Print and Digital: Both Goners

February 20, 2016

I read in McPaper this article: “Wolff: Print’s Dead — but So Is Digital.” Okay, I learned from Dr. Francis Chivers (Duquesne University professor in the 1960s) that God is dead. I learned from Francis Fukuyama (assorted universities) that history is dead. Now I learn from McPaper that print and digital are dead. A two’fer! That is what makes McPaper so darned compelling.

The article informed me:

the effort to compete with native digital news outlets like BuzzFeed means traditional news organizations, with traditional share price values, must, like the venture-capital supported natives, pay more for traffic than can ever hope to be made back from advertisers. In this model, the digital natives can yet hope to sell to deep-pocket buyers, whereas the traditionals can only go out of business.

Where does McPaper land in this business scenario?

I noted this passage and its nod to the recently acquired yellow orange newspaper, the Financial Times:

At present, the FT concludes, there is no viable economic model for a written news product. Hence, in some ever-increasing existential darkness, it’s back to the drawing board in search of one.

Question: How many trips to the drawing board do traditional newspaper publishers get to make? I thought the digital revolution kicked off 40 or 50 years ago. I wonder if the drawing board is okay, but the folks visiting it are in a digital version of Sartre’s No Exit.

Well, well, I dare say one gets used to it in time.

Stephen E Arnold, February 20, 2016

Comments

One Response to “Print and Digital: Both Goners”

  1. Norene Kincaide on May 1st, 2016 7:02 am

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