Half a century ago, NASA had all the positive PR it wanted. Project Mercury had wrapped in May with the longest American spaceflight to date, Project Gemini was poised to send pairs of astronauts aloft to practice key elements of a lunar flight, and the moon-bound Apollo elements—including the mammoth Saturn V rocket—were well along in design.

But while Neil Armstrong’s one small step would summon a giant leap in the space agency’s reputation, other events would pummel its public persona in the years to come: the Apollo 1 fire, the near-crippling of Skylab and the disappearance of Americans in space for much of the 1970s, to name a few. With the bloated costs and design disappointments of the Space Shuttle—not to mention the later tragedies of Challenger and Columbia—NASA has endured a combination of severe budget cuts and diminished public support.

Yet NASA stubbornly hangs on, as if personifying that line from the cult TV show Firefly: “You can’t take the sky from me.”

At first blush, the space agency’s latest PR coup seems almost laughable. In June, NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory urged people to wave at the sky on July 19 while its space probe Cassini, currently orbiting Saturn, aimed its camera toward the distant Earth. And by “distant,” I mean well over 800 million miles away.

And you thought finding your seat in a photograph of your favorite football stadium was a challenge!

Yet NASA created a deluge in news coverage and social media buzz around the “Wave at Saturn” outreach (also called, less poetically, “The First Interplanetary Photo Bomb”). While there’s no way to know how many people took part, it seems easily in the hundreds of thousands. From flash mobs in New York City to Comic-Con attendees in San Diego, people gathered to wave skyward—even in places where the planet wasn’t visible.

The payoff brought a global collective gasp: a stunning portrait of the tiny Earth and its even tinier Moon visible off the edge of Saturn’s great rings.

“The farthest any human being has ever traveled—every explorer who has climbed to a mountaintop, or dived to the deepest trench—is contained in those images,” wrote astronomy expert Phil Plait. “The farthest we humans have ever explored, to just beyond our own Moon—more than three days’ worth of travel at very high speed—is just a few pixels in these pictures.”

NASA’s seemingly silly initiative did exactly what was intended: reminding the public of its legacy and its future.

At the moment, the space agency relies on Russia to send humans into space, and then only to the International Space Station in low-Earth orbit. The manned Orion space vehicle is at least seven years away. Sending robotic rovers to Mars or sophisticated probes to the planets, while offering the occasional cool moment, leaves us feeling a little removed from it all.

And yet, NASA’s greatest triumph, landing humans on the Moon, was successful in part because all of humanity felt it had a stake in the outcome. The agency resurrected that notion with a single request: wave at Saturn. Once again, the entire planet felt it was part of the story—and was humbled by the result.

At first glance, Kevin Slimp doesn’t seem the suit-and-tie type. The bearded, mop-haired veteran publisher with a quick smile and warm Southern accent might be best placed at your backyard barbeque, actively engaging the relatives in talk on any number of issues.

Truth is, he has a discussion-worthy perspective on a specific topic: the demise (real or imagined) of print journalism.

Slimp is a frequent go-to source on the issue, which has generated a lot of attention in recent years—perhaps nowhere as pointed as in New Orleans.

In May 2012, the storied Times-Picayune dropped its print product to three days a week while moving most of its content online. So great was the public outcry that its distant rival, the Baton Rouge based daily The Advocate, rapidly became the preferred choice for Times-Picayune refugee readers, even hiring award-winning reporters away from its downsized rival.

When digital-first decisions soon followed at several Alabama newspapers, Slimp observed: “What happened in New Orleans, Birmingham, Mobile and Huntsville last week is a total abuse of the public trust.”

I met Slimp last week as he visited Kalamazoo to assess the impact of similar decisions at the former Booth Newspapers, now known as MLive Media Group—interestingly, part of the same media conglomerate that owns the aforementioned outlets, the Newhouse family-run Advance Publications. MLive includes the Kalamazoo Gazette, which went to digital-first in early 2012, continuing to print daily but limiting home delivery to three days a week.

Most of the people who met with Slimp were fervent evangelists of print. They offered compelling arguments why the death of newspapers—if one assumes they are, in fact, dying—is the death of journalism itself.  

Digital news, they contend, does not lend itself to the analytical depth that is the strength of newspapers. Online users want their news succinct, and they want it now. That puts pressure on news outlets to emphasize quantity over quality—an effect worsened by the almost-vicious staff cuts in newsrooms across the country.

