Philip Meyer je nekaj takšnega kot Francis Fukuyama časnikarstva, je nedavno ugotovil kolega Heribert Prantl v Süddeutsche Zeitung. Kakor je drugi razglasil konec zgodovine, tako je Meyer v knjigi Vanishing Newspaper (2004, University of Missouri Press) za leto 2043 oznanil izid zadnjega tiskanega časopisa. Od takrat se za časnikarsko industrijo in v njej zaposleni novinarski ceh slabe novice in napovedi le še množijo. Eden zadnjih zloslutnih znanilcev je Vin Crosbie, widely regarded as one of the most outspoken and expert critics of how the newspaper industry worldwide and particularly in the United States has responded to the digital media revolution. Crosbie napoveduje, da

More than half of the 1,439 daily newspapers in the United States won’t exist in print, e-paper, or Web site formats by the end of next decade. They will go out of business. The few national dailies — namely USA Today, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal — will have diminished but continuing existences via the Web and e-paper, but not in print. The first dailies to expire will be the regional dailies, which have already begun to implode. Those plus a very many smaller dailies, most of whose circulations are steadily evaporating, will decline to levels at which they will no longer be economically viable to publish daily. Further layoffs of staffs by those newspapers’ companies cannot avoid this fate - not so long as daily circulations and readerships continually and increasingly decline.

vendar vzroka za to, drugače kot večina tovrstnih nostradamusov, ne vidi predvsem v širjenju spletnih informativnih vsebin, pač pa ‘neprilagodljivosti’ časnikarske industrije same. Z drugimi besedami, po njegovem mnenju si časopisi s samim (brezplačnim) razpečevanjem vsebine v spletu ne delajo tolikšne škode kakor s prenašanjem in ponavljanjem informativnega ‘generalizma’ in ‘univerzalizma’.

Newspapers or other Mass Media companies that each produce a common product for all users direly need to understand that people are not going online to receive a common package (even one with multimedia added to it). They are going online to search and find the contents that the common package does not regularly give them. This is why most of the 1.4 billion people online primarily use search engines and to find content other than Mass Media content, rather than going online to use Mass Media online.
The average supermarket in America contains 45,000 different types of items (meat, produce, canned or bottled goods, etc.). However, imagine that you instead walked into a 400-year old market where the clerks hand you and every other customer an identical bag containing exactly the same mix of some 50 items and they tell you it contains what the supermarket’s manager thought you and everyone else should or would like to eat. Despite its venerable history, would you shop at this market again?

Crosbie je poleg tega prepričan, da medijska konvergenca, inteaktivnost, državljansko novinarstvo in vse drugo, s čimer se časopisi poskušajo ‘prikupiti’ spletnim uporabnikom, ne koristijo prav veliko, saj se je zaton (ameriškega) časnikarstva začel že pred ‘eksplozijo’ spleta (2.0), celo pred njegovo dostopnostjo širši javnosti.

Strinjam se z Amy Gahran, ki na Poynter Online ugotavlja, da ima Crosbie morda prav, ni pa nujno, da ima.

It seems to me that the nature of news and journalism are transforming. It’s not just about the “news business,” and definitely not just about “newspapers.” It’s possible that the era of traditional journalism may be on the wane — but does that mean that people will do without news or information? As I wrote last week: I don’t think so.
I think that people who want news will still get it through other means, possibly less directly, probably more collaboratively. It may not look like what journalists think news “should” look like. It may include a strongly automated, algorithmic component layered with human insight. It may look more like bullet points than stories. It’ll probably be strongly focused on mobile and social delivery channels. It may not even call itself journalism. But will it offer people the benefits they currently seek from news orgs? I think it could — maybe even better, in some cases. And to me, that wouldn’t necessarily be a “Gray Age.” Just a new chapter.

Ampak to novo poglavje, če dodam še svoj pomislek, si vendarle težko predstavljam kot izključno ’specializirano’ in ‘ukrojeno’ po zahtevah bralcev (bodisi v tisku bodisi v digitalni obliki). Ne zato, ker bi bil ‘zavezan tradiciji splošno-informativnega novinarstva kar tako’, temveč zato, ker ne vem, ali bi se v svetu, v katerem večino ljudi ‘zanima samo tisto, kar jih zanima’, ne premorejo pa niti kančka radovednosti in ‘odprtosti’ za ‘nepričakovane’ teme, udobno počutil. Drugače rečeno, manjši problem je (naučiti se) pisati (zgolj) o tistem, kar ljudi zanima (in to ‘zapakirati’ na ustrezen ‘nosilec’ informacij), bistveni (za družbo kot celoto) in težje rešljiv pa, kako ljudi zainteresirati za teme, za katere se zdi, da jih ne zanimajo, a bi jih ‘morale’, med drugim zato, ker so od tega - in njihovega stališča - odvisna temeljna družbena in medčloveška razmerja.

S čimer smo na prvi pogled spet nekje na začetku oziroma pri vprašanju, kaj mora in more storiti časnikarska industrija, da bi preživela (da bi se izognila usodi svoje ‘vrstnice, tekstilne industrije, novinarji pa usodi vrste drugih poklicev, ki so ‘izumrli’)? A v bistvu gre za vprašanje, na katero medijska oziroma časnikarska industrija sama ne more odgovoriti: hočemo in potrebujemo - kot posamezniki in družba - tisk (in medije sploh), ki nam bo svet okrog nas ‘odpiral’ ali smo zadovoljni in hočemo zgolj, da ‘streže‘ našim zanimanjem (in interesom)? In kakšne časopise (na katerem koli že nosilcu) smo - če sploh - pripravljeni plačati?

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