Big Paper, Little Paper, No Paper At All?

I love the smell of ink, the feel of paper.

by Bruce Schimmel

Not long ago, I made a bet on something that I had already bet against, some 10 years earlier, and had won. But I made this new bet anyway, despite the misgivings in my head, because my heart called out for hope.

In 1996, when I sold this newspaper to its current owners, I essentially bet against the newspaper industry. And until relatively recently, you could say that we both fared rather well.

Today, it is not news that newspapers are hurting. You need only check your iPhone. Still, I had to give the printed page another chance. So I bet a friend that I could devise a plan for a new weekly that needed to be printed. Something you couldn't digitize. Something that could not be eclipsed by the Web.

You see, I'm a child of print. My dad was a book collector, and I grew up surrounded by thousands of books. And through them, I came to love the printed word, the smell of ink, the feel of paper.

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I named my would-be weekly the Big Paper. As an antidote to the "who-shrunk-my-newspaper" syndrome that's afflicted the industry, I figured we'd go big. The Big Paper wouldn't have pages like an ordinary paper. It'd be like an origami, whose insides were unveiled by unfolding. As you delved deeper, Big Paper got bigger.

Unfolded, the Big Paper would reveal a poster that'd be larger and more detailed than most HD flat screens. Perfect for maps, suitable for framing, no batteries needed. And you could write on it.

My friends in the industry matched my enthusiasm with their generosity. And the prototype we produced of the Big Paper was beautiful. I'd like to show it to you, if it weren't so difficult to reproduce — which of course was the point of the exercise.

My Big Paper was beautiful but stillborn. I couldn't make the numbers work. I cut salaries, shaved circulation and automated. But try as I might, my spreadsheets still bled.

Alas, I lost my bet. And now I admit I'm losing my faith in paper itself. Not because printing devours trees and puts out pollution. (Those things can be mitigated. Really.) But because of a new generation that appears to have little love for the printed word.

In April, I ran a panel for the Society of Professional Journalists on "Ethics in the Digital Age," which attracted a wide range of J-school students. I argued that the ethical virtues of an actual newspaper are partly due to having to produce a physical product, whose errors aren't easily corrected.

The old heads in the audience nodded in sync, but the students were unmoved. So I asked how many of these J-students regularly read a physical paper. Not one hand.

Did they print it out at home? Nope. Did they print anything out? Not really. Just papers for class. OMG.

Look, I'm prejudiced, having fallen in love with paper as a child, But the death of paper is deeply troubling, because the printed word has a physical presence that demands more careful consideration than images flashing across a screen. I believe that people think better when they touch and scribble on stuff. I certainly do.

So what are your thoughts about paper? And, yes, please forgive the irony if I ask you to send your thoughts by e-mail to bruce@schimmel.com.