On Sat, 28 Feb 2009 14:56:21 -0500 Adam Maas <[email protected]> wrote:
> > 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 think we here in this corner of the world live in a parallel universe. everything that seems to be 'dying' over there is flourishing like never before over here. the newspaper i work for has a print run of about 1.5 million copies a day (since every newspaper in india is read by at least 5 to 6 people) the actual readership is that much more. we have about 15 editions, each edition having extensive local coverage apart from using wire stories for national and international content. revenue from advertisements have never been this good and we are just the no. 2 in *english* newspapers. the no.1 has a print run of about 2 million copies a day and the hindi and other language newspapers have figures touching 20 and more. we've had satellite TV for about 25 years and fairly large Net infiltration since about 1995 and just about everything seems to be flourishing. including (mostly paperback) book publishing. the amount of books being published by penguin india for instance is mind-boggling. all kinds of voices that were never heard before are getting published, a lot of it in the national languages other than english. most people i know still read a lot the 'old fashioned' way so i am really at a loss over your arguments. ;-) perhaps we don't realise or appreciate enough how good we are having it over here ... ;-)) regards, subash -- 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.
