The Chicago Tribune's Technology Is All Wet

I'd hoped to read about the Tribune Co.'s bankruptcy filing in today's newspaper, but it got delivered in the rain, so I threw the soaking wet mess into the garbage.So much for that technology, right?

After all, newspapers are a technology; printing words on paper, and then handing the paper to someone, relies on tools of production and distribution. Like all technologies, it was never perfect, but rather a trade-off, giving readers access to information in exchange for ink-smudged fingertips, and the occasional soggy block of pulp.

A lot has been done to try and forestall the demise of this technology. Page layouts have been updated, both at the Tribune and many other newspapers, to mimic the breezy format of Web sites and blogs. Editorial resources have been slashed, hoping to rely on more generic resources for news content. What little writing is still done locally is often cut short, dumbed-down, or otherwise made to, again, mirror the experience a reader might get on the Internet.

None of these modifications to the technology could overcome the fundamental fact that classified ad revenue, which had always paid the bills, has and will continue to dwindle to zero, as those dollars are better spent on online technology (the trade-offs are better).

More importantly, these changes have been self-defeating on the primary business issue, which was and is content.

If you stop thinking about technology for a moment, what newspapers used to deliver was authoritative information. Newspapers were public records, and people valued their assessment of newsworthiness, standards of research, and criteria for publishing. Newspapers used to be the opposite of brevity, opinion, and subjectivity. That's why the technology trade-off worked.

Newspapers were the anti-Twitter.

You'd think that in a networked world that craves authenticity and reliability, there'd be a place for something called "the Tribune" (or any other newspaper) to provide information that folks cared about. Newspapers could choose to do whatever it took to ensure that content -- reporting -- had unique value, in whatever format(s) it was produced and distributed.

Instead, viewed as a technology, they're just all wet.

Jonathan Salem Baskin writes the Dim Bulb blog, and is the author of Branding Only Works On Cattle.