The impossible dream?

Came across a quote on my desk calendar that struck a chord, considering what’s going on in the newspaper industry. What’s going on, in case you missed it in the online news digest, is continued shrinkage. Shrinkage of staffs, shrinkage of revenue.

We’re banking on a merciful updraft from the Cyber Gods to lift us to a multi(media) platform, to carry us to the rarefied air of restored profits.

While on this upward journey — many would call it a Sisyphean task — we blog. We videograph. We podcast. We embrace our inner multi-platform.

Here’s the statement made by editor R.W. “Johnny” Apple in 1993, 15 years before the industry started shunning newsprint as though it carries bubonic plague:

“Newspaper people love impossible dreams. I suppose we’re reckless sentimentalists. If we don’t love impossible dreams, we wouldn’t be working in an industry whose basic technology was developed in the 16th and 17th centuries.”

I’ve often heard of newspaper people referred to as ink-stained wretches — deservedly — but never reckless sentimentalists.

I like it. Makes those (few) of us still hoping for the elusive updraft sound kind of romantic, revolutionary even.

Sentimentality won’t save you from oblivion, of course, but I hope there’s still room for it in this increasingly frosty, bottom line-driven world.