Yes, the newspaper industry may be struggling right now, but it will rise again. I work in Television and still hear the stories about how cable, TiVO, movies, video iPods and videogames are making the industry irrelevant. And for a few years, TV was abominally bad. The business took a look at itself, made some changes that the public wanted and came back with a vengeance. Some would argue that the past couple years has been a golden age for television.
The same argument could made about the retail business -- remember when Highland and Circuit City came to New England and killed of Lechmere? Now Circuit City might be bought out by Blockbuster, who is also facing death as a company.
The newspaper industry has been dramatically impacted by the internet and the "category killer websites" (ESPN, CNN, etc.)The industry can choose to respond by cutting back completely or by reinventing itself. As someone who lived for the Sunday Globe as a kid (Gammons, McDonough, Ryan, Montville...) I can honestly say that the quality of reporting (storytelling, analysis, insider info) has tailed off dramatically. When I read Peter May, I just don't learn anything I didn't already know. Felt the same way about Borges, too. Shaughnessy has become the very thing he always railed against ("the negative idiots of talk radio..."), to the extent that I have completely tuned him out. Ryan can still write, but where's the new voices?
Goodbye to the crankiness of Peter May, goodbye to the articles that always let me know that Peter thought he knew more about the sport than I did, goodbye to the same viewpoint on a sport that has evolved tremendously over the past decade. I wish him the best of luck and hope that his passion for writing is rekindled, the same passion that seemed so promising when he first started writing about basketball years ago.
I welcome and look forward to the Marc Spears years. I have enjoyed his columns and blog articles so far and am interested in what he has to say.