. . . without news

I'm a little late to the game on this one, but here's a fascinating piece by Clay Shirky about the tough reality that the newspaper industry has to face up to. Shirky is an Internet consultant, but he puts on his cultural historian hat, comparing the current newspaper crisis to the revolutionary changes that occurred when the printing press was invented. It's a great piece, and I recommend you read the whole thing. Shirky certainly doesn't pull any punches. Here's a great quote:

And so it is today. When someone demands to know how we are going to replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that old systems won’t break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren’t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to.