NPs KO'd by tweets and teens: Who will write the obit?

I began following a Twitterer called "The Media Is Dying" today. One after one, a litany of failure scrolled across the screen.

Weeklies closing, dailies announcing layoffs, artists, cartoonists, reporters and even online journalists succumbing to the creeping crud that appears to be killing newspapers. With new sites cropping up each day to catalog the end of an industry, it's almost like sitting in a hospital room and watching someone die. It's heart-breaking, but you are helpless to change anything and helpless to look away. Will newspapers be heartened by the sadness so many feel watching their decline?

I doubt it. But here's another question. Who will write the obit for the industry?

Will it be Facebook: What's on my mind? I was so sad to see that newspapers died yesterday. So I took the quiz - which newspaper are you. I'm the New York Post (Straightforward and in-your-face! which one are u?).

Will it be Twitter: @replies Wht happend? None of the RSS fds on TW r working!

Will it be CNN: We have reports today that the newspaper industry has died. But, we caution, that those are unconfirmed reports. So we go to over to Don. Don, what do you know. Don: Well, not much yet. We are out here on the street and it appears that all the news boxes here in Atlanta are empty. We're also getting a lot of tweets on this. So as soon as we are done letting our listeners report the news for us, we'll get back to you.

However it is reported, it will be short and sweet and spread like jelly on tainted peanut butter. There certainly is no shortage of media pundits out there already circling -- groups, blogs and web sites dedicated to save newspapers, to catalog their demise, to predict their next incarnation. One thing that is certain, you may not have a physical newspaper to hold in your hands all that much longer. But you sure as hell will need their editors.

Web programmers are already scrambling to find ways to make the internet more like a newspaper. Consider Kosmix (Your guide to the web). This integration web site pulls together information based on meta tags (keywords). Of course, it's a computer doing it, which is why a search for the admittedly very broad topic of "newspapers" brought up a odd mix of items.

• A Wikipedia entry (A newspaper is a written publication containing news, information and advertising, usually printed on low-cost paper called newsprint. General-interest newspapers often feature articles on political events, crime, business, art/entertainment, society and sports. Most traditional papers also feature an editorial page containing columns which express the personal opinions of writers. Supplementary sections may contain advertising, comics, coupons, and other printed media. Newspapers are most often published on a daily or weekly basis, and they usually focus on one particular geographic area where most of their readers live. )
• An E-bay auction ($13.99 for an election day newspaper -- seems too cheap. I'd hold it for another 4 years!).
• And my favorite -- two You Tube videos. One on how to make bead jewelry out of newspapers and the other on using newspapers to start seedlings. And you thought there was no future!
  

For Twitterers, there's www.tweetdeck.com, which endeavors to pull together the diverse tweets the average twitter client receives and display them in a way to give them some cohesiveness. The company describes it:

In recent months there has been an explosion in social media with hundreds of services offering an abundance of information to the masses. TweetDeck is a realtime application that allows users to monitor that information in a single concise view. TweetDeck currently integrates services from Twitter, Twitscoop, 12seconds, Stocktwits and now Facebook.

New integrators pop up nearly daily -- Twitter applications on Facebook, ways to pull FB into Twitter, applications to get all social media and blogs on your iphone, -- and now more applications to seek out news and information throughout the web, pull it together and try to give you a picture of what's going on in areas you are interested in.

Hmmmm, sounds a lot like .. I know, a newspaper! Certainly, the ink and paper may go away - and along with it the gray smudges on white sofas and tan-colored outfits. The day may not be too far off when I won't have to run out in the rain to drag the soggy bag of decaying newsprint into the house and spread it out on the kitchen counter to dry.

But what we won't lose, what we can't lose is the product that journalists produce -- the information filtered through the expertise, the background, the credibility and vetted by an editor over the age of 12 who knows how to use their and there correctly. We will still need and value that product.

Yes, Twitter, Facebook, My Space, Kosmix, and Tweet Deck; You Tube and Flickr will all have a place in our new world of communication. I want to know what my friends are doing. I want to know what TV Hunk they most resemble. I want to see photos of their kids and share photos of my dogs. And I want to know what they think about what's going on in the world. But I don't expect them to report the news. We'll still need journalists for that - whatever the venue.

So, what about that obit? Maybe it's not an obit after all. Maybe it's a feature story:

News moves to web; computer industry sales to seniors soars!