Top Writers/Editors Debate Newspapers' Future in NYC

By: David S. Hirschman "Does print have a future?" asked Slate founding editor Michael Kinsley Thursday evening to kick off a panel celebrating the 10th anniversary of the online magazine.

Entitled "Online Media and the Future of Journalism" and held at the main branch of the New York Public Library, the panel addressed a wide range of issues in the movement of content online and the future of print media. On stage with Kinsley were former Time Inc. editor in chief Norman Pearlstine; current Slate editor Jacob Weisberg; Arianna Huffington, who co-founded HuffingtonPost.com; and Malcolm Gladwell, staff writer for The New Yorker and bestselling author.

The main question of the evening was whether newspapers (and magazines to a lesser extent) would continue to exist in the near and long-term. Gladwell likened the problems facing the newspaper industry to those facing the airline industry.

"The airline itself never makes any money, but everyone else connected with flying makes tons of money," he said, explaining that resorts, plane manufacturers, pilots, and others who depend on the airline industry see great financial gain while the core service provider sees nothing. "This is the newspaper business. Without the New York Times, there is no blog community. They'd have nothing to blog about. ...

"So the solution to the problem is not to say 'I guess newspapers are dead,' because the whole system crashes down. ... Airlines have got to be a bit better at pricing their services, and so should newspapers."

Pearlstine said that the major block for newspapers was that advertising, which has supported newspapers throughout their history, is increasingly finding its way online.

"The big problem is really going to be the business model for newspapers." said Pearlstine. "With the clear movement of classified advertising to online, it's going to be very hard for newspapers to sustain themselves as we know them. ... If you assume the principal strengths of newspapers traditionally have been their timeliness, their being publications of record, and their allowing for a transaction through classified ads, the 'net does all three of those things better than a newspaper does.

"So I think the most exciting thing that could happen is that newspapers and magazines become more publications of opinion."

Pearlstine said that, nonetheless, print publications will continue to exist because portable reading technology still would not be up to snuff. Weisberg agreed, saying that something akin to the "iPod of reading" would have to be created before newspapers were really under threat -- but said that will definitely happen soon.

"I don't think newspapers will die out," said Weisberg, "But when the iPod came along, suddenly the way that many people we know consume music change, and it changed quickly. ... We're still waiting for a device that is a comfortable way for people to read books, to read magazines, to read everything they read. ... Some time in the next several years there is going to be a device like that, and that is going to be a threat to all printed forms."

Huffington got some laughs with her assessment of the issue. "I find this debate between online and print, who is going to survive and who is going to die, incredibly old fashioned, irrelevant," she said. "It's not an either/or. It's like the old barroom argument 'Is it Ginger or Mary Ann?' This is 2006, let's have a three-way. We don't have to choose."

The panelists also took on the New York Times' TimesSelect pay wall, which Huffington slammed as "idiotic."

"Unless you are peddling porn, and especially weird porn, you should not ask people to pay for it," said Huffington.

Weisberg agreed, saying that the political conversation in particular had moved online, and that what TimesSelect has done was cut the paper's columnists off from it.

"On the other hand," said Weisberg. "It's in the interests of democracy for the New York Times to find a way to support its business, to support its very expensive newsroom and foreign bureaus. And if they can't charge for any of their content, what are they supposed to do?"

Near the end of the discussion, Huffington took a few swipes at former New York Times reporter Judy Miller, and the paper's coverage leading up to the Iraq war, asserting the value of blogs in debunking and questioning information that appears in papers like the New York Times.

"When the history of this war is written, The New York Times will have a huge responsibility for what happened," said Huffington. "Holding the mainstream media's feet to the fire is one of the great jobs the blogoshere is doing."