What stage of grief are we at now? Seems like bargaining. At least we are at the midway point. But I'm dreading the depression phase. We will have to insist that you "check in" regularly thru that patch.

The best parts of the Strib right now are the sports blogs--sort of like the True/Slant model. Real expert, up to the minute commentary from La Velle et. al. with decent (could be improved) user comments/dialogues. THAT is sticky. Hall's "rock on the shore" comment is hilarious. Their value, when they had it, was timeliness. Remember the morning/afternoon editions? Hall makes it sound like they were the Economist or some such.

And let's get rid of this fiction that papers did all this great investigative, months long expose stuff. They hardly ever had any, and when they did it was usually just stuff designed to impress a (very liberal) Pulitzer committee. Most stories these days are broken on blogs.

LAMBERT: It's hard to disagree with anyone who accuses daily papers of being far, far less relevant than they should be. Unfortunately, it's like the old line about democracy.

Makes me want to start a "kill the Strib" group. It's an old, dying monster that people keep feeding. Let's let the monster die and lets get people to start giving us the food instead.

LAMBERT: I'll file you under, "Tough Love."

The things a newspaper does, or in the strib's case does now only in part, that other outlets don't do and are unlikely to are two: (1) the long locally focused think pieces run by somebody smart, e.g. the pieces decades ago on health care or two year higher education; (2) sending somebody knowledgeable to the planning commission, park commission, school board, etc. to see what the bastards are up to. Other stuff, I can get elsewhere, but these things only a paper can, or at least will, do. I don't know how to pay for them, but without them civic life is much poorer.

Incidentally, Scott Johnson may be lurching towards sanity; he had a pretty good piece in NRO, of all places, pointing out that Coleman is justifiably toast.

LAMBERT: Johnson is a less of a caricature than Hinderaker.

My God, Brian, you must be channeling Hunter S. Thompson. That should scare the hell out of you.

Here is what Hunter once said (You might have the quote tacked above your desk:)

"Most smart people tend to feel queasy when the conversation turns to things like 'certain death' and 'total failure' and the idea of a 'doomed generation.' But not me. I am comfortable with these themes."

My problem is, I can't disagree with you.

This week may tell the tale of the Strib. Something Is Going To Happen, I think, in the bankruptcy/Guild negotiation. There's almost zero chance the news will be good.

Have A Super Day.

LAMBERT: I have a photo of Hunter on the wall here in the sanctum sanctorum, but not that quote. The outcome of the bankruptcy "negotiations" will of course be bad for everyone. For some reason I'm most curious about who "new ownership" installs to actually run the paper. A team with long term local connections would at least send the signal they were trying to salvage something credible, beyond just protecting the very last of their investment.

NRO "of all places"? The writing / analysis at NRO is excellent. I'm glad there's some readers of it here.

LAMBERT: Yeah, but do you really expect to read a piece in NRO arguing Coleman's hopeless position?

"...that once glistening, healthy horse has left the barn, crossed the river and the county and is running free in the foothills, never to return...."

LOL.

LAMBERT: Even a blind dog occasionally finds a bone.

I would find it interesting, too, to get a look at a reasonable, modest, insider's blueprint for what a Web-only news organization of the future might look like. Number of staffers, roles for those folks and paychecks, too.

Why do I get the impression that the current Savethestrib.com folks are trying to keep all those numbers and roles at about 98 percent of what they currently have and know?

Too bad, people, but half of you are going to have to go, like it or not. And those who remain -- or reapply for your jobs, in a single operation run by St. Paul's Dean Singleton -- will be drawing salaries that are much smaller.

If that were offered to future generations of journalists, that might be enough to get the watchdog job done. Expectations would align with ambitions. But it means hard times and reformulated retirement plans for the existing crop of journalists, and they're not savvy enough at business, or willing to sacrifice enough, to make it happen.

LAMBERT: You make a good -- often neglected -- point about the demoralizing effect of newsroom veterans watching first basic resources for their beats sucked away, health care costs shifted from the companies to them, stagnant wages and now an off-the-cliff drop in compensation. Brave words withstanding, you're just not going to get that old "110% effort", if for no other reason than they're going to have to moonlight at Kwikie Mart.

The major problem with the newspaper and publishing industries in the last few years is the same reason why a man finds a pretty girlfriend: why pay when you can get the same or better for free? More and more people are self-publishing both news and fiction on public blogs (where they're hard to tell apart) for only the cost of an ego-stroking. At the same time, bean counters at newspapers were dropping heads within their investigative staff and emphasizing hyper-local angles, leaving story material that was hardly discernible from blog fodder written by any local parent or activist.

