The news industry didn't need to be reminded that technology is changing everything. But last week brought a new jolt of reality: The Washington Post, an icon of American journalism, was sold to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos for $250 million.
If that sounds like a lot of money, it isn't. A decade ago, the Post brand would have been worth several times that much. Bezos paid a price equal to 1 percent of the value of his Amazon stock.
The New York Times Co., a former owner of The Press Democrat, recently sold the Boston Globe for $70 million. In 1993, the Times bought the Globe for $1.1 billion.
Lessons have been learned the hard way. Without attribution (or any show of self-awareness or irony), a Times story predicted that Bezos would "push to upend the often ossified world of newspaper publishing."
What some tried to deny is now conventional wisdom. And there could be no better example than an Internet billionaire, Bezos, buying the Washington Post and being welcomed as a savior. Never mind that Amazon's online businesses take customers from hometown retailers who advertise with hometown newspapers and websites.
Salon, the online magazine, served up a snarky headline: "The iceberg just rescued the Titanic."
Meanwhile, family owners at the New York Times, also an icon of American journalism, felt obliged to announce that their newspaper isn't for sale.
For someone who has spent his life in newspapering, there are so many emotions here.
It's been clear for a while that the industry and people who work in the industry were slow to respond. As is true with many changes associated with the Internet and related technology, there was a generational disconnect.
There was hubris and complacency, too. The industry thought it knew what was best — as if that mattered in a world that was moving on to new ways of receiving information.
In defense of the industry, there was also the simple fact that the dead-wood product made a lot more money than any nascent digital offering. When you're trying to sustain a large business and pay the people who work there, it isn't easy to move away from the business that pays the bills to concentrate on an emerging business with smaller returns (or no returns). Newspapers often found themselves juggling competing demands for time and resources.
All over the world, media companies are scrambling to create business models as profitable as newspapers used to be. These companies find themselves trying to serve two audiences at once — two audiences who prefer different platforms and different content.
When the Internet came on the scene, newspaper companies tried to simply move the newspaper to the Web, but if they've learned anything in the last years, it is that the Web is a different proposition. An Internet presences demands real-time news and commentary, video, social networking, interactivity and other innovations waiting to be invented. (If I knew what those innovations were, I would be writing this from my second home in the south of France.)
About the rush of newspaper purchases in recent months, it's worth noting that many news companies are returning to a familiar arrangement with private owners and, as is the case with The Press Democrat, hometown owners.
Other news organizations will be managed and supported by nonprofits and foundations. (The Knight Foundation last week donated $345,000 to support the incubation of online news products in Philadelphia.)
Some of these news-gathering organizations will be better than others — but that was always true.
Five hundred and fifty years after Johannes Gutenberg invented his printing press, people in the news industry are fated to live in a time of disruption, upheaval and re-invention.
All of us have a stake in their success. Americans were reminded this week it was the Washington Post that exposed the corruption that was the Watergate scandal, and it was the Washington Post and the New York Times that defied the government and published the documents revealing the deceptions used to justify the war in Vietnam.
At The Press Democrat, people come to work every day so that you know what's going on in your neighborhood and your town. They may report big stories — a pension shortfall, the arrest of a local official, questions about the management of a golf course — or they may report small stories, but they all contribute to the common language necessary for a successful community.
I can't pretend to be a disinterested bystander here, but I'm betting you know that local news makes a difference in your life.
As news organizations reinvent themselves, there will be bumps along the way. But so long as readers value news, investigative reporting and commentary, the job will get done.
Pete Golis is a columnist for The Press Democrat. Email him at golispd@gmail.com.
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