but I kinda don’t care.

Well sorta, but not really. One shouldn’t be scared to say the truth but that how things go, I guess.

I don’t have any, ANY, sympathy for the newspaper industry. There. I said it. Doesn’t make me less of a journalist or a bad reporter. Just one who is fed up with just about everything.

Blame it on the I-told-you-so-now-what-do-you-want-me-to-do attitude or my so-what thoughts I’ve been having lately but what’s happening to the newspaper industry now is not the economy’s fault. Not by a long shot.

I blame every editor, higher up, and every person with any sort of decision making power. I blame all others that never listened to reporters like me who at one time loved and cared about this business. Those reporters that could not see themselves doing anything else who are now eyeing P.R. gigs like a 15 oz Prime Rib.

Blogging, is like, so 2002. Myspace? So 2003. Facebook, was last year. And Twitter? If you blink, it’ll be over. These are fads that are still around, true but newspapers are just now jumping on them. Now. Like right now, right now.

It’s too late. Much too late to go down that road. Now it’s time to go back to basics in a new digital world. Some papers have embraced that…out of necessity. The Christian Science Monitor when straight web page. Ann Arbor is the latest paper to go down the road to online only.

The two biggest budget suckers for a newspaper are people and paper. People are needed but paper, I’m sorry but it’s optional. When it comes down to it, I will cut paper to save jobs. Seriously, a jobless journalist is bad for the economy and democracy.

We’ve should have gone down this road along time ago. And really, we should have taken the cue from the Democratic and Republican National Conventions when bloggers got press credentials. PRESS CREDENTIALS. That meant some dude with an Internet connection, a blogger account and a computer (that was probably better than my work computer) could get the same credentials it took me four (okay six) years of college and years of working in the industry to get. Seriously? Yeah, seriously.

And that continues. Pres. Obama plans to meet with bloggers this week. BLOGGERS, not reporters. I mean, hello, we need more signs?

Picking up on the hints hasn’t been newspapering’s think. But could the writing be any bigger on the wall. Change or be changed–with a big ol‘ lock on the front door.

So yeah, no sympathy here. I barely care enough for an “I told you so”. I’m done trying to yell at a brick wall that won’t move. Can’t save those that don’t want to save themselves.