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Are Newspapers Going The Way Of The Dodo

March 1, 2009 by robertweller

One by one they are failing across the nation, but I haven't heard a voice raised about trying to save them. No bailouts are proposed.

European newspapers get huge subsidies. And yet the Internet is growing faster there than here.

There are precedents for newspaper subsidies, paying them to print government notices, special mailing rates.

I wonder what Thomas Jefferson would say about a government that decided cars are more important than newspapers.

Most of you probably know that he said he would prefer newspapers without a government to a government without newspapers.

Certainly, newspapers had made errors in adjusting to the Internet Age. Detroit is no better, and they are getting bailouts. As for the financial industry, some of that was just plain thievery.

Television isn't doing much better. I heard a commentator rather pompously say one newspaper was going to start charging to log on. The New York Times already tried that. First people will be able to get around it. Second, you will be limiting the reach of your words.

There needs to be change in the media, and there has been. But too many managers blew off the Internet, certain people would never become comfortable reading on line. They also have continued to focus almost everything on the under-30 crowd, the group they have the least in common with. Those over 50 are assumed to be so committed to the ways they grew up with that they can't be reached. Nonsense. This group has gone through much more change in their lifetimes than the younger demographic. Especially now that it is being made so easy to go on line.

Of course, although I once was in management, I am a reporter-writer. Here's a joke so you will know where I am coming from.

A writer and an editor are on a plane that crashes in the Sahara and they are the only survivors. They have no water and expect to die. But off in the distance there appears an oasis. Is it a mirage. No, it is a pool of water. The reporter starts guzzling the water. He hears a tinkling side. It is the editor, urinating in the water. Why are you doing that, the reporter asks. “I am making it better.”

I ran into a couple in their late 70s and early 80s from California at the official dedication of the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic site on the desolate plains of eastern Colorado. They had temporarily left their history for some real history. They walked several miles in 80-degree heat. People are living longer so perhaps they shouldn't be written off.

Another key mistake has been to assume that the managers know what people want. And they have had thousands of focus groups trying to find out. There must be something wrong because all across the nation more people are going to the Internet on their own with their own stories.

I watched from the inside as computerization was ignored. Of course, unions fought to keep jobs _ that is their raison d'etre.

We need some new ideas. How about a machine-kiosk. A user goes there types in a few search terms of interest and it prints out the latest, including photos. Mobile phones can provide this kind of service, if you don't mind looking at a tiny screen. The iPhone, seemingly miraculously, can be turned sideways to give you a much broader screen on the Internet.

Wireless devices like the Kindle have a much bigger screen. For that matter, HP and other manufacturers are making very small computers stripped of some basics like DVD drives.

I am 61, surely someone who would be resistant to change, especially reading a book online. The other day I tried just that with a Google book and I was surprised how unthreatening it was.

What the newspaper can't do anymore is update you on a moving target _ except on their Web sites. You can get a google alert on your phone and computers are rarely far away.

With the possible exception of a few papers, like the New York Times and a few others, big takeouts, as long features are called, would be better left to magazines. They are things that can be written that will stand the test of time. Sigmund Freud's Interpretation of Dreams is a great read 110 years later, and was just revised.

Some of these things may seem creepy. Like when Netflix tells you that based on your previous choices you might like this movie. Or iTunes creates a playlist based on what you have played. Clearly they aren't perfect but they are no threat to your independence, either.

There's more coming. You can download movies on your PC or Mac and play them through your high-definition screen. Want to have several views on a news story: go to Google News. It's free.

In a world full of mobile phones with cameras you may see protestors being brutally assaulted in Burma.

The one thing I have no answer for yet. How do you limit the amount of crap you let into your mind? One clue. Don't read stories you don't care about.

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Comments

Demise of mainstream media in general

March 28, 2009 by Anonymous, 34 weeks 2 days ago
Comment id: 3496

Robert - Check out David Sirota's article on newspapers in the Denver Post yesterday, he addresses the superfluousness of mainstream media, they have dug their own grave by becoming non-essential, all-celebrities-all-the-time, living in the hip of corporations, running essentially press releases from the white house and pentagon, "embedded"reporters in Iraq. They have destroyed their own credibility. They have misused the trust of the public. We call NPR "National Pentagon Radio" in our house now.
Look deeper for the problem here, it is less about technology than credibility.
Paula

I have to agree with Paula

March 28, 2009 by phil, 34 weeks 2 days ago
Comment id: 3498

I look at the fact that six corporations own 90% of the media and I shudder. Who are these corporations? GE which owns msnbc, and nbc, not to mention a host of other outlets. GE is a major defense contractor and I will never be able to be convince that if you report negatively on the war that the hire ups wont be displeased. After all a reporter is at the bottom of the food chain in news. Above the reporter you have an editor and a bureau chief and above him a producer or publisher who answers to a board.

Can I expect these people to be unbiased? Look at the power they have.

Look at AOL-Time Warner they own the following:
AOL
Warner Brothers
Morgan Creek
New Regency Warner Brothers Animation
Partial ownership od Savoy Pictures
Little Brown and Company
Bullfinch
Back Bay
Time Life Books
Oxmore House
Sunset Books
Warner Books
Book of the Month Club
Warner Chappell Music
Atlantic Records
Warner Adio Books
Electra
Warner-Sub Pop Records
Electra
Time Magizine
Fortune Magazine
Life Magazine
Sports Illustrated
Vibe Magazine
People Magazine
Entertainment Weekly
Money Magazine
In Style Magazine
Martha Stewart Living
Sunset Magazine
Asia Weekly
Parenting Magazine
Weight Watchers
DC Comics
49% of Six Flags
Movie World
Warner Brothers Parks
Black Entertainment TV
New Line Cinema
Turner Pictures
CNN Headline News
CNN Airport News
TNT Network
HBO Network
Cinemax
Warner Brothers TV
Partial owner of Comedy Central
Five Line Cinema
Castle Rock Productions
CNN International
CNN Financial
WTBS Network
Home Shopping Network
Turner Broadcasting
Atlanta Braves
Atlanta Hawks
World Champion Wrestling
Hanna-Barbera Cartoonso so they may own more now.
Turner Classic Movies
CNN
CNN Radio
Cartoon Network

This list I made about two years ago so they may own even more media today. Big Corporations only get bigger and quire more market share and reduce diversity of opinion.

Print media vs. Electronic media

October 23, 2009 by Aman, 4 weeks 3 days ago
Comment id: 4195

 
  Media Trainer
This is really a big fight between print and eletronic media.Now we are very much habituated of computer and internet, easyly we can access various news of whole world.What the newspaper can't do anymore is update you on a moving target - except on their Web sites.But in very first morning the new and hot newspaper with a cup of hot tea makes me so pleased.
 

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