Bill,
Thanks for sharing the word from Glasgow (my grandmother's birthplace,
coincidentally).

Ian Bell worries that "If print dies, the lone, essential voices die
with it... all that can remain... is undifferentiated noise."

Of course print isn't irrelevant and shouldn't be abandoned, but the
more relevant part of "the printed word" is "the word." More of the
"lone essential voices" Ian Bell writes so eloquently about can make
themselves heard on the Web, despite its frustrating level of gabble,
than on all the world's presses.

Perhaps one of the future roles for journalists includes more
*listening* through the noise for those different and essential voices,
so that respected editors can rebroadcast, protect and amplify them --
not into Google's machine-generated hierarchy of "hits" and "links,"
but according to the essentials of truth in service of the public good.

I guess that's my answer to Lisa's question about what to tell young
journalists, too: Observe, listen... and report in ways that build the
audience's trust and respect for your profession.

How to do that is a bigger question... But I hope journalists,
librarians and scholars don't dismiss messages simply because the
authors lacked access to paper and a press. Unfortunately, murderous
thugs out to suppress the truth may not always find print more
threatening than words written online.

Bob Stepno
The University of Tennessee
http://stepno.com

On Oct 14, 2006, at 10:56 PM, Bill Densmore wrote:

>
> Ian Bell writes -- eloquently -- in the Sunday Herald of
> Glasgow,Scotland, UK, Sunday Herald - Glasgow,Scotland,UK about why
> the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya underscores what
> will be lost of print journalism succumbs to the web. "Her journalism
> mattered more to those who run Russia than any rebellious billionaire,
> opposition politician, foreign government, or patient democracy
> activist," he writes.
>
> LINK: http://www.sundayherald.com/58459
>