Kvetch of the Week: The silence of the press lords

Robert MacMillan, on the Reuters MediaFile blog, points out the irony that an American Press Institute gathering next week inviting the major domos of the industry (he calls them, in an Agnewian riff, “newspaper nabobs”) won’t allow an actual working reporter to chronicle the proceedings:

“It could be that they have nothing positive to say, that they have no ideas how to save newspapers and that it really is a no-growth, dying business. Or it could be that they have some really revolutionary concept that they’re not ready to lay on us yet. Or maybe it’s the well intentioned public relations concept that you never tell people about bad news (unless securities laws require it) and you only tell them the good news — like the idea that Barack Obama’s victory leading to massive newspaper sales is a trend that somehow will last.

“But as the future of newspapers dims even more, it would be interesting to hear every idea their people have to turn things around.“