Jim Shumaker on newspapers and New Media

"Well, they'll always be around. Shit, you know what they said in the '20s when radio came in, well, that's the end of newspapers. The late '30s, when television started they said well that's the end of newspapers. Forties when they started on cable and the '50s, they said, well, that's the end of newspapers. And now everybody's talking about the fucking information highway and fiber optics and all this shit and they say, well, that'll be the end of newspapers. It won't. They'll be around. You ain't ever seen a TV yet cover an ordinary wedding--or an ordinary funeral. They don't announce births, marriages, routine deaths and the like. The little community newspapers do. They, incidentally, are the healthiest newspapers in the country right now."

-- Jim Shumaker, interviewed in 1993 by Perry Deane Young, published by The Independent Weekly in January 2001 after Shumaker's death.