Why Paper May Survive as a Delivery Mechanism

Jay Moonah, a Toronto-based digital strategist and musician, argues in that print journalism will survive. I think print journalism will survive for special issues (print editions of The New York Times the day after Obama's election and inauguration sold out, and even were sold on eBay), but am not as optimistic as Moonah. 

On the other hand, an op-ed, "News You Can Endow" in today's Times makes a point that I've been trying to make about online-only mode. The authors, by David Swensen (the author of “Pioneering Portfolio Management,” is the chief investment officer at Yale) and Michael Schmidt, a financial analyst at Yale, cite a 2008 research report from Sanford C. Bernstein & Company:

“The notion that the enormous cost of real news-gathering might be supported by the ad load of display advertising down the side of the page, or by the revenue share from having a Google search box in the corner of the page, or even by a 15-second teaser from Geico prior to a news clip, is idiotic on its face.”

And that's the problem with online-only mode. It addresses some of the problems facing print newspapers, but does not solve all of them.