For his part, Slimp offered data that seems to indicate the rumored death of newspapers is decidedly premature. His analysis shows print growth outpacing digital, projecting it will do so for years. Newspapers also appear to remain profitable, whereas digital advertising has yet to prove lucrative. And the Orange County Register has bucked the downsizing trend by growing staff and investing heavily in its print product.

“Why do we keep writing our own obituary?” Slimp asked.

As an old newspaperman myself, I tend to agree that the breathless rush from print to online is not only ill-advised, but dangerous. Neither digital nor other forms of electronic media can adequately replace the thoughtful, in-depth, enterprise reporting that newspapers have honed for well over a century. Nor have digital or electronic media yet proved to serve effectively as the “community’s record,” any more than they provide the ongoing public forum that newspapers traditionally served.

In dumping print for digital while trashing newsrooms, the industry not only decimates its ability to do exquisite journalism but alienates the very consumers it hopes to enchant—or at least retain. A daily newspaper is a guest that people invite into their homes; an online publication is a commodity they have to retrieve. It’s a fundamentally different relationship.

At the same time, I’m not as quick to decry the role of online or broadcast media. They play a key role as well, particularly where immediacy is vital—so long as they don’t sacrifice accuracy on the Altar of Breaking News First, which has consequences both tragic and embarrassing.

Further, without some as-yet-unknown technological leap, newspapers will never be as readily accessible as their electronic brethren. They can attempt to play in that (cyber)space, and probably should, but have little hope of dominating it. 

I've said before that a daily, delivered newspaper is a guest invited into one's home; an online news source is a commodity that one must retrieve. The relationship is fundamentally different—which is why I think there is room, indeed a need, for both.

The era of “stop the presses!” and “extra! extra!” is long past. The future role of newspapers must be different—more thoughtful, more analytical, devoted to providing that necessary community forum and serving as the watchdog of society. Digital and electronic will always have the upper hand in terms of immediacy. My suggestion: Let them.

Print journalism hasn’t figured this out yet. I expect we’ll continue to read about the death of newspapers and the hacking of newsroom staff for some time to come. But once the light dawns, I predict a modest swing of the pendulum back toward print, even as digital remains a strong force by forging its own path.

If both are done well, the result will be a stronger, more reliable and more effective Fourth Estate.

There is an oft-cited quote about the younger generation, how they have bad manners, hold authority in contempt, are disrespectful, gluttons and gossipers. But rest easy, Millennials; the guy doing the complaining was the Greek philosopher Socrates, who lived more than 2,400 years ago.

Socrates’ rant gets raised about this time every year during high school and college graduations, the message being that society has survived and flourished under constant waves of younger generations and will continue to do so.

The Millennials—those born between 1980 and 2000—are getting most of the attention now. Businesses want to know what makes them tick. What interests them? What do they buy? How can we get them to buy what we’re selling? How will they impact our society in the years ahead?

Having read quite a few studies about Millennials, I’m encouraged by their potential. True, they tend to want what they want right now—but then, what young person hasn’t been that way?

Notably, they are a generation raised with and comfortable with technology, yet they aren’t necessarily quick to reject the past. Case in point: This fascinating study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, which found that Millennials love printed books and libraries as much as they love their smartphones and iPads.

“Younger Americans were significantly more likely to have read an e-book during 2012 than a year earlier,” the report states. “At the same time, however, print reading among younger Americans has remained steady. … In fact, younger Americans under age 30 are now significantly more likely than older adults to have read a book in print in the past year.”

What this tells me is that Millennials see value in the content of information, not merely in its delivery system.

As an author, I’m relieved—seeing my words in print on a bookshelf still trumps seeing them on my Kindle.

And as a communicator, I’m willing to apply this insight to a broader canvas.

Communicators make a mistake when they favor delivery over content. Too many of us talk about “Twitter this” and “viral that” without thinking strategically about the most effective way to share the message with the right audience. Maybe social media is the way to go, maybe it’s part of the mix, or maybe it’s the wrong method entirely. (*gasp*)

Instead of limiting ourselves to the latest shiny tech tool, let’s keep all the tools within reach and be strategic in their use--the right ones for the right job. 

Young and old alike are paying attention, and not always in the ways we assume.