Jim Lehrer on the fate of journalism

This weekend an interview with Jim Lehrer aired as part of the City Arts & Lectures series on KQED. It was a great hour, well spent every minute. Of particular interest was a few minutes near the end, during the Q&A session. The questioner asked Lehrer what he thought would happen with the newspapers. Lehrer’s response doesn’t appear to be online so I’ll paraphrase (you can listen to the broadcast in the SF bay area again on Tuesday). The gist of it was: a) the newspapers operated on the incorrect assumption that classified-ad revenue would never go away; b) A free society demands journalism and will come up with a way to pay for it; c) there’s a lot of interesting experiementation and ideation going on about how to pay for it, but we just don’t know yet what that way will be. Interesting stuff, definitely worth a listen if you can find it.