David Shribman speaks at Gorgas Library

Executive Editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette discussed the bright future of "the papers"

In our on-demand world, as technology continues to advance and the internet continues to grow, more and more people are getting the news from cell phones and computers, while less and less are getting it from an actual newspaper.

In fact, many think the newspaper business is dying.

Just don’t tell David Shribman.

The executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette spoke Tuesday night at Gorgas

Library on, according to Shribman, the bright future of newspapers.

He began, however, with the past.

“When I started in this business we set our type with hot metal and wrote our stories with typewriters,” Shribman said.

Shribman noted how much things have changed since those days, telling the audience about his granddaughter who calls the typewriter Shribman has kept after all of these years “grandpa’s old printing machine.”

Now, with the luxury of computers and e-mail, many reporters don’t even need to step foot into a newsroom to get their stories to an editor.

But Shribman said the internet will never drive newspapers into extinction, noting the Post-Gazette’s Web site only garners four per cent of the paper’s total profit.

This isn’t to say no one visits the site. In fact there are quite a few Pittsburghers who get their news from the online edition of the paper. According to Post-Gazette.com, every month 2.8 million users generate 40 million page views.

However, some things never change. The business still makes those who practice it very busy people and Shribman said he has a lot of responsibility to worry about. But Shribman said good editors are supposed to worry.

“And I must be a damn good editor because I worry a hell of a lot,” he said.

Shribman said newspapers are and always will be around because those who rule our nation, its people, need information to continue making proper decisions. Newspapers go out and get that information for them.

But in giving the people this information, many see newspapers and the media in general, as a group of skeptics overly critical of the government. Schribman disagreed.

“We’re not skeptical because we don’t believe in the founding principle of our country,” he said. “We’re skeptical because we believe in them utterly.”

However, Shribman said finding information is not all newspapers do.

“The role we play in this society is not only as hunter-gatherers,” he said. “We’re cultivators…We’re cultivators of an endangered way of life that deserves to survive.”

As the talk progressed, Shribman said the newspaper business is in the middle of a crisis of confidence.

He called for a reforming of what the business does and for those in it to remember the other industries which went through the same kind of period and have survived.

Shribman said he encourages his staff to embrace the future.

“We have to be open to the future and open to its challenges,” he said. “We’re not in the newspaper business, we’re in the news business.”