Oh Already With Newspapers and The Internet
I am not old but did grow up reading print media as most people in our country have. It started out with comic books, evolved into teen pop magazines, then fashion magazines, now I read The Economist, etc. Every day for most of my early adult life I read the newspaper cover to cover. Today, I consume digital and print media. Sometimes, the digital stuff comes via email. Nearly all of my digital content reading comes via Google Reader or email. Contrary to popular thought, I actually get very little news from Twitter. This is just one person’s media consumption — imagine how many and how diverse are all the others.
As someone who has always loved the incredible resource and outlet all information is and has always been in her world, to see the senseless belittling and whipping of print media (and particularly newspapers) just really bums me out. Yes, the industry has a NEW distribution platform it needs to adjust to. The idea that it can’t or shouldn’t is just plain false and honestly, I think the constant conversations about it point to a greater problem of misunderstanding and misinformation regarding the web. Why couldn’t a newspaper move or draw an audience online? Far few number of people with far less resources have been able to do just that. Yes, I know it gets sticky to make money there, but hasn’t it been more or less true that eyeballs are the ticket to making money online? Draw the audience and technically, you should be able to pay the bills. Last I checked, it was anybody’s game to do that, especially on the web.
That the internet is going to replace or modify the print media channel is not new or revolutionary. Why is everybody still gaping at it like it’s the car accident that just happened? Success on this new platform is not easy but the formula is bottom line basic: Draw users/audience/readers/customers to you online and you have a business — just like you did with your magazine/newspaper/whatever in the past.
Newspapers and magazines have an established customer base to tap for this — there is no reason why they should be failing with the web. That is, unless the wrong people are talking, the wrong things are being said, or the wrong leaders are making decisions about that business. I think we all stand to lose a lot with the absence of these information sources and the type of stories they bring in our world. It’s too bad.
