Hartford Courant
Frank Harris III recently re-subscribed to the New Haven Register after reading it online and occasionally picking up a newsstand copy for more than a year. “Yes, there is something about reading it in the morning in bed or at my kitchen table with toast and oatmeal and milk or grape juice and eggs, or reading it outside on my deck or on the front steps with the sun shining on my head,” writes the Southern Connecticut State University journalism department chairman. His piece rubbed Courant columnist Rick Green the wrong way:
I’m glad you know how to read the news for free online, Frank. But a journalism department chairman who can’t be bothered to actually subscribe to a daily newspaper? How do you think your students might one day actually get paid for their work? Another sign of the times, I suppose..
I asked Harris what he thought about the “scolding” from Green. His response to the columnist:
You have cast the first stone. But you too have sinned. Your blog, for instance: By posting online, are you not contributing to the demise of print? Are you not contributing to journalistic sin? Welcome to journalism hell, Rick.
More after the jump.
Forgive me, Rick, for I have sinned. I, a journalism chair preparing future journalists for the new news media landscape, had stopped subscribing to my local newspaper and was reading various news publications online.
Picking up the paper periodically from the local deli shop or the guy trying to make an honest buck by selling the paper in front of the gas station, was not enough. I should have subscribed.
God help me.
So says the apostle to the journalism Gods, Rick Green, Hartford columnist in today’s blog.
I will burn in journalism hell, no doubt, fueled by the very paper newspapers that I had failed to subscribe to.
Ah, if only I had kept my lips sealed. Instead, in my Hartford Courant column – it should be noted that the local newspaper for the town in which I live is not the Hartford Courant, as I live in the New Haven area – I noted the obvious: More readers are getting their news and information from other than the traditional newspaper. That is why the newspapers continuously offer more ways to link to computers, phones, Ipads, nooks, Kindles.
Heck, if the Dick Tracy wristwatch were around, they’d be linking to that too.
In any case, I re-subscribed, Rick. Ah, but that year or so in the wilderness when I was not a subscriber — .
OK. If I truly deprived my journalism students or anybody else’s journalism students of future jobs by my not subscribing over that period of time, please forgive me, for I have truly sinned.
But apostle Rick, please note that at Southern Connecticut State University we are preparing our students to be multimedia journalists. That is, they will enter the news media landscape prepared not solely to write for traditional newspapers or broadcast, but also online publications, television, radio whatever else comes along. They, in fact, will be able to provide a full package of news via text, video, audio, still photos and graphics for any vehicle.
In any case, the question is not necessarily how we get the news – but that we get news. Sure, I would love for folks to pick up the actual copy of the newspaper. But over the years, more and more people are not. Will the newspaper as we know it be around? I hope so.
If it’s not, I hope it’s not written that it is because of that devil-of-a-journalism chair/columnist Frank Harris III back in the year 2011.
Ah, Rick. You have cast the first stone. But you too have sinned. Your blog, for instance: By posting online, are you not contributing to the demise of print? Are you not contributing to journalistic sin?
Welcome to journalism hell, Rick.
Maybe together we can start a newspaper there. Call it the Hellacious Times. You and I can have a heated debate on paper vs. online, though it would be a neat trick. At what degree does paper burn?
In hell we might have to go online – joined by all who are reading this online instead of paper.
………
Rick Green sends his response:
I get two papers on my doorstep every morning. I’m on my blog before 7 a.m. I write an old-school column three days a week. I post on my blog and Twitter 7-days a a week, all day.
I read news online all day, every day.
And you know what? I still find time to actually pay for the news I read.
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[This post was modified to note that Harris resubscribed to the New Haven Register, not the Hartford Courant.]
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