The Daily arrives and the newspaper returns

Clyde Bentley, 2009-2010 Fellow

It’s far too early to tell if The Daily is the greatest thing to come to journalism since ink by the barrel. But what was very clear from the debut of Rupert Murdoch’s iPad-only digital publication is that “newspaper” is back in the lexicon of the futurist.

While Murdoch was somewhat coy about calling his interactive, digitally-delivered baby a newspaper –his staff, the press and every tech writer from here to Cupertino used the term liberally. Sure, it has 360-degree photos, links to advertisers, HD video and social networking everywhere you look. But it retains the newspaper’s recognizable page design, its before-breakfast delivery and its focus on well-crafted prose.

To be sure, Murdoch said “The Daily is not a legacy brand moving from the print to the digital world” It’s a new template, he said, for the way stories are told and consumed.” But the platform-transcendent concept of the newspaper is back. “The magic of great newspapers — and great blogs — lies in their serendipity and surprise, and the touch of a good editor,” as Murdoch explained.

Exactly. For the past decade journalism educators and others have been struggling with the “paper” part of the word we have used to describe an evolving medium. The argument overlooked the bigger view of the newspaper as communications device that has a huge range of content topics, is simple to navigate and has an inordinately large editorial staff that, among many other things, is adept at using the written word. Newsprint optional.

So thanks, Rupert. You’ve taken resurrected the old and inspired the new to create sometime greater than either. I think that’s what we originally had in mind for “convergence.” Maybe now we can focus simply on “journalism.”