I don’t know who Clay Shirky is, or didn’t until Instapundit linked to him some hours ago.  Now I know, a bit.  I’m sure others know a lot.

Yes, that was one of lots of pictures I quickly found.  You can’t tell what he’s thinking there, but you can tell where, because the thought is giving off green light.

So anyway, this is one of the best things I’ve read recently about newspapers and their forthcoming doom.  What I like about Shirky is that he has a sense of history, what it is and what it does.  In particular, history is not fair.  Economically, Shirky is entirely right that the future often starts as a teenage hobby rather than a real business with a real “business model”.  And the money for the future comes not from a Proper Investor, but from your auntie or your regular job wages.  (But I would say that wouldn’t I?  Because that puts layabouts like me back in the centre of history.)

Typical good bit (one of two dozen equally good bits I could have picked):

“You’re gonna miss us when we’re gone!” has never been much of a business model.

And I for one will miss the newspapers.  Look no further than the previous posting here for goodness sakes!  But, I didn’t pay for those newspapers did I?  I merely photoed them, having actually paid for some milk and a new light-bulb (over the odds because this was very near to where I live and directly on the way to the tube), which is why the shop-man didn’t make a fuss about me photo-ing and why I felt comfortable doing it.  Had he made a fuss, I would have left, I would merely have not taken any more photos, and then used the first one I took instead of the second one.

We bloggers do endless “riffs on the news”, as I recently read this point being put by some old newspaper hack somewhere or other.  Our own personalised editorials, in other words.  True.  But newspaper people still talk as if, in the absence of their “news”, we’d have nothing to editorialise about, and whole days would pass when all we’d do would be just suck on our keyboards, whining “there’s nothing to editorialise about”.  This is insane, for two reasons.  One, it’s insane.  Two, we’d get our “news” from other sources, and from each other.  Or, we’d just wander about and find it for ourselves, and tell each other about it.  Maybe this won’t be so nice, so informative, so publicly concerned, so elevated.  Tough.  And in a lot of ways it will not be fair.  In a lot of ways, cars are not as nice as horses, engine ships not as nice as sailing ships, but cars and engine ships still won.

Although, in my opinion, in the not that long run, “it” will be nicer, more informative, more publicly concerned, more elevated and much, much more.  As far as the niceness bit is concerned, from where I sit, it already is much nicer, and much better informed.

UPDATE Monday:  These people will not miss them when they’re gone.  Quote of quote:

“I was thrilled at the turnout here in Cincy, however I wasn’t thrilled with the lack of coverage by the local media. Trust me on this, during the Bush Adminstration when they had 4 people show up at the local Federal Building and protest against the war they were all over it. When 3500 (estimated) people show up to protest the bailout they just shrugged. People were pissed and are realizing that the media is doing much more that shilling for Obama, that they are willing participants in the propaganda effort. Every time they do so they lose a bit more credibility and people are turning them out and getting there news elsewhere.”

“There” news?  I come over all old-fashioned about things like that.  More seriously, I get the impression that in Britain we don’t have nearly such a problem with bias in our print newspapers, which are far more politically varied than in the USA, but this merely means that the crucifixion of the old print media in Britain will be more prolonged.  In the USA, the newspapers are being guillotined, with huge slices of their ex-readers saying: good riddance.

The BBC, on the other hand . . .  JP also talks “guillotine”.