I don’t think it should be a question of newspapers either staying as they are or disappearing altogether in favor of the internet. I keep going back to this idea, it doesn’t have to be one or the other. If they would focus on their own strengths, then both might retain enough customers to make a profit, because they would be fundamentally different services. If, however, they both try to do the exact same thing, then customers will decide between them and one will succeed while the other fails.

I don’t think the Internet will just gradually improve to the point where it has all of the qualities of print. To use your example, automobiles may have overtaken railroads in our country for transportation, and automobiles bring great freedom and convenience, but they do not and will never equal the safety and capacity of trains. Cars, compared to trains, are inefficient, polluting, and more expensive to use—you usually have to buy or rent a car, but you only need a ticket to ride a train. Likewise, the Internet has tremendous strengths—it is fast, it is convenient, it allows for independent thinking and discussion and I think it is already more local than corporate media. But the very nature of the Internet—hypertext: links and speed and motion—discourages deep ponderous thought. The very nature of the Internet—search engines, for example—put a wealth of information at people’s fingertips, but restricts their awareness of subjects they aren’t already looking for. The very nature of the Internet means that to access it, one must have and know how to use expensive equipment and gadgetry. Newspapers are just there: you have them and you can read them until, after centuries or millenniums, they’ve crumbled away. So which is really “fittest”? And is the fad-driven whim of customers really the best mechanism to decide?