ed No funeral!

Wipe that sad look off your face, The Independent!

It’s a rebirth, not a funeral. It’s a change of clothing, not being dressed for the coffin.

The Independent newspaper of Britain has published its last print edition, making itself available only on line. The Guardian, an ideological left of center newspaper, eulogized the “end” of the print version. True, sympathies go to both papers (one may doubt The Independent can be called that), considering the plight facing newspapers as we know with the advent of the Internet and the changed habits of the public.

To those who have worked in this business for a long time, it may be felt that the paper would join a long list of names of comrades killed in battle prior to it ― The Christian Science Monitor, Newsweek and News of World (wrong cemetery!) among them. Behind each of these names were hundreds, thousands of journalists and supporting staff who were let go.

But it is time to wake up and stop listening to the funeral Danny Boy because newspapermen have got it wrong all along. It is an exciting time for change.

First, let’s break down the newspaper, and it would be news, which is content, and paper and ink, which is the medium. Now the industry is being asked to give up the old medium and get on with the new medium ― online. Cyberspace is unlimited and thereby offers many chances. Besides, the industry still gets a hold of news.

All we have to do is to find ways of harnessing this new media environment as a new profit model that is friendlier to social networking services, now a popular venue for gaining news among the younger generation. Then, other attempts should be made to cultivate new and better ways of delivering the news to the people. There are precedent-setting examples such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

Soul-searching efforts should stop at nothing. Remember that the newspaper industry is one of the least restructured; and by the standards of other industries, changes are long overdue. We are having a change belatedly.

Then, worthy of a deep thought are the humble beginnings in which the newspapers came into being. The job made its true start as muckraking and beefing about the rich and powerful. Is the separation from its roots one reason that this industry is being spurned by its customers, considering millionaire journalists who hobnob with heads of state?

It is pivotal to bring as radical a change as possible to the industry and make it competitive in whatever new form, by, for starters, arming ourselves with a can-do spirit. If the end of the print edition of The Independent provides a lesson, it would be that the death of one gives birth to another. For that, thanks.