Centerpieces

RELATED DISCUSSIONS  IN THE BLOGOSPHERE

Track the discussion: *BlogPulse results *Technorati tracking *del.icio.us discussion *digg comments *Subscribe to a feed of blog reactions to this piece Bloggers respond: *Steve Yelvington responds to this piece on his blog. *JD Lasica responds. *Steve Bryant responds. *K. Paul Mallasch responds. *Bill Doskoch responds. *Andy Dickinson responds. *Mark Matassa responds. *The Editor's Desk (Wichita Eagle) responds. *David Hauslaib responds. *Cynthia Brumfield responds. *Jeremy Littau responds. *Craig Stoltz responds. *Mark Potts responds. Main discussion: *View it all *View highlights

Is it a journalist's duty to read the newspaper? Is it a citizen's? Roy Peter Clark says it is. He writes: "There is one overriding question about the future of journalism that no one can yet answer: How will we pay for it? ... Until we create some new business models in support of the journalism profession, we've got to support what we have." You can read the original article here, and the comments here. Below are some responses to his piece, organized by themes that emerged over the course of the discussion. Add your thoughts.

My duty is...

• "I feel no DUTY to subscribe to the papers. My duty as a journalist, first in broadcast TV and now online and in print, is to do the best job I can to present information fully and fairly. The medium I use depends on the story and the situation, not on a commitment to paper." -- Susan Prince
  
  
• "I agree with Mr. Clark that we have an obligation to buy and read newspapers. It's an investment in our democracy to support the brave reporters in Iraq and elsewhere who report stories we would otherwise never know." -- Mary Hausch
  
  
• "My loyalty is not to newsprint. It is to my craft and if I must switch mediums to continue to practice that craft, then so be it." -- Earni Young
  
  
• "If there's any duty here, I'd suggest we news people have a duty to support online products as a way to drag the news industry kicking and screaming into its inevitable future."-- Grant Gross
  
  
• "My duty, as a journalist, is to support the grassroots journalism movement that is spreading across the country." -- K. Paul Mallasch

• "If you really care about journalism, you'll do your best to avoid reading or otherwise supporting "paper-based journalism" whenever possible. Since the future is clearly in pixels, video, audio, etc. you'll do everything you can to learn about, live with, and come to understand paper-free journalism." -- Bob Wyman
  
  
• "The issue isn't how to prop up print newspapers -- that battle's over, and it would be a tragic waste of resources to keep fighting it. It's how to get people to pay for news online." -- Jason Fry
  
  
• "I believe it's time for civil disobedience -- journalists who love journalism should be willing to go to jail to force their paymasters into making the changes necessary to secure a place for serious news reporting in the digital future." -- Craig Stoltz

Follow the Money

• "Support advertisers that support the local paper, either in print or online."-- Beau Dure
  
  
• "The revenue will be there, but as we focus on preserving the use of trees to tell stories and sell advertising, we're failing to position ourselves to compete for it." -- Svend Holst
  
  
• >"The business is moving but hasn't yet moved on to digital dominance. ... Print advertising pays the bills for the news-gathering enterprise for now and will for some years to come." -- Rick Edmonds
  
  
• "If you want to give the industry some breathing room to figure all this out, then you should subscribe to at least one newspaper. The career you save may not be your own, but it may be an important one, nonetheless." -- Eric Deggans

• "If all the employees of Kodak had clung to their 35-mm cameras as film slowly became a souvenir of hobbyists, it would not have made one iota of difference." -- Matt Thompson
  
  
• "How much difference would it have made if Kodak employees had continued using film cameras while their customers went digital?" -- Bill Mitchell
  
  
• "Isn't what you're telling the newspaper industry akin to: ... Telling Kodak that it should keep the focus on selling people film even though the market has moved nearly completely to digital?" -- Steve Outing
  
  
• "The comparisons between film and digital photographs and music downloads vs. CDs are not applicable to the news industry." -- Alex Dering
  
  
• "The Kodak analogy might be right in the future but isn't now. The business is moving but hasn't yet moved on to digital dominance." -- Rick Edmonds

• "The future belongs to those who can successfully provide news and information desired and valued by a target audience." -- Forrest Carr
  
  
• "The solution is to use the resources of the newspaper to reach people with information important to their lives, on whichever platform they prefer." -- Jim Naughton
  
  
• "Hanging on to an old medium, whether it's paper or broadcast TV (from an earlier life as a program director in public TV), doesn't serve readers or viewers well. Focusing on the content should always be the priority, not the medium." -- Susan Prince

• "I'm still embarrassed that I stopped taking the paper, but I feel that they abandoned me long before I left them." -- Kellye Crocker
  
  
• "I do my duty. I receive -- and read -- three newspapers a day -- WSJ, Boston Globe, and NYT. All three have suffered a decline in quality over the past year. ... Why am I still a loyal reader, when the newspapers I buy are no longer loyal news suppliers?" -- Steven Ross

The Silver Lining

• "The good thing is that WE are reading, and we are hungrier for stories than ever before." -- Mario Garcia