While visiting friends in Portland I ran across a copy of the latest edition of McSweeny's Quarterly Concern, The San Francisco Panorama (Issue 33, available at mcsweeneys.net). This hefty display of visual and literary virtuosity will go down in history as a celebration of the newspaper format, exploring the outer limits of the newspaper experience. Despite the fact that producing such beautiful, considerate newspaper would be completely impossible to execute regularly given the limitations of a real daily, The Panorama makes a grave and important point: If the physical pleasures and everyday realities of our current literary outlets are to survive, they must push themselves far, far away from the norms and conventions of emerging digital media. Do what digital media cannot. Give readers in-depth, localized writing and engaging points-of-view, presented in an unusual and tactile manner.
Blow their wigs off with sheer brilliance and keen production.
The San Francisco Panorama boasts over 320 pages of original content, featuring delicious writers like Michael Chabon (personal favorite) Art Spiegelman (creator and writer of the Maus series and Garbage Pail Kids (bet you didn't know that!)), design favorite Chip Kidd, and of course McSweeny's founder Dave Eggers. The Panorama employs writers and designers from all corners of the journalistic landscape to unleash their talents on the oversized pages of this one-off behemoth. Not only is there a magazine included, there is a hefty comics section AND a sports section, complete with wall worthy poster by Image Comics' James Stokoe.
The death of the typical newspaper very well may be upon us, and thousands of brilliant, mediocre and downright sloppy journalists will be forced into reformatting the content they produce into alternate consumables in order to survive. I could go on about how considerate and hard-hitting investigative journalism is an essential part of our democratic process. Unfortunately, my left-wing conspiracist mind believes that the American public is held hostage by tyrannical right wing wackos screaming bloody socialist through every media outlet available. Needless to say, I would not mourn if all of Rupert Murdoch's war mongering editorial newspaper empire went bust. Newspapers that continue to thrive these days are extremely local affairs, catering to the needs of specific communities rather than buying general AP content, chopping it to fill available space.
How will the intellectually ravenous continue to consume information? I believe that print will survive in a special, anachronistic empire. I enjoy reading and believe (hope?) that I am the norm rather than the exception — I read the NY times on my iPhone, I buy a few magazines a month and read them in a completely backwards, upside down, flip through manner, I read about my peculiar geeky special interests on the internet, and I continue to buy books because they are beautiful objects with in-depth information that continues to be unavailable on the internet. Content is King, and we are incapable of committing regicide.