The time has come not to try and save newspapers but to mourn their demise and experiment with what might replace them. That is the stark, but irresistible, message of internet philosopher Clay Shirky, whose magnificent post on the death of newspapers should be read by everyone with an interest not merely in publishing and journalism but in society, per se. But there is more to Shirky’s post than doom-mongering. Much, much more – not least for everyone working in PR.
First, though, a recap of Shirky’s superb post. Shirky argues that we are living in the midst of a revolution – one caused by the internet – in which the key question is not ‘How do we save newspapers?’ but ‘What will come in their place – and what will journalism look like when the old world has gone?’ Dan Kennedy picked up on this in yesterday’s Guardian, confessing to more than a mild sense of disquiet as he looked into the crystal ball so brilliantly illumined by Shirky and realised that nothing will save newspapers, least of all charging for online content, as appears to be the au courant thinking among those who believe, like Canute, that they can resist the implacable forces of change.
Shirky’s analysis is cast-iron. Take this paragraph, for example:
When someone demands to know how we are going to replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that old systems won’t break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren’t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to. There are fewer and fewer people who can convincingly tell such a lie.
It is honest, too. Shirky knows that the economics of traditional newspaper publishing make it doomed, but admits that he doesn’t know what will replace newspapers. The point, though, is that no one does. All publishers can do is experiment, and see what sticks. The process will take decades, but that it is underway cannot be doubted.
But if newspapers are on the deathbed, what of PR? The art of spin is hardly a modern invention, but its primary source of expression, in recent years, has been the newspaper. It may seem inconceivable today, but there will come a time when the Sunday supplements do not entail the felling of a small forest, when news – and features, and obituaries, and law reports, and property stories, and all the rest of it – will not be digested via the black ink of a printing press and its stamp on paper. We’ll pick up all this, and more, in digital form. What, then, of the press officer, when the press doesn’t exist?
Just as journalism is undergoing a huge and remarkable transformation, so too is PR. The astute PRs, whether in legal services, property, finance or media, should also be reading Shirky – and asking themsleves what they’ll be doing when the known world is no more.
[...] the newspaper industry. Her piece reads as an attempt at some positive media PR in response to Clay Shirky’s definitive essay on the decline of newspapers, but for all its good intentions, it doesn’t seem to say very [...]
For a certain poet, an unspoiled stretch of seaside was like “the holy hush there is in the land on Christmas morning. The roads fairly empty, the sky almost free of aeroplanes and you begin to hear and see and smell once more”.
But who uttered these lines?
(It’s a Monday, and this is your starter for 10 – and yes, we’re fresh to the metropolis, from a coastal sojourn.)
The following words appeared in a Times article in 2003, about the paper’s recently departed Head of Legal, Alastair Brett. They’ve been doing the rounds in the wake of Brett’s sudden exit last week, though without attribution. Who, we wonder, wrote them? Two suspects present themselves – our own occasional scribe, Alex Wade, and Dominic Carman, son of the late, great George (an old mucker of Brett’s). Or was someone else the author? Whatever: the fact remains that Brett was a fearless, tenacious and excellent newspaper lawyer, a man whose commitment to press freedom coursed through every vein in his body. We don’t know the precise reasons for his departure, but he will be missed.
“[He] is known for his impassioned commitment to press freedom – so impassioned that he has been described as “certifiably insane”. Capable of an intimidatory snarl or two, and prepared to be stubborn, Brett is far from mad. He is erudite, charming (so the ladies say), and not known for sitting on the fence. If his sanity has, tongue firmly in cheek, been questioned, one thing not open to doubt is that Brett epitomises the old school Fleet Street lawyer”.
Pictured: Fleet Street - not the same as it used to be.
A curious observation leaps at us from Roy Greenslade’s piece about whether Conrad Black, shortly to roam the high-class hotels of the world again as a free man, will return to the UK and carry out his threat to sue his biographer, Tom Bower, for libel:
I somehow doubt that he would have the appetite, or the funds, to pursue a libel action, but Black marches to the sound of his own drummer, so he might just do that. Even if he did, my money would still be on Bower winning.
Hang on, Roy – what about suing via a no win, no fee deal? Funds or no funds, a CFA would see Conrad through – though maybe he’ll remember what happened to the last press baron who sued Bower. Anyone for Richard Desmond’s curious dalliance with libel?
Pictured: the kind of place in which Conrad Black may be spotted (if not at the Royal Courts of Justice).
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All OK for Desmond and Five
Heading for an airport tonight? Your experience may be different in future…
Released almost a year ago, Spada’s groundbreaking research report, British Professions Today, is available for free download
In this article, Gavin Ingham Brooke and Rohit Grover of Spada examine the importance of marketing and PR in a downturn.
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A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.
Πλάτων, Greek philosopher.