If the New York Times dies, does the news die?
The death of an institution isn’t far off, writes the Atlantic in an article titled End Times, and with it an entire industry may be preparing to slip underwater. Low on cash, high in debt, the legendary New York Times is reeling from the recession. There’s no guarantee that it, or many others of our best newspapers, will survive the next year. The immediate effect of the Times ending its storied run (or degrading to a lesser entity) will no doubt be the journalistic equivalent of a nuclear explosion. Journalists love writing about journalism, and all the old bromides will be dragged out, chief among them the accusation that print has not evolved: it simply needs to join the internet age. Alas, the criticism will be misguided. The New York Times has done an excellent job of growing its web property. ComScore says the company’s pageviews are approaching 200 million a month; that’s a lot for any website. Other newspapers have also done well, just not nearly well enough. In fact, “well en
