On Sat, Feb 28, 2009 at 1:34 PM, Mark Roberts <[email protected]> wrote: > [email protected] wrote: >> >> In a message dated 2/28/2009 10:12:43 A.M. Pacific Standard Time, >> [email protected] writes: >> I still insist on subscribing to the print edition of our local >> newspaper. But although everyone *says* they prefer print, there aren't >> enough of us who back up these statements with action. >> >> ============ >> I think newspapers and books are two quite different things (you didn't >> reply to what I said). > > Newspapers are the canary in the coal mine. If people are willing to abandon > newspapers for the crappy monitor technology we have now, imagine what will > happen when there are electronic viewing media that are close to the > legibility of a printed page. That's just a few years away.
I disagree. The major factors in the decline of newspapers come down to news cycle (Internet and TV is faster), Craigslist (which killed off classifieds, long a major portion of newspaper income), the effective change of the mainstream media into a mild-left monoculture (thus reducing their target audience) and the shift from local newsrooms to wire agencies for much of their content, resulting in a lack of local news (always the newspapers advantage over TV) combined with a concentration on news that is best delivered in other ways (and often heavily slanted due to the wire services reliance on local stringers often under the thumb of local political powers). Newspapers are dying because they quit providing a quality product while also having part of their business model evaporate and annoying a reasonable portion of the market. > >> I suspect newspapers will end up mainly online. If the advertising >> revenue will support it. >> >> Not all print media is equivalent to all other print media. > > In fact, I expect advertising revenue will support books eventually, when > they're in electronic form. I think that stinks, but it's very likely to > happen in order to subsidize the cost of the technology. I hope it's a > short-lived phenomenon. > The only real success in electronic publishing (Baen Books' Webscriptions service) uses their electronic books to advertise their dead-tree books. They've seen an overall increase in dead-tree sales this way. -- M. Adam Maas http://www.mawz.ca Explorations of the City Around Us. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
