The last newspaper post for a while

Not only have I not written about newspapers for a while, I’ve also not finished a longish piece I’ve been working on about not writing about newspapers anymore.

But it really boils down to this: I’m out.

I can’t stand to be the guy screaming from the stands that the team is running toward the wrong end zone. If newspapers want to march off the cliff of paid content, they should get on with it so that they can fail faster and make room for what comes next. The industry’s endless hand-wringing is neither productive nor entertaining anymore.

As a good friend said to me last night, apropos the notion of “saving newspapers”:

“If the patient that’s strapped to the table is obese and sclerotic and cancer-riddled, do you give the patient oxygen? Or, to mix the metaphor, do you sprinkle water on the new green shoots coming up over here?”

If anyone asks after me, I’ve gone watering.