NDM:Build The Wall analysis' The future of newspapers

The article, Build The Wall, is available here on the Columbia Journalism Review website. 

3) Summarise each section in one sentence:

• Section 1 

The mode is full-bore panic.Content matters. And you must find a way, in the brave new world of digitization, to make people pay for that content. Either you believe that what The New York Times and The Washington Post bring to the table every day has value, or you don’t.

• Section 2 

The newspaper is all but dead, they will insist. Long live the citizen journalist. A blog here, a citizen journalist there, a news Web site getting under way in places where the newspaper is diminished—some of it is quite good, but none of it so far begins to achieve consistently what a vibrant newspaper, staffed with competent, paid beat reporters and editors, once offered. New-media entities are not yet able to truly cover—day after day—the society, culture, and politics of cities, states, and nations. And until new models emerge that are capable of paying reporters and editors to do such work—in effect becoming online newspapers with all the gravitas this implies—they are not going to get us anywhere close to professional journalism’s potential.

• Section 3 

The cancer devouring journalism began somewhere below the knee, and by the time the disease reached the self-satisfied brain of the Washington and New York newsrooms, the prognosis was far worse. Or to employ another historical metaphor: when they came for the Gannett papers, I said nothing, because I was not at a Gannett paper.

• Section 4 

For the industry, it is later than it should be; where a transition to online pay models would once have been easier with a healthy product, now the odds for some papers are long. But given the timeline, here are a few possible outcomes, if theTimes and The Post go ahead and build that wall.

5) Read this response to the article by Dave Levy, criticising and disagreeing with David Simon's viewpoint. What references to new and digital media can you find in Levy's response?

6) Finally, what is your own opinion? Do you agree that newspapers need to put online content behind a paywall in order for the journalism industry to survive? Would you be willing to pay for news online? Critical autonomy is the key skill in A2 Media - you need to be able form opinions on these issues.