That isn’t because I haven’t pondered micro-payments, or endowments, or Web subscriptions, or citizen journalism, or even the new media consultant’s insistence that salvation for every Web venture lies in Twittering — it’s because there’s precious little work that’s been done to study what exactly newspapers do that is of civic value, what functions will survive the broadsheet’s decline and fall, and the most viable and efficient ways to revive the important stuff that doesn’t survive.
The task is made insanely difficult by the fact that every newspaper is different—a quirky bundle of stuff, the business section excellent and the sports section atrocious, and vice-versa in the next town, a public meetings calendar on page three here, but nowhere on the pages of the newspaper three towns over.
