What’s a writer to do?
Posted on | April 2, 2008 | No Comments
We know newspapers are struggling. It’s gotten so bad that Steve Outing at Editor & Publisher has canceled his local newspaper subscription, which he details this week.
Magazines are taking a hit these days just as their daily newspaper brethren. Newsweek. Time. And those are publications that are still in business.
The New York Observer publishes a great piece from Doree Shafrir on the decline and fall of the writer. Salient points:
- It’s not 1960 anymore
- Blogging is good training for blogging, not journalism
- Gay Talese is pretty insightful, even at his age
- There are no kids coming into the magazine ranks (much argument over that point)
- The New York Observer is very New York-centric
In a related article, magazine editors ponder their future. Our hero Chris Anderson of Wired says:
“In 10 years, I think my magazine will look like it looks today.”
It may very well be that magazines become the print vehicle in the future. All news is online and analysis falls to magazines that come out once a week or less. But the bigger issue, which Talese alludes to in the Observer article is that most writers are tied to their computers. Great articles and great writing happens when you walk out the door into the wide, wide world.
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- Why they’re different audiences
- More on Sam "F*** You" Zell
- Has the advertising free-fall slowed?
- No big deal: Magazine circulation falls (again)
- A newspaper’s soul
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