Clambering on Board The Times?

This is a super video, and I'm optimistic about The Times' future, but one comment gives me the creeps.

Explaining his paper's current situation, Bill Keller says, "It's always been one of the higher aspirations in the business to work for The New York Times. Nowadays we're a little bit like the last ship afloat, so, you know, we have all these life boats floating around underneath us and people dying to clamber on board."

No, no, no!

People are not trying to clamber on board. They're not looking for an institution to save them. They're busy building their own boats, creating great content, solving problems and building small businesses on their own, independently.

(Here's the link to the video above for international folks who can't view Hulu.)

Comments

[Alastair Adam]

Ouch! This was intensely painful to watch - but also bitingly accurate and funny. Keller is right about it being much easier to sit and riff on other people's hard work, but we desperately need to find a new model for investigative journalism. Democracy dies in darkness.

[Rick Burnes]

Alastair, I agree about the need for a new model for investigative journalism. The best model I've see yet is the non-profit model, eg http://www.sunlightfoundation.com

Also, I think Keller oversimplifies on the riffing on other people's hard work. There is a lot of that on blogs, but there's also collaboration and filtering that produces great content that would otherwise be unattainable. Sunlight is an example of this, too.