Good people talking newspaper journalism

We seem to have moved beyond the handwringing over the future of newspaper to some solid thoughts. Here are two interesting columns on the topic, and what the Journal Sentinel is doing to attract an audience.

First up is my favorite columnist, Leonard Pitts. He looks at newspapers and suggests maybe we should just blow the model up and start over again. Pitts is one of the best thinkers around, and this is quite thoughtful.

Next up is a report of a discussion from the Chicago Reader in which a number of media types and academics discuss "Will Newspapers Survive?" I liked best the comment from the editorial page editor of the Sun Times, Tom McNamee, who said if papers die they die. Journalism will survive. That's the heart of what we should be discussing, where journalism will go, how it will get there, and how will it work in a capitalistic system.

Finally, Marty Kaiser Sunday wrote about the Journal Sentinel's new system, what he termed a "news hub" in the center of the newsroom, constantly updating the paper's web site. He said the paper is "moving from a once-a-day print newspaper that also publishes online, to a multimedia news center operating virtually around the clock."