Portability of news

Author

Jaouad Ben Dahman

Description

Newspapers look like goners, but I am not so sure. The Washington Post has a good chance of surviving, and I expect certain other major papers like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal will as well, although they may evolve into electronic-only copies. I also expect many niche community newspapers will survive and possibly thrive. It is a lot less costly to deliver bits to a display screen than it is to physically print and distribute a newspaper, and electronic versions are doubtless far more carbon-friendly. I am dubious that any electronic version of a newspaper will provide quite the same experience as its physical manifestation. Newspapers can be browsed; they invite your curiosity. Electronic versions are far less so, simply because you are limited by screen size, resolution and portability.

Newspapers are all desperately searching for the right formula to survive in the information age. What form of electronic content would be good enough to make you want to spend a quarter or two a day (plus the advertising) to get it? Based on the websites I read none of them is quite there. My suspicion is that a completely new revenue model will evolve. The bad news for the newspapers is that they will probably will not control it.