Even in today's market, I believe there will always be someone willing to pay for a Hunter S. Thompson. For that reason, I foresee hard-hitting commentary and investigative journalism moving to weekly and monthly journals with more emphasis on writing style. Well-managed blogs like MinnPost will take over the time-relevant pieces.

LAMBERT: You still have to have some kind of reliable underwriting mechanism for unglamorous grunt stuff and the longish incubation phase of investigative work.

That's a good critique of the wretched situation we're witnessing. The scariest thought of all, however, is Mossberg's revenue model, which would turn reporters into whores, much like certain sports columnists who sully their beats today.

LAMBERT: Its the public interaction thing that could act as a regulator on the worst excesses. People are forever saying "There's no editing of blogs. Bloggers just make stuff up." Well sure, some do. But in my experience there is no end of readers eager to slice and dice anything and everything you say and challenge every statement. As long as those people keep watching -- and if you have some respect for them -- you've got your "wiki" editing.

As it states in Ecclesiates, “There is nothing new under the sun”. That passage immediately came to mind when I was reading the grand plans of True/Slant. Examiner.com has been doing a variation of this with their “Examiners” for a few years now, when it became clear that the economics of starting a newspaper in a variety of towns wasn’t going to be viable. Whether or not they’re succeeding, either financially or artistically, cannot say.

Where have we seen this before? Oh, yes, in newspapers. In days of yore, they were called columnists. Anyone familiar with H.L.Mencken? Walter Winchell? Heck, in this town, Cedric Adams or even Shooter/Sid Hartman? Nowadays they’re known as bloggers.

While this generation of pusillanimous editors seems intent to suck all of the life out of their fast-fading papers (whatever life wasn’t crushed by financial mismanagement), let’s not forget that bright, vibrant columnists were big draws for their franchise. While we are all supposed to eagerly await the gripping account on the latest Citizens’ League study, the fact is that you’re not going to sell many newspapers. Personalities were a big part of what sold papers.

The “Rock on the Shore” metaphor is particularly inapt. I say this as someone who grew up reading the paper, delivering the paper as a youth, and who’s been a subscriber for my entire adult life. There’s nothing fixed and solid about the print version. It’ll end up in the recycling bin before the new one is flung onto the doorstep.

What print does is that it still connects with those Luddites who don’t want to be surfing. A declining audience, to be sure, but an audience with disposable income. The print version also has the salutary effect of bringing in more revenue.

I’ve said this before, and Henry Wolff earlier said it better than I: The encomia lavished on Investigative journalism has been absurdly overblown, and more of an overhang from the Watergate era. That’s not negating its value. It just is produced so infrequently that it has very little relevance. Instead, much of what passes for reporting is merely repeating what was delivered at the latest press conference.

Let’s not deceive ourselves: For all of the high-minded rhetoric about informing the citizenry, the modern newspaper is an advertising delivery vehicle, with some news thrown in. The sooner that management and the unions realize it, perhaps they’ll be able to claw their way back to a workable model. While the “hyper-local” approach has been subject to great ridicule here and other places, I humbly submit that perhaps it was a decent idea poorly executed. What the paper should be trying to do (and I think that this was the idea), was that there are actual news stories occurring out in the hinterlands, (otherwise known as suburbs), and, if you covered them, and grew a readership, perhaps some of those local advertisers would follow. Seems like a reasonable idea to me. I’ve read that the smaller community newspapers have weathered this storm much, much better than their bigger brethren. Perhaps it’s because they weren’t flipped and leveraged to the hilt. Perhaps because they’re better attuned to the needs and concerns of their customers (both readers and advertisers). The companies (Journal Register, Gatehouse, Morris Newspapers) that have assembled a collection of small papers have been crushed by debt, however.

Like sports, entertainment, I suspect that the news business will have an even more-pronounced two-track system. The stars (columnists/bloggers with a following), they’ll earn a living, and may thrive. While the news organization will still need a certain bench strength, I suspect that will entail an entry-level, part-time, even hobbyist approach. This is a return to the Old Days of newspapering (RE: The Front Page) of 50 or so years ago. Nothing new under the sun, indeed.

LAMBERT: I can't go into all the ways that boilerplate management empowers dull, boilerplate editing to suck the life out of distinctive voices. But it is an absolute key factor in the disintegration of papers. In essence they are now being produced with a reader in mind who frankly doesn't like to read too much.

Can anyone name an old media that WILL survive?

Radio is dead. Local tv news - sorry Don Shelby -is dead. Who waits until 10 PM for a sports score when you can get it off your blackberry anytime?

Yellow pages - dead

Shared mail - dead

Magazines - dead

Newspapers - will be struggling along with smaller readership....

MASS MEDIA IS DEAD!!!!

Deal with it dudes and dudettes.

LAMBERT: Everyone is. But someone somewhere has to punch in those scores, not to mention interview the jocks.