Pull-it-sir!

The Washington Post's huge haul of Pulitzers yesterday raises anew the question of the importance of newspapers, or lack thereof. To be sure, the paper was recognized for its coverage of major stories, and some of that coverage would likely have not happened, or at least not have happened on the same scale, absent an institution like the Post.

On the other hand, Dick Cheney is still vice president, war veterans continue to get poor treatment and shootings will likely continue on college campuses.

For any institution to be successful, it has to matter. Do newspapers matter? I think they do, but they don't matter as much as they used to, or as much as they would like to.

Here on the local scene we are about to see an example of how a newspaper can matter, as the Common Council seems set to change its ways in the handling of "member statements," some of which seem to have morphed from simple bloviating into something resembling decision making.

Thanks to complaints by Stew Rieckman of the Northwestern, it appears the Council is going to try to hew a little closer to the law. That's a good thing.

But newspapers need to do a lot more if they want to return to their former central role. They need both to go in deeper into stories and come out stronger.

That's probably something that won't be done for much longer using the current forms of organization and business models for newspaper companies.



Some people think the necessary changes will come through further experimentation. But the truth is that experimentation is hard, in part because it always includes the possibility (likelihood) of failure.