Are Newspapers The TiVo Of News?
from the maybe,-but-not-quite dept
Earlier this year, The Daily Sho did a segment about the New York Times, where correspondent Jason Jones had the classic line where he referred to the paper newspaper as providing "aged news". Danny Sullivan has posted an interesting rethink on that, noting that rather than "aged news," what if we just think of newspapers as "stored news," or more specifically "a TiVo for news" or an "iPod for news." It's based on a recent talk given by Kevin Marks, where he notes that despite all the hype about "real time" info, people will pay plenty to store and delay information, such as with a TiVo or iPod.It's an interesting idea, but if that's the case, I'm not sure the newspaper is really the best or most efficient means of "storing" news. Part of the reason why the TiVo (or other DVRs) and the iPod have been so successful is not just because they allow for the storage of content, but because they allow for the customization of what content, and give significantly more control over how it's consumed. Newspapers aren't quite like that. They tend to be more "here's what we've decided you want," rather than a delivery of what you've asked for or chosen to store. I would think that something like an RSS aggregator would be a lot more like "TiVo'd news" than any newspaper.
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Filed Under: news, newspapers, storage, tivo
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Instant news is entertainment, in the same manner as a game show or anything on Faux News. Newspapers tend to report the story better, and seem to be right about things more often.
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Almost never when compared to other media that same morning. Their stories are at least six hours out of date at that point.
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Key difference
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Online news is (almost) always in the same place no matter when a given person accesses it. And with a high degree of reliability, it will still be there in the future. I guess what I'm saying is, it's accessible in the first place because it's already stored.
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Not even close
Printing stories and advertisements that some faceless editor chose on dead trees is nothing like a DVR.
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Prepare for tomorrow....
But you really should consider the ramifications of Moore's Law on storage...
http://brownzings.blogspot.com/2009/11/disruptive-change.html
By 2013 we can reasonably expect the price of a GB to drop below a penny, and by 2015 (15 years from now) a TB will drop below a penny. The blog points out that by 2020 $100 will buy you a storage device big enough to hold 15 YEARS of HD Video.
Then the question becomes... Why should I have to decide AHEAD of time what I want to watch? And why should I rely on a content company to watch anything that already exists?
So at this point News Papers are behind the eight ball when it comes to storing news. BUT they have vast archives of news. At what point to they look to provide access to their archives to everyone? Is there any way for them to leverage their news history as well as expanding their content daily? What about text to speech and real time delivery (to allow them to compete with radio)? Small 15 second adds tied to GPS info (in an iPhone application, for example) could be hugely profitable, couldn't it?
Just thinking about News Papers as news storage sources....
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