Some are old, some new – but all tell it like it is. The sooner we come to grips with these things, the better.

Getting Past Newspapers’ Past – Jeff Jarvis – 10 things newspapers aren’t. The key here is “Newspapers are no longer magnets that will draw people in.” This is why they’ll never be able to charge for content under the current system.

Media and a “sense of community” – Daily Kos – refutes Washington Post article by Howard Kurtz (Lack of Vision to Blame for Newspaper Woes then the longer Death of Print?, May 11, 2009) in which he laments the loss of “community” in the demise of newspapers. Kos hits the nail on the head when he talks about how antiquated that view is: So I have no idea what Kurtz is talking about when he decries the lose [sic] of ‘sense of community.’ I have found far more community online than I ever did in those dark, pre-internet days.”

The Survival of Journalism: 10 Simple Facts – Mindy McAdams – this is from 2008, but was resurrected today on Twitter and still applies. Basically, let’s stop living in the past and move on. “No one today goes to one spot online as the trusted information source. People don’t even go to five or six. Everyone goes to dozens, hundreds — more. A subscription scheme is therefore not workable.” Exactly. If newspapers were to start charging for online content, I’d have no idea which one I would want to align myself with via subscriptions and would there’s no way I could subscribe to content from all the places in which I currently access news.  McAdams delivers what is probably the most damning prediction, however. “Newspaper companies, in particular, seem unlikely to blaze the trail toward a viable business model for journalism.” And, that’s just sad.

More to come…