What if The New York Times goes out of business -- like, this May? Abe Rosenthal often said he couldn’t imagine a world without The Times. Perhaps we should start. At some point soon -- sooner than most of us think -- the print edition, and with it The Times as we know it, will no longer exist. For a time, the fluff helped underwrite the foreign bureaus, enterprise reporting, and endless five-part Pulitzer Prize aspirants. But it has gradually hollowed out journalism’s brand, by making the newspaper feel disposable.
From last year: Get real or go home.
From a year ago, remixed: "News" is the cultural anomaly of our moment. Someone from the past, I think, would marvel at how much time we spend consuming news and how our social consciousness is defined by how much we think we know about people we'll never meet and places we'll never go, and how it makes us feel as if we’re part of something big. Someone from the future, I’m sure, will marvel at our blindness.
Have you seen Season Five of The Wire? In the "smoking lounge" on the loading dock outside the Baltimore Sun, City Editor Augustus "Gus" Haynes talks about layoff rumors with veteran police reporter Roger Twigg and City general assignment reporter Bill Zorzi. Haynes, Phelps, Metro Editor Steven Luxenberg and a dozen other editors gather in Managing Editor Thomas Klebanow's office as he runs the metro budget meeting. Phelps and Luxenberg admit that they're chasing the Daily Record on the story on MTA cutbacks but blame their lack of a transportation reporter. Klebanow scolds their inability to do more with less. At the newspaper bar, Haynes and the team celebrate a job well done. Gutierrez is happy with her contributing line and to be working for the Sun. But Templeton, obviously dissatisfied, has his sights set on the Times or the Post.
Best. Show. Ever. End Times | 
