As somebody who makes the bulk of my living via the printed word (newspapers, magazines, books) I’ve been dismayed to read this sentiment repeated a lot over the last few months. (Often, interestingly enough, by people who have a vested interest in the death of print and dominance of the Web, but that’s another post entirely).

I do believe that print is changing, and that there will be a lot of pruning and turmoil before we return to some kind of stability in the industry. But I don’t believe print will die. There are too many people (like myself) who enjoy sitting down with a glossy magazine or paper book, and though I go online a lot for entertainment and information, a computer screen just doesn’t scratch that itch in the same way.

But what bothers me most about this discussion is the way people pooh-pooh print, a model that’s worked for hundreds of years, while at the same time not working to really elevate the model they are promoting. If print really does die, this is all we’ve got left. And I’m not happy with that prospect, frankly.

I see some fantastic writing out there, but I also see “news” that consists of poor reporting, NO reporting, or borrowed/stolen reporting (question for the people who think we don’t need ‘traditional media’: where are the resources and money going to come from to keep creating that quality reporting that many bloggers love to borrow from? How many bloggers are really able to do their own, in-depth, in-person reporting?), horrible grammar and spelling (there’s a reason writing is a profession and editors exist), and product placement posing as content every.single.day (something that is at least kept to a minimum in print due to clearly-established ethical standards and boundaries between the people who write the content and those who sell the ads).

I hate to sound like a curmudgeon, but if we’re in the midst of creating a brand-new media model, don’t we owe it to ourselves and future generations to put some thought into it? To take it seriously as something of value beyond the free stuff or ad money we can score from our own blogs?

I’m not anti-marketing. Clearly, as a freelancer, I have to market my work every single day. I’m not opposed to product sponsorship or advertising. Again, unless we’re independently wealthy, there generally has to be some kind of financial support to keep us producing.

But I feel like the idea of good writing being worth something is being eclipsed by the idea that everybody can make money online. And what I see as a result is a lot of poor content. Call me a snob, but I don’t like it. I value the time and effort and often, teamwork that goes into a really good piece of writing.

We (bloggers, writers who are going online, social media gurus) are in the midst of inventing a new way of communicating. I feel a certain responsibility to make sure that we’re creating something of quality. No, that doesn’t mean that every blog post each of us writes has to be prize-worthy. It does mean that collectively, we need to look at what we’re creating and evaluate whether it’s worth the bandwidth it uses. And if we’re going to write off print and traditional media as dead, the least we can do is look closely at the model to see what we might be able to learn from it. Clearly, traditional media isn’t perfect. But oh my, neither is new media.

Social media holds a lot of possibility. In some ways, it’s the great equalizer: it’s made it within reach–nay, easy–for all of us to be our own publishers, editors, marketers, and entrepreneurs.

My question is simple: are we going to rise to the occasion?

Edited to add: in just one more example of why writers need editors, my fabulous writer-friend Toni just informed me that the word is “pooh-pooh”, not “poo-poo”. Duly noted, fixed, and let me apologize: as a mom of two kids still early in their toileting careers with a baby about to emerge, “poo-poo” is on my mind more than it probably should be.