Media company strategist Steve Yelvington has a great post on his blog entitled Death to the 'death of journalism' meme.
If you're interested in media issues, it's short, sweet, insightful and well worth a read.
Newspapers are not the alpha and omega of journalism and not the anointed vessels of the First Amendment. Journalism will happen with or without them.
But newspapers are not going away, not any time soon. They are far more healthy than generally believed. Don't confuse huge corporate finance mistakes with a failure of the advertising business model. Don't imagine that the problems of the Baltimore Sun and the Boston Globe are the problems of every newspaper.
Among the more than 1,400 daily newspapers in the United States, most are very profitable operations today by any reasonable business standard, even in the depths of the worst economic recession since the Great Depression.
Newspapers can embrace change. I know of some that are making 20, 30 percent or more of their advertising revenue on digital products. Migrating from a single-product factory mentality to a customer-focused portfolio of solutions is hard, but it's necessary. It's not impossible.
The Internet is not your enemy. Your customers are not your enemy. Your competitors might sometimes be your enemy, not not always. You are part of a herd. If you're smart, you'll figure out how to be the alpha. (Hint: Organize the herd.)
He closed with this:
There are more horses in America today than before the invention of the motorcar. They're not, however, our primary mode of transportation; they're used for other purposes. We will still have printed periodicals for quite some time. Figure out what they'll be used for. But keep your eye on the new tools; that's where the big opportunities will be.