July at paulcarvill.com, the home of Paul Carvill on the web 2009 at paulcarvill.com, the home of Paul Carvill on the web

Here’s some exciting news concerning the current hot topic in the publishing industry (among industry-focused newspaper people, anyway, so i.e. all of them) — the future of newspapers. Dave Eggers, author and editor-in-chief of the McSweeney’s publishing empire, has revealed that a forthcoming issue of the literary journal McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern will be in the form of a newspaper. But more importantly, Eggers, who comes from a journalism and newspaper background, says they will be providing not just a physical print issue of a newspaper but also a workable model for newspaper publishing, in the form of a business plan to be included in the same issue.

In an interview with author, poker player and occasional McSweeney’s contributor Stephen Elliott at Rumpus, Eggers is optimistic yet practical about the future of newspapers. He says his hope for the McSweeney’s newspaper issue is that former employees of the erstwhile regional newspaper Rocky Mountain News might use it to get together and put out a print newspaper again.

“There’s room in the world for both online and paper,” he says. “I think newspapers that adjust a bit will survive and still do great work. But we need to give people reason to pay money for the physical object.”

In the interview Eggers also touches on the class and cultural snobbery that leads most commentators in this area to assume that the whole of the newspaper audience has access to computer and mobile devices and consumes their news entirely through electronic media. Children he works with as part of an ongoing educational program, he says, aren’t constantly online, love printed books and do their work with paper and pencil. He goes on to question whether everyone really wants to consume their news through the same screen they’ve been staring at all day during work hours.

This kind of fresh thinking and innovative approach is exactly what the newspaper industry, currently mostly staring at its shoes, shifting from foot to foot and wallowing in a despondent self-pity, needs. Eggers and the McSweeney’s empire have long shown a fondness verging on fetishism for quality printed paper products. McSweeney’s has infamously published past issues in the form of novels, sets of books or even, in one case, a pile of mail tied together with elastic bands. The McSeeney’s empire extends beyond just the literary journal, though — they also publish The Believer, a magazine where ‘length is no object’ and which is ‘printed in four colors on heavy stock paper’, and Wholphin, a quarterly DVD featuring visual arts from the serious to the inane, one issue of which contained the Adam Curtis documentary The Power of Nightmares. They also now produce Shirts, a package of specially designed t-shirts delivered bi-monthly. McSweeney’s appears to be entirely self-financed and not affiliated with any large publisher, and in addition to putting out several titles on a regular basis is also involved in the running of several non-profit organisations such as the 826 Valencia Writing Center, a place where kids can get help with their schoolwork, extra tuition and even publish their own works.

If anyone can inject a little innovation and enthusiasm into the newspaper industry, albeit tempered with practicality and business sense, Eggers and the McSweeney’s team are surely those people. I look forward to the publication of their newspaper which is coming, says Eggers, “ideally in September.”