washingtonpost.com
According to Achenbach, the future of journalism is on the Web. The “dead-tree edition” of the news is showing up on fewer and fewer driveways. One of the reasons for this is that “often the print version of the news is Old on Arrival.” On the Web readers can tap into the latest breaking news and get constant updates.
Another reason for falling subscription rates is that major newspapers are often associated with a single point of view. They are biased. As Achenbach said, it is important to “get it right and be fair.”
Many journalists seem to be a bit unnerved with the readers’ desire for interactivity. Howard Kurtz, for example, frets that tracking page views is “not journalism, it’s marketing.” Achenbach refutes that argument. He said: “The most-read stories online are often what we’d all agree are the best pieces of journalism.”
Achenbach serves notice that “newspaper journalism is different these days.” If newspapers want to survive in the current market, they must change with the times. If they do not, they will be as “dead” as the “dead-tree edition.”
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