Deadwood

Clay Shirky on Newspapers and Glaciers

I’m getting increasingly irritated by the hysteria surrounding the newspaper industry. Clay Shirky, author of one of my new media bibles, “Here Comes Everybody,” nails it on Boing Boing.

“And once that became obvious, we said so, over and over again, all the time. We said it in public, we said it in private. We said it when newspapers hired us as designers, we said it when we were brought in as consultants, we said it for free. We were some tiresome motherfuckers with all our talk about the end of news on paper. And you know what? The people who made their living from printing the news listened, and then decided not to believe us.

So I’m calling bullshit on the Rosenbaum thesis, because no one has been “caught up in this great upheaval.” Caught up? That makes it sound like a tornado. This change has been more like seeing oncoming glaciers ten miles off, and then deciding not to move.”

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