Great observations on the newspaper business

So this doesn't have much to do with printing, at least directly, but I'm making myself a few allowances on a Friday afternoon heading into a holiday weekend.

Mike Masnick, in his usual incisive manner, has a great post at Techdirt well worth my readers' while, in my opinion. He summarizes and analyzes the comments from a recent Charlie Rose show and its newspaper management panel in "WSJ Editor Claims Google Devalues Everything".

As those paying attention know, the long decline in newspaper readership has long been exacerbated by competing media forms, the latest being the Internet. And more recently the business is suffering, like most media businesses, from an overall decline in advertising correlated directly with the economic slowdown. But as Masnick points out, the opportunities granted by the Web and the perceived demon Google are enormous, and it's up to the industry, at least those in the industry who plan to survive, to figure it out.

Where does this relate to print? It seems even still the mindset of too many of those in the business is stuck with the model of literally, the News-Paper business. "If it ain't printed (centrally I might add), it ain't a newspaper and we can't sell it."

Thanks, Mike, for the excellent thoughts!

Comments

Anonymous said…
Jim, thanks for the point. It's always worth a visit to your site to see what you are up to.

Just wanted to share that I've been asked to be the Print Correspondent for mediashift at PBS.org. I'll be doing a column about every two weeks.

Here's my first one:http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2009/02/print-is-the-next-big-thing042.html

It's called Print is the Next Big Thing. Since most of the viewers at PBS are journalists and newspapers they are still a little blinded by by the internet buzz. It's gotten a little traction.

Stop by when you have the chance. I would love to get your take on the conversation. Maybe just on Fridays.