Everybody Has to Shift

Newspapers: Don't Blow It Again "A common theme heard throughout the conference -- as told by Saffo as well as many other speakers and participants -- was that the newspaper industry has got to "think different" from now on. We haven't done a good enough job of casting aside the old metaphors..." [at Editor & Publisher, via Tomalak's Realm]

Where to begin? Caution: liberal quoting ahead:

"A common theme heard throughout the conference -- as told by Saffo as well as many other speakers and participants -- was that the newspaper industry has got to "think different" from now on. We haven't done a good enough job of casting aside the old metaphors...."

"While the economies of newsroom convergence are important (and thus convergence is probably inevitable), we can't allow ourselves to let old-media ways dominate new-media platforms."

Substitute "libraries" for "newspaper industry," and you'll see that we're not the only ones facing these problems. Then again, we can't wait for others to solve it for us, because they won't.

"Why not? As several smart speakers at last week's conference noted, the kids of today won't tolerate it when they grow up. If there was a message that came through loud and clear in San Jose last week, it is that kids today expect to interact with their media."

"From playing interactive online games, to using instant messenger (IM) services to communicate with friends, to interacting with their television (by having control over when programs are watched, and skipping commercials with devices like TiVo and ReplayTV), today's kids expect their media to offer a two-way street of communication."

"A safe assumption is that when today's children and teenagers reach adulthood, they'll not be tolerant of media that's one-way, that's not interactive. They expect to be able to manipulate media content, and to share it with others. The one-way conversation of a printed newspaper won't do -- thus print's prospects for the young digital generation are not promising. Newspaper Web sites and other newspaper digital media formats likewise cannot afford to perpetuate the one-way model. They've got to become more interactive."

In other words, they've got to become "shifted."

"Why? Because we've reached a point where digital media and the Internet are mainstream mass media. And because a generation is aging that has known nothing but life with the Internet -- life with interactive media, which young people have embraced as their own...."

"...the Web is only part of digital media's future. Saffo implored us to investigate such burgeoning technologies as 802.11 wireless networking (high-speed wireless connections for computers and portable digital devices that will bring us untethered broadband content in public places, as well as the home). Such technological breakthroughs will have a profound impact on digital media, edging it even faster toward the day that digital information outnumbers print."

"To date, the newspaper industry has understandably focused much of its new-media effort on the Web. But listen to the voices telling you that there are other promising digital opportunities. (Jupiter Media Metrix suggests that mobile content will bring in more money than Web content in a few years -- and consumers are more likely to pay for mobile content than for Web content.)"

Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy night!

Last update: 2/13/2002; 7:49:16 PM.