Hamlet’s Blackberry: Why Paper Is Eternal

Abstract

The condition of American journalism in the first decade of the twenty-first century can be expressed in a single unhappy word: crisis. Whether it’s a plagiarism scandal at a leading newspaper, the fall from grace of a network anchorman or a reporter behind bars, the news about the news seems to be one emergency after another. But the crisis that has the greatest potential to undermine what the craft does best is a quiet one that rarely draws the big headlines: the crisis of paper. Paper’s long career as a medium of human communication, and in particular as a purveyor of news, may be ending.