doing as badly as you think.”
“Chillax, people,” wrote Daniel Gross, who also works for Newsweek, a newsmagazine that fired lots of people last year before cutting its page count. “I can’t help but think that many newspaper-doomsayers are conflating hope with analysis.” Which brings us to our first problem: Based on this article, it would seem Gross believes there are actual Internet monsters-”newspaper-doomsayers,” “digerati,” etc.-cackling and blogging with glee every time a newsroom loses an editor. Mentioning the latest abysmal newspaper circulation statistics, he says “newspaper haters” must be joyous.
Newspaper haters is a group of people that doesn’t really exist, but, even if it did, it wouldn’t be composed of people in Internet media. Those people, if they don’t occasionally do odd jobs for papers and magazines themselves, have close friends who do. Close friends who, if unemployed, are going to have nowhere to look for work but the Internet. In other words, a blogger who roots for print’s demise is actually rooting for his pals to be fired and come steal his job. Nobody does that. Daniel Gross is projecting, arguing that the newspaper die-off is made up by making up some silly animosity on the part of the Web.
Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online 
FishbowlLA Twitter feed loading...
