It would be easy to accuse editors and publishers of being clueless about the coming Internet disruption and to insist that the industry's proper reward for decades of haughty attitude, bad planning, and incompetence is bankruptcy.
But newspapers have really, really tried to wrap their hands around the future and preserve their franchise...
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Having lived thru these lost opportunities by management, I have some very bias feelings on this matter. Working for a national news organization I had numerous contacts with other print organizations, we were the young bulls and upper management was cautious since they had seen so many other technologies over the years that would drive them to their graves. These were the same people that fought to keep hot lead over offset. They still didn't get that the average price for a ... More »
A sympathetic look at the demise of the newspaper industry. Still, the article contains little information we haven’t seen before. New technology alters old forms of technology. And the internet doesn’t seem to accommodate the lengths of traditional newspapers. Then there’s the problem of advertising and revenues.
How will technologies still on the horizon displace our current forms like free television and other mass media? For example, IPod is more than merely a new distribution medium and it’s potential is still in the process of being developed.
Newspapers did try to adapt to the online world rather early, but failed in the imagination department. Now we are beginning to hear of both small and large newspapers discontinuing their print editions in favour of going totally online. People are beginning to look to their iPhones or other media device to read their "papers" as well as keep up with the news on an instant basis. I do not think print newspapers will disappear tomorrow, but perhaps within 5-10 years they will be mostly history.
Interesting history of printed newspapers' response and adaptation to other media, in particular to the Web, well documented with links to several good sources. Yet the conclusion that "the newspapers failed to invent the Web" doesn't proceed from a sound analysis with clear criteria for success or failure, at least not in this article. The book by Boczkowski on which this article is partly based is likely to contain a sounder analysis and be much fairer.
A great article for people like me who came late to the internet . If people a lot smarter than myself did not see the potential, I'll quit kicking myself in the ass.
While being internet illiterate is a hardship in these early days of learning, While just being 54 I believe I'll be able to at lest navigate the net by the time i'm 94.
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