About The Medium Run

This is a more-or-less-weekly blog about local newspapers and their hopes for an online future, written from the perspective of a print guy turned online guy for a small, respectable daily in the Pacific Northwest. Because that guy is me.

Here are my assumptions:
1) Newspapers are generally in big trouble, because before long the Web will do everything that print does, except better and cheaper. However
2) Most local newspapers are still near-monopolies, both in news and advertising. So they aren't currently in big trouble. But
3) They will be. Moreover
4) If newspapers fail, the people that replace them will be uninterested in or incapable of original reporting, the crucial community service good local newspapers provide today. Therefore
5) Newspapers need to rapidly learn how to do on the Web what they've been doing in print--except better and cheaper.

Here is where I stop:
1) 2040. I don't have a damn clue.

If I have one wish for The Medium Run, it'll help counteract the general disregard a lot of media thinkers have for newspapers outside major metro areas. If the city slickers aren't going to look out for us, we're going to have to look out for ourselves.