More On The Demise Of Newspapers
August 7th, 2008 categories: Rants & Riffs
William Lobdell worked at the Los Angeles Times and its sister paper, the Daily Pilot, in Orange County, California for 18 years before going digital in August 2008 (he now writes a blog). Mr. Lobdell has written a post at his blog entitled “42 Things I Know”. It is a clear look at the future of most newspapers and how the Internet is taking their place. The post reads…
“#8 The idea that your daily news is collected, written, edited, paginated, printed on dead trees, put in a series of trucks and cars and delivered on your driveway – at least 12 hours stale – is anachronistic in 2008.
#9 As a friend told me last week, “Bro, face it. You guys are the 8-track cassette of news.”
#10 Other seemingly indispensable industries have been rubbed out by technology, leading to the unemployment of scribes, steamship captains, and the Pony Express riders. Why not newspaper reporters?
#11 Newspapers were unbelievably slow in embracing the Internet, even though younger reporters have been pleading with their bosses for years to embrace the Web.
#12 Amazingly, it took until 2005 for top editors at The Times to realize the Internet not only wasn’t going away but might lead to the demise of newspaper.
#13 Prior to that, the Internet operation at The Times was used as a place to hide reporters and editors who had fallen out of favor.”
CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE POST
His clear and sober assessment of the state of printed media speaks to the future and it is coming faster than we think.
Today’s picture of Lahaina and the West Maui mountains was taken from my father’s boat as we were on our way to Molokai.
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