Flipping Pencils

Where

Where, a blog about cities founded and guided by Brendan Crain out of Chicago, has been on this blog’s list of favorite sites almost from the beginning.

I’m pleased to report that I’m now a contributor—one of ten regulars—to Where. 

My first post on the blog came in October as part of a Blog Action Day dedicated to discussing poverty.

Today, I’m starting a series of posts about the future of urban journalism—a subject that combines two things I like to daydream about: cities and newspapers.

I’ll continue to post here at Flipping Pencils as usual— that is, every so often.

Why Can't Newspapers Be Fun to Read?

"Stop being important and start being interesting."

That's Michael Hirschorn's advice to newspapers, which continue to hemorrhage readers to the Web.

In an essay peppered with manifesto-like slogans in the December 2007 issue of The Atlantic, Hirschorn—an editor at the magazine—argues that "serious" news such as The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times print on their front pages needs to be "sexed-up." He says such news needs to be "marketed with the kind of zeal that so far only [media-baron, owner of the New York Post and now The Wall Street Journal Rupert] Murdoch has been willing to muster."

Hirschorn's right, I think. It's important to understand, though, that he's not saying that newspapers will survive only if they fill their pages with irresponsible, sensationalistic crap.

The Sunday City is a Great Local Newspaper

"Newspapers offered a mixed story as new data showed a circulation decline industrywide — by alarming rates at some papers — while visits to their websites grew."

—USA Today, 2006

Unless I start my Sunday by reading a real newspaper—the kind you can spill coffee on without frying a keyboard—I get cranky. Which is why reading about declining newspaper subscriptions worries me. What sort of wretch will I become if real Sunday newspapers go extinct?

But then I think of The Sunday City, and I realize there's hope. The Sunday City is a weekly from my hometown, and it's one of the few papers today gaining print subscribers. Let me tell you about it.