So another paper is getting whacked by the media revolution and the spiraling economy, but this one is a little closer to home.

I know when I was growing up, pieces of The Globe were always lying on my kitchen table. And in my living room. And my computer room. And by age six I was pretty adept at tearing through the Sunday paper for the comics section. So I can see why a lot of people are up in arms about The Globe possibly folding in the next month ‘- it certainly put an uneasy feeling in my stomach.

Fortunately that’s not going to happen. I hope. I’m about 80 percent sure on that one.

Sure The Globe is losing money faster than it can be burned, and if a kid blew $135 million in the last two years his pops would be pretty pissed too. I’m sure the New York Times Co. is.

But while The Globe is projected to make $135 million fewer than it was in 2007, it is still coming up with something like $500 million in revenue, according to The New York Times investors’ website.

If I had a kid who was pulling in half a billion dollars a year, I wouldn’t want to get rid of it either, and I’m equally sure the New York Times Co. doesn’t.

So The Times gave The Globe a month to get its act together and cut $20 million.

This is neither something new nor is it something impossible. Like Matt Rocheleau reported in his series published in The Collegian earlier this week, the newspaper industry has been going through monumental changes. The Christian Science Monitor, one of the oldest and most internationally respected publications, stopped printing a paper version of its product earlier this year, and numerous others have declared bankruptcy.

But this is the first time that such a large publication is facing an outright closure; it will not be the last. I would be willing to wager that every other major publication in the world is holding its breath to see how this thing turns out.

This has happened because newspapers got in a little over their heads. For a long time, newspapers were the way to get information out to the masses; and if a company wanted to advertise, newspapers were the only choice. Then radio came along. Then television. Newspapers were settling with a smaller share of the market, but still settling ‘- that is until the bombshell hit: The Internet.

A lot of journalists get a bad taste in their mouths when somebody says ‘Internet,’ which is understandable because it is largely why they will be out of a job soon.

On the other side, for the increasing group of journalists who grew up with the Internet, it is a realm of unlimited possibility just like it is for everybody else.

The Globe, like many other newspapers, has been digging its own grave for a long time by clutching onto a print product. When the newspaper industry realized people were demanding online versions of papers, they rushed to post that print online. It just forgot one little thing ‘hellip; money.

This is something a 4-year-old could have figured out: ‘Hey, if you can pay for something or get it for free, what do you want to do?’

The business model for the past 10 years has been based on a hope and a prayer that people will continue to want the feel of paper between their hands ‘hellip; it’s amazing that it has worked this long.

The advent of the Internet, blogging and cable news is not a bad thing. It is, in fact, a great thing and allows the news industry to do what it has always wanted to do: provide a wider diversity of opinion and information to people as soon as it is possible. Sure, the mainstream media is largely controlled by a small number of companies, but a greater number of platforms allows for this greater potential.

It is now possible to read about all the day’s news in any number of voices on the Internet. Maybe John Stewart and Stephen Colbert are all the news people want to hear every day. Great, I’m with them. But remember that those blogs and shows are commenting on and analyzing stories that were written by journalists who actually report.

Journalists have been afraid of this change in the industry, but what they don’t understand is that the industry has always changed ‘- and an insistence on standing still is more productive of failure than anything else.

If The Globe goes under, it won’t be anybody’s fault except The Globe’s, though a number of people will be happy to place the blame on The Times Co.

Of course it does not help that, according to sources inside The Globe, the Times Co. was happily taking The Globe’s profits and not reinvesting in the paper.

It should
be remembered, though, that money alone does not reinvent the newspaper industry, and nothing short of that is what The Globe needs to survive.

No one knows how readers will absorb the news in the next 10 years, but it probably won’t be on a sheet of paper.

The Globe’s being on the brink of failure is not a bad thing either; it is a necessary thing. Like the ghost of Christmas future, sometimes a cold, stony grave needs to be laid out before someone’s ways are changed.

With any luck, The Globe will come out of this ordeal with a better paper and a model for the news industry’s future.

Ben Williams is a Collegian columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].