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… said Phil Bronstein, San Francisco Chronical editor-at-large, at the conclusion of the op-ed piece titled Slouching Towards Oblivion, by Maureen Dowd in today’s NY Times.

No one knows yet what is going to replace the formal newspaper (as Clay Shirky points out in Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable), but it’s a pretty good bet it’s going to involve some digital and different ways of sourcing, assembling and distributing “the news”.

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Slouching Towards Oblivion

 MAUREEN DOWD

April 25, 2009

Maybe it’s because I’m staying at the Sunset Tower on Sunset Boulevard, but I keep thinking of newspapers as Norma Desmond.

Papers are still big. It’s the screens that got small.

Now that everybody can check their iPhones and laptops for news that personally interests them, now that they can Google, blog and tweet, as well as shop — and stalk — on Craigslist, old-school newspapers seem like aging silent film stars, stricken to find themselves outmoded by technology.

As a disgusted Desmond asks from behind dark glasses: “And who have they got now? Some nobodies — a lot of pale little frogs croaking pish-posh.”

Eric Schmidt, the Google C.E.O., reassured me that newspapers would last 500 years, but only for a boutique market: commuters taking trains, cabs and subways on the East Coast and in cities like London and Paris.

“For somebody who lives in the suburbs,” he said, “especially if they’re driving and they have kids screaming in the back seat, why would they prefer a physical newspaper over something that is more personal.”

[ Snip … ] 

But in real life, journalists are feeling the chill. Calling his purchase of The L.A. Times and The Chicago Tribune “a mistake,” Sam “The Sham” Zell said, “It’s very obvious that the newspaper model in its current form does not work and the sooner we all acknowledge that, the better.” He said he probably would not try for a merger because “that’s like asking someone in another business if they want to get vaccinated with a live virus.”

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