Why Paper Is Eternal - Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press ...

are premised on the idea that newspapers need to completely rethink their
mission. One widely discussed study commissioned by the American Press
Institute concluded that newspapers should stop viewing themselves simply as
publishers of news. Instead, they should try to identify other jobs consumers
might “hire” them to do, much as they “hire” a milkshake at a fast food
restaurant. 93 Some papers have forged various kinds of content and advertising
deals with online portals. Others have tried to divide up their content in a way
that takes into account the different things people seek from paper and the
Web. When The Wall Street Journal launched a redesign at the end of 2006,
publisher L. Gordon Crovitz explained to readers the distinct roles the two
versions of the newspaper would play: “Your print Journal will be a daily oasis
of context, perspective and knowledge, while WSJ.com will be the ultimate
source of what’s-happening-now news.” 94
In a very different approach, The New York Times, in addition to its
popular website, now offers a Web “reader” that tries to mimic some qualities
of paper. Times Reader, as it’s called, downloads the contents of the paper,
which can then be read via a special software interface. “Introducing a digital
newspaper that reads like the real thing,” announced a recent advertising
supplement in the hard-copy paper. 95 The interface is pleasant and intuitive to
use, in part because the copy closely resembles print on paper. But there’s
another, perhaps more important reason it reads more like “the real thing” than
other digital renditions of newspapers: Once the latest edition of the Times has
been downloaded, it can be read and explored offline. This unplugged mode
lends the whole experience a psychic semblance of paper’s boundedness and
autonomy. You are not out in the vastness of the Web, the seconds ticking
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