Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2006/07/12
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Two major trends are going on to kill newspapers. First, the basic literacy rate is declining substantially, many citizens just can not read even at an eighth grade level: as a subset go into the archives of the NYT and read what was written fifty years ago, they assumed a much wider vocabulary and a grasp of more advanced literary devices. Second, is the huge growth of information sources available from all directions; radio during commute times, Internet connections at work and home, smart phones, podcasts, and probably other sources. Also, established companies rarely make the jump to new outgrowths of their dominate market. Western Union didn't go into telephony, the phone companies didn't go into cable, the railroad companies didn't go into automobiles, the movie companies didn't go into television in the early days. In the rare cases where the large see possibilities in new directions they frequently botch the project witness IBM in PC's. Defined the product but failed to take control. Established newspapers then could not be expected to make the jump into cyber-reporting successfully. Success is defined as making a profit from the venture. A hysterically funny outgrowth of this thought train is that the talk show hosts are making money from their subscription services that link loyal listeners to an extended version of what they hear on the radio. I would pay rather a lot for an extended version of the days news that doesn't fit in two columns and 500 words. 0.02 cents Don don.dory@gmail.com On 7/11/06, Brian Reid <reid@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us> wrote: > > > > Today? It's all bottom-line crap that drives newspaper space for > advertising and in many cases photography is given short shrift as it takes > up "revenue producing ad space!" :-( > > Of course, it's worth noting that 80% of the newspapers that used to exist > in the olden days have gone bankrupt and no longer exist. Perhaps they > should have spent a wee bit more time worrying about revenue producing ad > space..... > > Remember when there were afternoon newspapers as well as morning > newspapers? > > > > _______________________________________________ > Leica Users Group. > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information >