Yesterday our own David zomGergen told you of the spontaneous revelry that engulfed his home neighborhood of Harlem the other night. (Didn’t you hear?)
It was a similar scene in our nation’s capital, as noted on the new blog Curbside/Shoreline. And, as that writer pointed out, Nov. 5 was also an exciting day for newspaper publishers across America, although likely not the dawn of a long and lasting change of the kind bearing down on 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Here’s the difference, noted by others already: People didn’t snatch up papers yesterday to get the news. They did so to have a keepsake, a physical remembrance of an historic event. Today and onward, we’ll go back to getting news and information in the ways we find most convenient for us — and those increasingly involve pixels and power supplies. As long as unique moments in history remain few and far between (and by definition, don’t they?), the dead-trees business will likely continue to see its profits, and relevancy, slip.
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