Local Signs of Global Realities
November 21st, 2008 by Hugh Kennedy
Few things could more potently signal the shrinking world that is print – or as someone recently put it, putting poison on top of wood pulp treated with poison – than the upcoming closing of Out of Town News, the 50+-year-old newsstand in the center of Harvard Square, which for many Cantabrigians is more or less the center of the civilized universe.
Depend on the fact that the rents are stratospheric. Escalating rents in the Square over the past 15 years have driven much of the edgy flavor out of our agency headquarters’ neighborhood – The Tasty becomes Abercrombie & Fitch and Pacific Sunwear (oh, sorry; did I drop off there?) becomes Citizens Bank, etc. – but the closing of Out of Town is a milestone. Print is still a powerful medium, but you’re more likely to see several Kindles in the manicured hands of first-class air travelers these days than hardback books or newspapers.
Our business has certainly reflected this trend. More than 60% of our work now happens in pixels, not print. And so it goes around the world.
Web-based worlds can do many things, of course, but here’s one thing they can’t: give thousands of people each week a place to meet in the Square.
As they say in textland, 
