But let’s be clear: It’s the wrong debate.

The future of news printed on dead trees is not important to human behavior or world society. I say that as someone whose first love was journalism. I spent about 20 years writing and editing news that appeared on some form of paper.

The future of the newspaper as we know it in this 21st century is about as relevant as what happened to the horse and buggy in the 20th century. It is also about as relevant as discussing the quality of components in my iPhone instead of what I can do with the features those components enable on my iPhone.

As humans, we are wired to consume, discuss, and opine upon whatever we consider to be “news.” This human behavior is not dependent upon whether that news arrives on a dead tree, on or your Facebook page, or on the network evening news.

Too many “marketers” do themselves (and their clients or employers) a huge disservice by focusing more on the tool that delivers information rather than on how we as human beings use that information. I find this to be especially true these days when it comes to social media. I don’t care if it’s Twitter or Facebook or YouTube — these are tools that enable communication, they do not change the biology that compels us to seek out connections and information, including “news.”

The newspaper is also a tool. It is a means of delivering information that in many ways has been superceded as a delivery mechanism, and in some ways, has yet to be replaced (when I can read the news on a Kindle while taking a bath and not fear the results when it falls in the suds, that may change).

So what’s the secret or the observation here? I challenge myself every day to step back from the tools of the trade and focus on the big picture instead. A press release no more defines public relations than a newspaper defines news.

Marketers and creative people are always complaining that the good people we work with as clients, colleagues and bosses don’t “get” what we do, that they instead want to talk about the colors in a logo, or the fine print in ad or the talent chosen for a commercial.

What’s happening with the growing fissure between “news” and “newspapers” should give all of us who consider ourselves creatives a prime opportunity to remind those we work with that communication (or news) is not about the medium in which it’s delivered — it’s about whether the communication happens. It’s an opportunity to refocus the conversation where all of us say we want to spend our time anyway: on the strategy and thinking that guides our work, not on the details.

If and when newspapers do disappear completely, I will shed a tear or two. I will miss the smells and sounds of a high-speed Goss Metroliner thumping through a 250,000-copy print run, the blur of type speeding through the webs of the towering press decks. I’ll miss the secret thrill of sitting in a coffee shop on a morning when my story topped page 1 and everyone, it seemed, was reading that story and commenting on it.

But I will not miss the news — it will evolve, but will continue until and unless our basic biology changes. And I will not miss the opportunity to continue to put all of my skills to work helping people to get into the news, to make the news better, and to use the news. I realize that the real debate is not about whether newspapers will live or die, but whether we as humans can make news itself a tool that informs and enriches our own lives on a daily basis.

Paul Furiga is the president and founder of WordWrite Communications, a fast-growing Pittsburgh public relations agency employs the ageless power of storytelling to deliver results for its clients. You can contact Paul and learn more about WordWrite at: http://www.wordwritepr.com.

Apple recently launched their latest gamechanger – the somewhat uncomfortably named iPad. Now, I freely and unapologetically admit to being an Apple idiot – I love the experience that is the Apple brand from the products to the online and brick and mortar encounters. While they’re not perfect and are notoriously controlling, Apple has earned my trust after 25 years of delivering products that are both aesthetically pleasing and performance driven. After watching the hour plus launch announcement online I turned to my soon-to-be-college-bound daughter and said “Well, I’ve just found your textbook – ALL of your textbooks – for the next 4 years.” So, yeah, I will be buying one – particularly when the price comes down.

Here’s what makes the iPad really interesting – and more unsettling to me – the device (along with it’s black and white forefathers like Amazon’s Kindle) will further cloak in a digital mask yet another revealing aspect of what makes us unique individuals – specifically what it is we are reading.

Printed magazines, books, newspapers – these have always been outward labels that have given the passerby a small clue into the mind of the person engrossed in the publication. Whether that person was reading the New York Times or The National Enquirer, a Harlequin Romance or Shakespeare, the latest issue of the New Yorker or the New England Journal of Medicine, each title divulged to the outside world a sense of who they were and what made them tick. Which subsequently provided one with a sense of superiority (I would NEVER read that…”) or inferiority (“she must be incredibly smart”) or a sense of belonging (“I just read that as well”). There’s comfort and community in all of this as well as marketing of course. It may not exactly be word of mouth but seeing the title or masthead in someone’s hands certainly provides some form of endorsement. Not to mention a way to begin a conversation.

Laptops and digital readers are stripping this aspect of communication and marketing away. Why does porn have such a strong presence on the web? It can be hidden so easily from prying eyes – one can ogle privately. The digital reader has replaced the discretely wrapped in brown paper approach from a generation or three back. As communication has gotten more connected, sophisticated and complex – yet in many ways less personal – we have been able to shroud ourselves in more and more layers of digital grime. We’re able to conceal more easily than ever before and invent profiles and collect “friends” all because we are in a position to technically be able to do so. Yes, we are also able to reveal – hello Tiger Woods – elements of our character we may not want to just as easily but you have to really stumble – or be unduly scrutinized – to do so. Most of us enjoy the ability to be anonymous should we choose.

Let’s turn to a larger canvass. Bookshelves, be they in a home or office setting have always been more than mere storage for what we have read, intend to read or are just for show (somewhere in the recesses of my brain I vaguely remember a “bookshelf kit” that could be ordered so you could impress your intended with an erudition you may not have earned). Bookshelves become insightful murals – portraits more revealing than almost any oil painting or photograph. While our eyes are often referred to as the “windows of the soul” – for me it’s the bookshelf – we get to survey an individual’s interests, dreams, politics, passions and fears then build a framework that supports a personality we believe them to possess. Record collections – they were called albums for those of you under 35 – had a similar power.

I was recently invited to a client’s home and as I walked into his townhouse I was greeted by a series of bookshelves that covered the entire surface of one wall – a 6 foot high and 20-foot long panorama of he and his wife’s entire reading life played out before me. Biographies on Lincoln and Dylan, social and business commentary by Friedman, Gladwell and Godin, designer’s treatises into architecture and furniture, books on impressionists, observations from sociologists and psychologists (there was actually a lot of “ology” on the wall) all formed the brushstrokes of their literary painting. Intermingled among the books were a few family photographs that seemed to echo sentiments of “we were at this stage of our lives when we read this or that”. I could have taken a camera, filmed the bookshelf and pictures left to right, set it to music and delivered an emotional and fairly complete depiction of their lives together.

Now take all of it – the books, the photographs and the music – the whole wall, every newspaper or magazine you read and stuff it into a 1.5 lb piece of aluminum that is a half inch thick and has a 9.7 inch, LED backlit IPS display. Everything we could formerly observe an individual reading in the airport, the park bench or the coffee shop is now concealed behind the ubiquitous Apple, Dell or Sony logo. Sure, the logo says something about you – but it’s not in the same way a Dickens, Vonnegut, Salinger or Angelou might. Plus the logos have co-opted all of that marketing power – it’s not what you’re reading, it’s what are you reading it on.

The technology is breathtaking and beautiful and I am on board – but as these advancements and new connections are being built there are also some pretty non-revealing walls being erected. People have always been a mystery and you can’t judge a person or a book by its cover – but at least there used to be a cover.