In his visualization of "The Next Great American Newspaper," (found via Paid Content) David Gelernter reimagines the newspaper not as a permanent object in time, but as a series of snapshots of moments.

As an object-in-time the web-paper will be king, if we let it be--but what kind of object is that? If a still photo is an object in space, a parade seen from a fixed location is an object in time--its grand marshal two hours in the past, its rear end 20 minutes into the future. And (it just so happens) the news is a parade, it is a March of Time (Time-Life's famous newsreel series), a sequence of events--and thus perfect for a (new style) web newspaper. How can history's parade (or any parade) not be interesting? A proper web-paper will be a parade of reports, each materializing in the present and marching off into the past.
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The new style news story is a string of short pieces interspersed with photos, transcripts, statements, and whatnot as they emerge: It is an evolving chain; you can pick it up anywhere and follow it back into the past as far as you like.

It's a thoughtful article in an era of deconstruction of journalism for deconstruction's sake. In the last few weeks--or even months--I've found myself talking about journalism, and often wearily defending it, particularly in the wake of the New York Times scandals. What makes me weary is the excess of posturing and the lack of ideas that have emerged from the whole furor.

The author makes some questionable assertions--he thinks Nietzsche and Wittgenstein are "two of the greatest writers of modern times" for starters--but the idea is interesting. He gives a fair amount of attention to the way people read and the experience of reading the news.

For years the industry has been trying to envision the way the Internet will change publishing, but much of the analysis in the blogosphere has been in terms of technology or external forces. We should change journalism because it's broken, say those who see the fall of the Times as vindication. Or we should change it because we have all these nifty new tools, say the bloggers who want to be journalists. What's refreshing is that the focus of this piece is reader-centric. It considers what we should be doing in terms of how people read. What a concept.

I hadn't heard of the author before, so I did a little digging and noted that he's got a number of political views I don't agree with. (Interesting factoid: He was also wounded by the Unabomber.) The article linked above is not particularly ideological, but ideas don't exist in a vacuum. Gelernter has said that journalists should be MORE judgemental, so in that spirit, I offer this disclaimer: Far be it from me to endorse some of his other views, as when he told the Atlantic that "when the WASP aristocracy ran the country it was in some ways better off." Caveat emptor.

*CF, are you reading this? I know you loved it.