on Mar 19th, 2009Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable « Clay Shirky
Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable « Clay Shirky.
The hot topic on blogs last week seemed to be that the demise of the printed newspaper is inevitable, and with it the entire idea of the fourth estate. The question seems to be whether or not our society can have a meaningful free press if there’s no newspapers to deliver it. This is a much more complicated question than it seems at first. Of course the entire concept of a free press integral to an open and free society while simultaneously being a commercial enterprise has always been a complicated question. We’ve just done a good job of burying the complexity beneath a surface of banal platitudes about the press and journalism.
If there’s any kind of theme to this weeks blogging its that the world is far more complex than we think, that there are no simple answers, and that we may, finally, have reached a point where were going to have to do some hard work as a society to answer those questions… Shirky seems to get that, hence my linking to his article. Consider it required reading.
As long as you can write what you think without getting arrested, the system is working, regardless of the medium.