Recovering Journalist blogger Mark Potts took issue with Joe Strupp’s top ten newspaper industry stories of the year, which ran on Editor & Publisher Web site last week.
At the top slot in Strupp’s 2006 list was “The Web Comes of Age” – but Potts contends that happened years ago.
Potts also wrote that Strupp missed the big story. “No, the problem with Strupp's list is that the biggest story of the year in the newspaper industry is that everybody in the industry seems finally to have figured out that the industry is in very serious trouble, and the upheaval that's resulted from that realization in the past year has been nothing short of massive,” Potts wrote.
Potts also wrote that “major structural and philosophical changes” may be the top stories of 2007 and beyond – but he presents this at the end of a less-than-optimistic post. Yes, changes are afoot and many newspapers are taking a serious look at their next moves – but we need to remember going into the New Year that change isn’t always bad. Sometimes a little positive thinking and innovation can be a good thing. Let’s not start 2007 on the wrong (the negative) foot.
In that vein, we asked last week for your newspaper industry New Year’s resolutions. Read our suggestions and add your resolutions here or e-mail me at beth.lawton@naa.org.