Arthur Sulzberger Jr. isn't a household name. But what Mr. Sulzberger thinks about the future of daily newspapers -- including The New York Times, the paper his family publishes -- should matter to all of us.
Last week, Mr. Sulzberger was asked if those of us who still cherish getting our fingers stained by newsprint would have his paper to fold first in half, then in quarters, during our morning commutes five years from now.
It was one of those leading questions often asked of captains of industry at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland. The press-shy publisher was cornered by a reporter for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, and perhaps spoke too loosely.
If Sulzberger had only followed the usual script, he would've assured the reporter that the print edition of the Times would not only be around in five years, the company will have figured out a way to make a profit from online advertising, too.
But he ended up saying, "I really don't know whether we'll be printing the Times in five years. And you know what? I don't care, either."
Perhaps sensing that his answer was too flip coming from the chairman of the most powerful news organization in the world, Mr. Sulzberger told the reporter that he's concentrating on the Times' transition from print to Internet.
"The Internet is a wonderful place to be, and we're leading there."
Say, what?
Didn't the Sulzbergers, the shareholders of the newspaper and several partners invest half-a-billion dollars into a new state-of-the-art headquarters in Times Square, scheduled to open this spring?
True, it will still be considered a canny real estate venture even if the newspaper "disappears," but it makes you wonder why a besieged publisher fighting a hostile stockholder rebellion would say anything negative and on the record about the future of his primary product.
These are tough times for newspapers and everybody knows it. The business model that Ben Franklin took for granted while cranking out his colonial broadsheets is now a money-losing anachronism.
We don't need Sulzberger to tell us that a whole generation of prospective readers has already migrated to cyberspace and cable TV for news and opinion -- our own internal surveys confirm this along with our dwindling profits.
What we're looking for from the chairman of the most powerful newspaper in the world is an indication that he shares our sense of crisis -- and a resolve to overcome it.
What startled me most about Sulzberger's "realism," if we can call it that, was his inattention to the question of whether his newspaper's march to an exclusively paperless future is necessarily a good thing.
Perhaps I'm missing something, but it's my suspicion that democracy will be greatly diminished if newspapers as influential as the Times are only available to those with enough income to afford computers and PDAs.
If other regional and national papers follow the Times' example, we might as well hand our republic over to the assorted scoundrels in business and politics who will profit from newspapers' retreat into cyberspace.
It may be an old-fashioned notion, but we need the shame and reward dimension that comes from the presence of newspapers in the heart of our communities.
The accessibility, ubiquity and low cost of newspapers is, in itself, a positive social value that must be preserved.
When the Pennsylvania Legislature votes itself a raise in the middle of the night, such brazen thievery needs to be heralded with banner headlines, in-depth reporting and excoriating editorials.
When a superior athlete performs an amazing feat of athleticism or skill, publishing a photo of the event is part of the public celebration.
When public transportation is threatened by shortsighted funding cuts, who will be the advocate the community needs and deserves?
Newspapers provide communal accountability that comes from many sets of eyeballs reacting to the same headlines. Television news is not equipped to take up the slack.
Discarded newspapers on cafeteria tables and bus seats are as much a part of the dissemination of news and information as what high-priced anchors do on television every night -- perhaps more so.
Perhaps the total migration of newspapers to the Internet is already a done deal and nobody has bothered to tell me. If so, then it's not too early to start complaining about the erosion of the rest of our democratic values and institutions.
Copyright ©1997-2007 PG Publishing Co., Inc.
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