Newspapers and the Parable of the Humping Elephants

With morbidity nearly universal and mortality increasing daily, America’s newspaper publishers are shouting “Code Blue!”

As the number of failing news organs grows, some are calling for newspapers to charge for access to their content online.

Others hope charitable endowments will sustain newspapers, much as they do other things the free market can’t support, like soup kitchens and opera.

Yesterday David Carr of the New York Times proposed that newspaper owners be allowed to collude, in ways that may violate anti-trust law, in order to preserve the public service they provide. [If all newspaper publishers agree to put their news behind pay walls [say], more people might decide to pay for it online.]

There will be other occasions to flick a Bic at these strawmen.

But as I’ve absorbed this in the past two weeks I’ve been reminded again of a favorite metaphor.

When I was a kid, a nature TV program showed a pair of elephants, the female on the ground near death. The male tried revive her–nudging her, trying to feed her, snuggling her.

Finally, in a desperate attempt to forestall the inevitable, the male elephant mounted her and tried  to copulate.

This was horrible to watch: a creature in panicky love and denial, trying to hump his dying soul-mate back to life. She died soon thereafter.

I suspect you know where this is going.

The elephant is dying. We all love her. We have nudged her, tried to feed her, snuggled her.

But for god sake, let her go. There is life on the savannah.

You will never join it until you realize it’s time to get the hell off.