June 6, 2008 | In: News
Is print media dying?
Business Week’s article The Writing on the Wall (and the Web) brings to light something that has been on my mind for a few years now: the growing popularity of digital media and the ultimate demise of print publications.
“I come from narrative,” [Barry Diller, CEO of IAC/InterActiveCorp] said. “I thought nothing would interrupt the story, and people want to sit there and watch passively, and that is the storytelling experience.” Now, he says, “I don’t think passivity is going out the window,” but it will shrink in significance, thanks to interactive tools that enable people to “manipulate” forms of content.
In today’s market, and specifically in regards to “Web 2.0” and the growing amount of two-way communication between consumers and producers, the general public expects more interactivity from their content. Static articles, such as those found in newspapers and magazines, lack the dynamism of media found on the Internet, on our cell-phones, and on television.
I used to be worried about the end of print, but these days I’m not so concerned. I believe print will always exist in one form or another, but the growing convenience of our technology, the fact that it has become portable and easily accessible, tends to make me forget about it.
What do you think? Is print media dying? And if so, do you care?
Updates
- 05/05/09 – Journalism Online may very well change the way we get out news, and Amazon is about to announce a larger Kindle for newspapers and magazines.
2 Responses to Is print media dying?
cb
June 13th, 2008 at 11:40 PM
No, I don’t think print media is dying. There may be one section of the population for whom the internet can replace some forms for print media but as far as I see it the markets don’t necessarily have to either replace each other or augment each other. You just have to look at the way some of the newspaper websites have branched out to see that they are an augmentation rather than a replacement.
They serve different purposes. I don’t necessarily want every media source to be interactive or dynamic. As long as the quality of the writing is high.
Atlas
June 14th, 2008 at 1:38 PM
I think that’s a good way to look at it — that the markets augment each other. Media convergence and such.
And you’re right, not everyone expects or even wants interactivity from their media. The more I think about it, in fact, the more I realize how often I don’t take advantage of said interactivity at news sites (I just read).