[AEJMC Newspaper Division list] Newspapers

[Lofflin, John]

Perhaps a better analogy to Morris Code is the eight-track tape player. Like
recorded music, newspapers will certainly survive in some form. WHAT you read
them on may someday be different, but, you'll still read them. (I'm trying
now to imagine myself not dropping the Kindle into the bath water.) As
academics we are terrified of being left behind the curve. I'm thinking we
act like teenagers about these things because we've bought into the idea that
we are the ivy on the walls rather than the walls. 
 
What is in danger, and perhaps reminiscent of Morris Code, is reading, as
anyone who teaches freshmen knows all too well. Yet freshmen who don't read
newspapers constantly show up at our office doors wanting to work for
newspapers. As academics, we obviously are needed, and we have some work to
do.
 
Why, for instance, can I only get a few graphs into any columnist's formal
column but find myself delighted reading his or her blog? Why do I skip read
through a game story on the newspaper's Web page so I can get to the readers'
chat at the end? My guess is newspapers, both on cheap paper and delivered in
zeros and ones, will be vastly different in five years and, as the newspaper
division, we have a role to play in those change. If we say we are no longer
about newspapers, we will be abdicating to others what only we can do.
 
John Lofflin
Park University
 
Are we educating people to be fulfilled by the jobs they have in journalism?
Or, are we simply educating them to fill jobs in journalism?

 
  

________________________________

From: news-list-bounces at aejmc.net on behalf of Michael Abrams
Sent: Sun 7/20/2008 9:17 AM
To: Paul Brinkman; Phil Meyer; Rosenberry, Jack
Cc: news-list at aejmc.net
Subject: [AEJMC Newspaper Division list] Innocuous desuetude



Why not vote? If no change is needed, then it will be reflected by that
vote.

Will newspapers cease to print? Nailed to a cross of greed? Forbid it,
Almighty God! Yet, no one remembers much about Morse Code, Pluto Water or
Battenberg insertions. It may be, despite out best wishes and fond memories,
newspapers, victimized by innovation, will end up in that slough of despond,
to steal the apt phrase of President Grover Cleveland, in a state of
'innocuous desuetude.'

(credit Wm. Jennings Bryan, John Bunyan, S.J. Perelman, Grover Cleveland,
H.L. Mencken, Samuel Finley Breese Morse)

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