So let’s spare a final thought for those journalists seeking to create and sustain something genuinely different in a familiar and troubled environment. Working with limited funds, seemingly hasty management, and a general public evidently ever more unwilling to pay for newspapers, the project appeared from the first to be doomed to fail. It was therefore heartening to read the words of Alison Phillips this morning, whose optimism reflected the newspaper she so briefly edited:
I just hope all of those of us who’ve been involved in this escapade—readers, staff, advertisers, paperboys, papergirls … never ever stop trying new things. Because that’s when we start dying.
To take Samuel Beckett: “Ever tried. Ever Failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.”
Thanks for everything…
John Jewell is director of undergraduate studies at the School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies at Cardiff University in the U.K. This article was originally published on The Conversation.
