The Santa Barbara Book & Author Festival started last night with an award presentation to local author T. Coraghessan Boyle, and continues tomorrow with, among other things, a panel titled What’s Next for Newspapers. On the panel will be: Jeramy Gordon, editor and publisher of of the Santa Barbara Daily Sound; Matt Kettman, senior editor of The Independent; Jerry Roberts, author of Never Let Them See You Cry and former managing and executive editor of the San Francisco Chronicle and the Santa Barbara News Press, respectively; Peter Sklar, publisher of Edhat; and Craig Smith, columnist, law professor and author of Craig Smith’s Blog. I’m the moderator.
A few questions running through my mind…
| Will all newspapers eventually be free? |
| How can papers, which have a daily or weekly heartbeat, keep up with the hummingbird-heart pulse rate of Web-based journalism? |
| Do you see the newspaper becoming Web publications with print versions, or (as they mostly are now) vice versa? |
| Is there enough advertising for all of you? |
| Will advertising survive as a business model? What will be the mix of advertising and other sources of revenue? |
| How do you see the emerging ecosystem that includes bloggers and expert locals who are in good positions to participate in the larger journalistic process? |
| What will be the complementary or competitive roles of radio and TV stations in the future local journalistic ecosystem? Bear in mind that analog TV will be a dead chicken in early 2009. |
| Is it possible, really, to replace a once-great institution such as the News-Press? |
| How do you see each of your roles playing out in the event of an emergency such as an earthquake, a wildfire, a tsunami? |
| What do you see as Santa Barbara’s role in the journalistic world? Are we leaders? Followers? Both? Neither? |
Be interesting to see how it goes. Hope to see some of ya’ll there.
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