There was quite a boomlet of articles today about the futures of journalism and publishing, from predictions of dark times ahead to good pieces about the pointlessness of paywalls. A summary for future reference:

A good article about what it means for NYC's literary set

A paywall that failed in Australia

Predictions for 2010 from the ever-thoughtful Kassia Krozser.

I don't plan to belabor this issue, because it's perfectly obvious how this is going to turn out for quixotic thinkers like Robert Gottlieb. But once again, Kassia Krozser has some insightful things to say:

Most accounts of the Kindle seem to fall into two categories: either the tech journalists evaluating it as a consumer product, or book trade people evaluating what it might do to current business models and practices. Relatively few are considering the Kindle as readers, and then going from there. Which makes Josh Marshall's post especially interesting, because he notes something about the Kindle (and the iPhone addon) that others rarely have, and then extrapolates from that to something that hits home for me, as someone who has a few thousand books himself.

Below are some quotes, and then a follow up comment:

Well. I have to admit, I didn't expect this. I think UM Press should get credit for making a dramatic move. It remains to be seen how well their particular strategy plays out, but they have certainly made themselves a press to watch:

The University of Michigan Press is announcing today that it will shift its scholarly publishing from being primarily a traditional print operation to one that is primarily digital.