There were several
intriguing posts in the past few days which orbited around the question of the
evolution of newspapers and print media. Jeff Jarvis commented on the Newspaper Association of America’s upcoming
$50m campaign designed to show advertisers the value of newspapers. According to Rafat Ali this exceeds the $40m
campaign planned by the Magazine Publishers of America. The campaign addresses how readers are
engaged with not just the newspaper itself, but with websites, niche
publications, and even podcasts. But
while newspapers are anxious to prove their online chops, it seems they aren’t eager
to share the wealth. According to Steve
Rubel a scant few of the top 100 daily newspapers in the United States have RSS feeds that
stream the full contents of the print edition.
Each of
these writers concludes that the industry isn’t forward thinking enough and/or
isn’t thinking strategically. The bottom
line: newspapers need to get with the
program or find themselves extinct. Steve Rubel goes so far as to make the prediction that in ten years news
will be delivered automatically each day, not by the paper boy, but via
wirelessly enabled e-paper devices that are easy to read, powered by RSS.
I
wholeheartedly embrace the myriad changes brought about by the various
disruptive Internet technologies. I’m a
big believer in the democratization of information and the potent combination
of citizen journalism with real-time user interaction. From the perspective of media and advertising
this brings substantive and welcome changes. That said, I question whether we’re going to enter a Jetson’s-style
media consumption model anytime in the near future.
When it
comes to anything longer than a paragraph or two, I want to read it on
paper. I need that physical interaction
in order to fully absorb the content. And I suspect I’m not alone. While many of us may glance through headlines on a monitor, we also
print out longer articles – or wait until we get the paper version.
So the
question is what will readers want? Yes
they want customized content on-demand. Yes they want access to it anytime,
anywhere. But how would they design the
experience? And how will the news and
print media industries respond?
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