Death Of Old Media Still Greatly Exaggerated

from the different-strokes... dept

Tue, Aug 1st 2006 7:03pm — Mike Masnick

The battle for the soul of the news may not be as big a fight as you'd expect. While the newspapers continue to make silly strategic moves, the focus on the platform rather than the content is a mistake. News, obviously, doesn't need to be delivered by a newspaper. However, the idea that there's some sort of big battle between newspapers and online news sites is misleading. As a new study shows, the two remain complementary, as different people use each for different purposes. Perhaps that's why it should come as no surprise that newspapers are continuing to invest in their web properties. It's not about moving to the web and ditching paper, but in recognizing that they're news organzations -- not newspaper organizations.

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10 Comments

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Anonynous of Course, 1 Aug 2006 @ 7:17pm

The printed news media will never be replaced,
for serving fish and chips, lining a bird cage and
wrapping fish.

I used to subscribe to five newspapers now I
get all my news from radio and the internet.

When news papers began shifting away from
hard new, when they began confusing editorial
comment with reporting, I found them less and
less interesting.
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Whatever he said, 1 Aug 2006 @ 7:23pm

Coupons only please
I'd get newspapers if they only came with coupons, beyond that I am done with them.
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Robert Rittmuller, 1 Aug 2006 @ 7:46pm

News....paper...OHH I get it!
I totally agree, years back I did some contract work for a daily paper on their internet site. I always had to keep explaining to them that they needed to treat the web site as just another "presentation" of the existing content. I tried to steer them towards the basic idea that they should always post content on the web site as it was approved but they always fell back on the traditional publication routine...once a day. Flash forward a few years, they still don't get it but I heard they had some layoffs recently....hmmm

That said, I don't think that blogging, or anything similar is going to take the place of respected media outlets in the long run. I for one don't believe much of what I read on blogs, but I do think bloggers have something to add in the editorial space, where good ideas and unbiased commentary seem to be few and far between from the usual suspects...
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dorpus, 1 Aug 2006 @ 8:44pm

The Nuclear Meltdown of News
I just moved to Alabama today. In a not-quite-newsworthy local event, the local wal-mart had a freezer failure in the ice cream aisle, so there was a sea of rainbow-colored ice cream soup.

Sounds better than all those headless Lebanese babies on TV news, but will old media ever care? Will they talk about news that ordinary folk relate to, or keep giving minute to minute coverage of people being blown to bits on some other corner of the planet?
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Laurel Papworth, 1 Aug 2006 @ 9:13pm

Dialogue is the Content

While the newspapers continue to make silly strategic moves, the focus on the platform rather than the content is a mistake.
Hmmm the content is not the focus, it's the dialogue. The sooner traditional media enters into a dialogue with their readership like talkback radio, the better. Screaming at the TV News and cheering on the football team at the local sports bar can be transferred into an online community. Why not have your readers engage together in social networking around news articles to gain and retain loyalty? Nudge the writers and editors into entering the cut and thrust of debate. Time to pop down from the journalistic pedestals and enter the scrum that is online debating with the rest of us Great Unwashed. :)
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cynthia ware, 1 Aug 2006 @ 9:55pm

Death of Old Media
The Fourth Estate plays a vital role in our culture and continues to influence almost all of our social institutions. But there can be no mistaking the magnitude of the wave that will wash hard copy newspapers down the drain. As has been forcasted, picture if you will, a woman sitting down to read her newspaper. Computer chip beaming directly into her brain from her headband upload, 500,000 incoming emails daily pulled down WiFi, vlogging her work to the other side of the world at her office. And a newspaper, right?!
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Crimsondestroyer, 1 Aug 2006 @ 10:22pm

RE: Death of Old Media
And 499,995 of those E-mails will be spam.
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Tashi, 2 Aug 2006 @ 1:00am

There is a lot of "old blood" in newspapers. People that have been around 30 years and more. Despite the advances in technology, they still have a "newspaper" process mentality rather than a "software" development mentality because essentially, because of technology, printing a paper uses processes usually thought of in software development terms.
That is, the technology is not being fully utilized to maximize the ROI despite the $$$ spent on the technology. Eventually that discrepency will catch up to them.
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Lay Person, 2 Aug 2006 @ 8:54am

No news is the only news...
There are no news organizations anymore; just 5 media conglomerates that stroke each other in order to serve each other's business interests.

There still are real journalists out there but the platform is no longer what it used to be. Now they must act as puppets serving the agenda of the media companies.

These conglomerates are:
Disney, Viacom, Time-Warner, News Corp, Clear Channel

More info: http://www.sarahstirland.com/archives/mediacon.htm

Anyway, news has been replaced by big business and anything they show is either filler (endlessly repeating non-news) or a story twisted such to satisfy other agendas.
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Brian A., 2 Aug 2006 @ 9:31am

The paper
You left out "reading while you sit on the can". Though you could use a PDA I wouldn't recommend it. Should the need arise you may find the electronic device slightly more uncomortable than a page from the Wall Street Journal.
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