El fin de los periódicos???

Russell Baker presenta en el The New York Review of Books un diagnostico del problema de la prensa escrita. La crisis que sufre no depende tanto de las nuevas tecnologías: Internet y blogs. Sino más bien, y en el mejor de los casos, de la tensa cohabitación entre dos espécimenes muy diferentes: periodistas y empresarios. Los primeros, encargados de suministrar de contenido al periódico, trabajan con una lógica diametralmente opuesta a los dueños: empecinados en hacer de la prensa escrita un jugoso negocio.

"There is a growing literature about the multitude of journalism's problems, but most of it is concerned with the editorial side of the business, possibly because most people competent to write about journalism are not comfortable writing about finance. Still, it is on the ownership and management side that the gravest problems exist. The best discussion of trouble in boardroom and business office is found in newspapers' own financial pages and speeches by journalists in management jobs. One document widely read among newspaper people is a speech delivered to the American Society of Newspaper Editors a year ago by John S. Carroll, formerly editor of the Los Angeles Times. It is an eloquent expression of the uneasiness many reporters and editors now feel about the future. Carroll titled his speech "What Will Become of Newspapers?" and, as the title suggests, his prognosis was not cheery.

He was especially alarmed about the breakdown of understanding between owners and working journalists and about the loss of common purpose that once united them. This has come about, he said, because the functions that were once the realm of strong publishers have been taken over by Wall Street money managers. The breakdown at the top began some forty years ago when local owners began selling their papers to corporations. As the nature of markets changed, power shifted from the corporations to investment funds, which make money by investing other people's money in ways that make it multiply. It became hard to say anymore who or what a newspaper owner was. Owners ceased to be "identifiable human beings," as Carroll put it. Sometimes the owner, who had once had a name—Otis Chandler of the Los Angeles Times, John Knight of Knight Ridder newspapers, Barry Bingham, of the Louisville Courier-Journal—became an it. Sometimes it seemed to be a room full of market researchers trolling the world by computer for profitable investment opportunities. Sometimes it was a fund manager with neither experience nor interest in journalism."

Un testimonio similar presenta el editor André Schiffrin en sus libros: La edición sin editores y El control de la palabra.