[Home] [ABCNews.com] [ColeGroup] [InfoWorld] [Money] [NYT]
New columnist recalls eyeing print's future a decade ago
"Now, keep in mind, this was long before Dubba Dubba Dubba and the Dot Coms appeared on the scene."
About 10 years ago, I was sitting in Duke Snider's restaurant in Vero Beach, Fla. About a half dozen of us, from newspapers across the United States and Canada, were having dinner and, in the time-honored tradition of newspapermen on an expense account everywhere, solving the problems of the world.
We were there ostensibly because we were the officers of the Harris Users Group, which was meeting right up the road, and wanted someplace where we could have a working dinner without interruptions. In reality, the person picking up the check was a lifelong fan of the Duke's and was hoping for a chance to see him. Well, the Duke wasn't in, and the problems of the world were few, so we turned to something far more dear to my heart: the future of newspapers.
The Duke's fan (let's call him Don) was convinced that the rapid changes in technology were going to pose a problem for newspapers, and something was going to come along that would eat our lunch.
That started a quite heated discussion, with most of the table siding with Don. Now, keep in mind, this was long before Dubba Dubba Dubba and the Dot Coms appeared on the scene. All of us had CompuServe and PressLink accounts and routinely used a half-dozen bulletin boards, but we were anomalies.
Don kept talking about things coming down the pike. Flat panel displays, cheap chips, wireless connectivity -- all sorts of interesting things that were going to make it easy not only to collect and distribute information, which newspapers do very well, but to customize and personalize it, an area in which newspapers have a problem.
Although much taken by his vision of the future, I could not imagine anything that would routinely tell me the things I didn't know that I needed to know the way a newspaper did, and I could not imagine anything nearly as portable.
Fast forward to 1998, and much of Don's vision has come to pass. The laptop I use weighs about as much as a couple of paperbacks and isn't much bigger. I use wireless devices to send and receive e-mail while taking the train into Manhattan, sitting on the beach on Bald Head Island or even in my office.
The Internet came out of nowhere as an information delivery vehicle. My house is a Teeny Area Network, fed at a couple of megabits a second by a cable modem. America Online has a subscriber base the newspaper industry would kill for.
And Bill Gates is, well, Bill Gates.
I started thinking about this the other day when I was asked to fill in for a while on the New(s) Media column. I'm no Luddite, but I'm not exactly sure where this new media thing is going or even if it is real.
Now don't get me wrong. I find the Internet indispensable in my personal and professional life. I use it daily to check dozens of information sources, I write for several web sites and my favorite spot for financial news is thestreet.com, which exists only on the Internet. But I make my living as a writer and technology consultant. Most of my money comes from print products. My second-largest income source is from teaching people how to use computers; Internet and new media items are a distant third.
I think two major issues are at play here. No. 1 is the portability of such a wealth of information. No. 2 is the serendipity factor, finding out the things you didn't know you needed to know.
On the days I take the train into New York, I never see people using computers to read news, company information or much of anything else. If a laptop is out, it is being used to play games. If people want information while commuting, they are reading ink smeared on dead trees.
I'm not sure I understand that behavior. With my wireless modem and Internet accounts, I can get the latest financial information while everyone around me is stuck with yesterday's 4 p.m. close in the Wall Street Journal, and news summaries are automatically e-mailed to me throughout the day. Many of these people have laptops, cell phones and pagers with them, but the morning dose of information comes from dead trees smeared with ink.
I often despair for the state of the newspaper industry, when profitability seems to depend on the price of newsprint or oil or something else outside the control of publishers. Circulation is well off its highs, and we crow about increases of one percent, something that makes me nervous.
I recently did a story about new sections for newspapers (see NewsInc., June 22, 1998), and the dead tree people are doing a lot of things to personalize papers, ranging from address-specific mailing labels printed onto targeted weeklies by Copley's suburban Chicago papers, to a targeted sports supplement in Tampa. I still think that print is our bread and butter, not just for the near future but for a long time to come.
What do you think? Let me know by dropping a note to sebrier@home.com.
-- Steven E. Brier
From NEWSINC., August 3, 1998, Copyright © 1998, All Rights Reserved.