Fasten your seat belts, ladies and germs, for the Wall Street Journal’s Andy Kessler is going to tell you how to fix the so-called dying newspaper industry. Wait, as a matter of fact, it’s not dying. Newspapers, because they’re harder to copy and pirate à la music and video, will be here for a little while longer. Great! Why hop online to get all my news, from numerous sources, sources other than the biased liberal media elite, when I can hold some shoddy and unwieldy piece of newsprint in my hands, getting Grade F ink all over my hands? It’s just so very heaven.
The problem, in my utterly worthless opinion, with this piece is that Kessler tries to analyze every last media industry—TV, newspaper, music, advertising, etc.—in 1,000 words. That’s hardly enough to review a printer, revolutionary though it may be, let alone analyze, you know, everything. The fact is, newspaper cost a stupid amount of money to produce: cutting down trees, making paper, hiring some dude to deliver bundles every which way. That, or upload a couple pages of HTML.
You don’t see too many ice industry barons running around anymore, do you?
A Future for Newspapers [Wall Street Journal]
I think newspapers will have a limited future. But will probably change format a bit. A lot of people read their news online – but its still nice to hold something in your hands occasionally. Under the text reader is perfected (which I saw a Sony one that is coming close) we can expect newspapers in some form to continue.