With the recent demise of the Rocky Mountain News and several other newspapers, I’m obviously very interested in how papers are going to evolve in order to survive. The Washington Post’s column “Life After Newspapers” by Michael Kinsley shared several ideas recently on how this endurance could potentially occur.
Kinsley writes about some of the ways newspapers got where they are today and the “armada of boats” the industry missed along the way. But he also mentions several ideas that have been thrown about regarding ways to save this sinking ship. Some of these suggestions include:
• Newspapers should become nonprofit foundations
• Foundations should supply investigative teams and foreign bureaus and other expensive accessories
• Limits should be placed on the nefarious practice of “aggregation” – Web sites lifting the news, via links, from other sites (this topic was discussed at a meeting this week of the Newspaper Association of America)
• Customers should be forced to pay
Overall, Kinsley explains that no one really knows right now what the newspaper of the future will be. But I wholeheartedly second his thought that it will be “more or less like the one of the past, only not on paper.”
I believe newspapers will always provide great value and we’ll always depend on them to get our news. But the evolution seems to revolve around how people will want that news, and online is certainly the direction it’s all going.
on Facebook
on Twitter
Recent Comments