People pay to read the news. My family pays nearly $30.00 a month just to get the New York Times delivered to the front doorstep. But what if what we read in the paper is also offered in a digital format? Not only that, but what if it's offered for free? Nearly $30.00 a month or $0.00 for god knows how long?
This Monday www.nytimes.com posted up this article by David Carr, free for the world to read and registration wasn't even required. This same article was also found in the New York Times Business section on Monday, in the paper that people had to pay for whether it be purchasing it off the stands or getting it via a paid subscription (well, I guess there's also a possibility of picking it up off the seat or floor of a subway train).
Now the question is, will this type of model of handling websites eventually damage print journalism and more specifically newspapers?
At this point it's possible that it won't. There are a lot of people that read the paper while taking public transportation. The portability of the medium is a strong asset and that's why for the time being online media won't be able to impede print journalism. I do know one person who does have a PDA and is able to retrieve (likely through wireless hotspots) websites through it on the go, but that's only one person I know of so not many people are tampering with this technology. Not to mention wireless hotspots aren't necessarily available everywhere either, and not all of those available are free.
But that's the present and with the future that can change. What if wireless hotspots become more widespread? Laptops and/or PDAs become bigger and more widely used? DVDs and broadband internet did not take off immediately, and while HD television sets still have very limited market penetration sales are expected to rise the technology to become more mainstream before the end of the decade. Not to mention PDAs and Laptops may seem more appealing to carry around than a stack of papers. I mean there has to be a reason Apple keeps shrinking that iPod (by the way, what's below nano?). So right now newspapers still hold some advantages over the new big media medium, but who knows what the next big revolution in technology will be.
Hey, for all we know if things get bad for the print version companies may decide to pull an "ESPN Insider" on us (which my fellow peer Zack Barangan talked about in his own blog entry) and have readers will have to pay for a subscription to the online version.
Anonymous (not verified) @ Tue, 02/28/2006 - 4:00pm
"will this type of model of handling websites eventually damage print journalism and more specifically newspapers? At this point it's possible that it won't."
Eventually?????? Wow, yeah right. Read more online articles on the subject and you'll get the REAL deal. Knight Rider, Tribune, Newspaper stocks.
My parents bought a subscription when i was younger. I grew up with a local paper. I have yet to pick up a paper since then and I (along with other 20 somethings) are not going to change. It's just going to decline more. Local TV is not much better and I am in that biz.
If I want to know something I will google the subject and read it or read my local paper online at their website for free. News is not what "they" want me to read, but what I want to read. The internet allows ME to choose not what others including my bosses think is news.