Demise of the dead-tree press?
Interesting article by Adam L. Penenberg @Wired, “Newspapers Should Really Worry” (via Dave Winer):
Imagine what higher-ups at the Post must have thought when focus-group participants declared they wouldn’t accept a Washington Post subscription even if it were free. The main reason (and I’m not making this up): They didn’t like the idea of old newspapers piling up in their houses.
I’ve never read newspapers because i find them a cumbersome, flawed medium for information dissemination. They try to deliver comprehensive, timely news coverage but i find them slow, limited in scope and inherently biased. They all have their editorial policies and firm political standpoint in order to appeal to a large homogenous readership, so you’d have to read at least three to get even close to a more or less objective representation of events. Newspapers kept their place during the rise of radio and television due to their asynchronous nature which makes them a better fit for consumption on your daily commute or in cafes, but with more and more ever-better connected portable devices for up-to-the-minute info-access everywhere i can’t but see the demise of the dead-tree press. These days i prefer reading press agencies for news and weblogs for opinions.
This is imho largely due to the fact that newspapers only offered a solution to a problem based on technological compromise and with online access serving the need for news coverage far better the medium has eclipsed. I still find tremendous value in the printed word. I like reading hardcopy books (though i’m not opposed to ebooks either) for several reasons: They are cheap and easy to come by (isn’t it ridiculous that it’s easier to buy books on paper than to buy them digitally?) and offer better legibility. Besides that there’s gratification in having this physical representation of the time spent reading a book and the joy, knowledge or insight gathered through it resting in your bookshelf. I also enjoy magazines, but only those that embrace the medium they rely on. The fundamental building block of a book or magazine is not the word but the page. Words are mere information, consume them in whichever way you like. A story doesn’t lose it’s value because you read it on paper, in your browser or have it read to you on your ipod. A beautifully typeset and laid-out article placed carefully in context of other articles is bound to the pages it’s printed on, the magazine it belongs into.
With newspapers being all about delivering timely news coverage and with their short production cycles there’re few qualities to leverage based on the paper medium. There’s still great value in the expertise, methods and practices employed by editorial offices and these won’t go away anytime soon, just don’t expect dead-tree papers sticking around too much longer.