In a fascinating article on CNET, Larry Magid talks about a tech journalist conference he went to in Malta. The European journalists he met there were generally more bullish about the future of print than their American counterparts.
Don't worry, Larry told his European peers, we're just a few years ahead of this particular curve, and your time will come.
However, the most important point he made was this: The whole print factor is in many ways a side issue and very soon we'll end up in a world that's medum or delivery neutral - we could get the information in any number of ways catering for our particular tastes:
"The news business is not about print, it's about information. It doesn't really matter whether you read the news on paper, on a computer screen, on a mobile phone on a Kindle, or on an as-yet unavailable technology.
"However the news is consumed, what's important is that there remains a cadre of talented, honest, and enterprising journalists to dig up facts, dispel myths, and keep powerful people in check."
And certainly, last year's TNS Digital Worlds / Digital Lives study showed that while trust in online media was high, that trust level didn't extend to blogs as such. Consumers by and large still want news from credible sources that's well-researched.
As Paul Steiger of online news site ProPublica put it at the International Online Journalism Symposium in Austin:
"The future of newspapers is terrible. The future for journalism is good. The future for journalists is mixed."
Link to original postLink to original post
Link to original post