Together we can...

So we all saw Deval Patrick's signs with the slogan "Together We Can."  Well, the Boston Globe decided to ask for the rejoinder to this phrase from its readership and posted them online. A few of my favorites include "Together we can:

• turn the state around and put the Berkshires on the ocean!"
• move past this impossible love we all have for our blue laws"
• play canasta"
• resurrect Ben Affleck's career"

Clearly, there's one thing to be learned from this:  Deval did a good job not hiring people who submit to silly Boston.com contests.

Tough times on Newsprint Row

In another sign that the newspaper industry is headed for a "forced realignment of expectations", the Boston Herald recently muscled a 26-month salary freeze out of its news union. This comes is part of a very bad decade for newspaper balance sheets across the country, with readership in decline and advertising revenues squirting blood.

Of course, this comes in contrast to the continually-profitable online arms of both newspapers (and the ballooning readership of the cutthroat, satire-drenched Dig). It's easy to see this as a Big Win for blogs and for sarcasm, and, as much as I would like to trumpet that line, I don't think it's so simple, and I don't think it's time for shit-eating grins from the armchair editors. Instead, I think it warrants some serious thought into what exactly media's going to look like in a few years—and how the citizen media will start to replace good ol' temperate media in the years to come.

I do worry, though, that Harvard hasn't caught on to this yet. I think the Crimson is starting to realize it, and there's certainly no shortage of campus would-be entrepreneurs looking to capitalize on this whole In-tar-net confab. But there's still a lot of people here who believe that journalism is going to look like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal from here to eternity. Fact is, it's not—and that's regardless of what normative assessment you place on that change. Newspapers are in serious trouble, and we need to figure out how we're going to account for their decline.