Sometimes you do begin to wonder. You really, really do…
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=41621&c=1
And, in particular, the evidence of Professor Steven Barnett of Westminster University and his contrary take on the proposition: “The only future for print media is online”.
“Barnett warned that the history of technological change in media was littered with wildly inaccurate predictions about the future.
“He said the development of online technology had followed the same pattern as previous technological revolutions in media, which had usually resulted in existing platforms adapting and coexisting with new media….
“…Each time, the pattern is exactly the same – those traditional media adapt and defy expectations by becoming as integral a part of the new media scene as the old.
“The reason each time is that they serve a need that no other media can serve.”
OK. Interesting. Other than giving me a nice, comfortable, lazy – and in the NotW’s case, let’s be frank, a slightly titilating – read on a Sunday, what ‘need’ exactly does a printed news medium satisfy for the remaining six days of the week that a web-based platform can’t?
It gives me something to read if I sit on a tube or a bus on my way home for work. Granted.
But that’s invariably free – and heavily subsidised, to boot. And if it wasn’t there, I’d settle back into my iPod, read a book or while away half an hour flicking my way across the pages of my iPhone.
But, yes, for a specific community of commuters the printed newspaper word might, just, still service a need. Might.
If I like to read my news 24 hours after the event, it works; if I like to get into my car and drive to Tesco’s every night because the corner shop has closed, it works…
The list goes on and on.
As for the telephone and courier anaolgy, well… uh?
“He quoted 19th-century Post Office chief engineer Sir William Priest, who said that the telephone had only been successful in the United States because it lacked Britain’s “superabundance of messengers” and servants.
“But far from the popularity of the telephone wiping out Britain’s courier industry, Barnett pointed out that according to one report, in 2004 it was worth £14.4bn…”
Where do you start with that one? The telephone probably worked quite well in the US cos it’s quite a big place; am I going to send a messenger from Boston to New Orleans or am I going to pick up the phone?
And as if the healthy state of UK courier industry proves the point… What is it that the booming UK courier industry is actually couriering these days?
It’s the stuff we’ve bought off e-Bay; the books we’ve bought off Amazon…
The kind of DIY, geography-lite consumer behaviour that crushes the traditional newspaper classified advertising model into the ground.
Actually, in fairness, it did prove the point.
The motion was “overwhelmingly defeated by attendees to the debate who largely comprised senior figures from the media…”
Always the same. Just as turkeys don’t vote for Christmas nor does King Canute ever call for a towel…