Sunday, November 1, 2009
How to Save Newspapers, Maybe
Newspaper readership has been declining for decades. Proposals to have the government subsidize them seem not only dangerous (the press is supposed to be a watchdog for the people against the power of the government) but stupid. Should we subsidize the telegraph because everybody uses telephones, mobiles, IM, SMS, microblogging and blogging to send messages?
Distribution channels and formats change over time. So does media. I don't know whether this is the answer. But it's interesting.
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
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2 comments:
I think it is a deeper issue, with many factors influencing the current changes in newspapers - as well as where news as an industry will go in the future.
1. Major corporations buying local newspapers. Face it, Gannet or Murdock have no clue, and no interest what is happening in San Luis Obispo. Thus when a corporation buys media company in a locality they will try to force a USA Today form of media on the local population - something they can already get through CNN Headline News.
Our Long Beach Press Telegram has survived (so far) because people want to read local news, not USA Today. Looking at the PT, more than 75% of all stories (which I counted this morning)are local in nature - and very few use wire service content.
2. Advertising. Who wants to spend a lot of money advertising in a media that will not be read at any where near the numbers of just 10 years ago. For a local product it is better to advertise in the Press Telegram, LA Weekly, or OC Weekly (in the case of LA). You will get a much higher percentage of local readers who will actually be interested in your service or product.
3. Citizen Journalism. While there is no assurance you are getting the whole truth, or even the level of interpretation of events a professional journalist may give, citizen journalism has shown its value in Iran, Palestine, and other locations where truth is often clouded by propaganda spewed by lunatics at Fox News or radio programs such as Rush Limbaugh.
In the Internet age traditional media has failed to evolve to meet the needs of a global audience, and has miserably failed to adopt new technologies.
I'd rather see Gannet sit back and become visionaries and leaders again, rather than prop them up with tax dollars to further subsidize their substandard, obsolete form of both journalism and media.
I agree with you. I'm not sure how important design is. It might only help at the margin.
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