The Death of Traditional Print?

A blog post by Bob Guccione, Jr. published in the Huffington Post talked about the future of media. He broke down the future of media into four major points.

His first point: "Within two years, a major city daily will transform itself into a free paper. Home delivery will still require a paid subscription. The Sunday paper will continue to be sold and will morph into a hybrid of the best of a pleasurable Sunday-paper reading experience and a week-long events resource."

A newspaper won't make a profit providing a free paper. If it was free I would take the time out to go to a store and pick up the the paper instead of paying a subscription to have it delivered to my home. Majority of people that work jobs do not have time to read the paper. Majority of workers look at the news online while they are at work. Workers do not have to wake up earlier to get their news because they can do so at work. Plus, the news they are reading in the paper is considered old.

His second point, "A cable channel will pass one or more of the Big Four broadcast networks in total viewership, chiefly because it makes better programs."

The Big Four of course is NBC, FOX, CBS and ABC.

I agree with this one. There are so many alternative programs on television. Many cable networks are appealing to niche groups. The traditional big four do not offer programming for alternative groups. For example, Music Television (MTV) appeals to a younger audience. They were once known for just playing music videos, but now they only have about one show dedicated to music on their main channel. They have expanded so much that they have other channels dedicated to music and different cultures. There main channel is dedicated to reality shows. Cable networks are able to compete with the big four networks because of the popularity of reality television.

His third point: "Google will lose significant market share, because viable competitors will create as good or better search engines and incentivize people to use them."

Google losing their significance, right now I find that hard to believe. Maybe we can talk about this in a couple of years. I know I have been using Google as my search engine forever. Even now, Google continues to reinvent itself. So like I said, when there is a true competitor then we can talk about this.

His last major point: "The Internet will not consume print, because it's not strong enough, it's not better, and it's too busy consuming itself."

The internet provides an easy alternative and cheaper alternative, especially for college students who have little money. Nowadays, a person can do anything on the Internet. Overall, I think print and Internet will continue to co-exist for a while. Internet will prevail in the end. Information is literally at a person's fingertips.

I do not understand how Guccione can say the Internet will never be stronger than print when the rest of his article bashes traditional print. He basically says that traditional print needs the Internet to survive:

"Offline media companies should use the Web to do a better job of competing with one another..."

"The Internet hit traditional publishing like the asteroid that struck the earth and killed the dinosaurs."

"I know the conventional wisdom: that readership is being lost to the speed and efficiency of the Web."

He also talks about traditional media outlets and how they ignored the Internet as a new wave of media. So I do not understand how he came to the conclusion that the Internet will never be stronger than print.

That is all I have to say.

Compelling Journalism

I would have to say that CNN.com does do a good job of integrating news coverage from users into their traditional journalistic coverage. This allows users to be engaged in the news coverage. News organizations are always looking for ways to provide continuous traffic to their sites. CNN does a good job of making sure "Joe Blow's" voice is heard. I find one of the easiest topics to provide video is storm coverage. I always find it interesting and exciting that CNN will not waste time to incorporate home video of a hurricane or tornado in their coverage. They even provide links in their search database of people that track storms. I need to incorporate some interaction with my users on my own Web site.


The first thing that strikes me about the Oregonian newspaper piece is that it's about a woman preparing to die. This is a piece that must be taken seriously. This is the true meaning of a human interest story. If a person dies of course there is going to be reporting done, especially if the person is well-known or famous. I have not seen too many reports about a person knowing they are about to die. So this is a unique topic.

From the beginning of the first video they used a very simple approach and just performed interviews in her home. From there they just let her tell the story. This video is appealing to people that are going through the same situation or have a family going through this. So having a simple shooting concept was good when a user is focused on what the person in the video is saying. I can say from my own experience how rough times like these can be. My grandmother passed away this month from lung cancer.

Bashing your own school, who would do such a thing?

Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Especially when you have valid reasons to your opinion. Alana Taylor, NYU journalism student gives her opinion why her school is lagging behind in the new age of journalism. This was posted on the PBS site called Media Shift. She starts off talking about one of her classes called Reporting Gen Y, which is one of the few classes focused on new media.


I am surprised by this because NYU is supposed to be a good school to attend. I always hear the school in the media because they are known for graduating some of the best young minds in the country.

They are in the media capital of the world, which is obviously New York city so its shocking this particular program is lagging behind in the digital age. I mean they have access to top notch newsrooms in the city, so one would think they would have caught on to the new wave of media.


Back to her journalism program, she pretty much says the focus is to become an editor for a magazine or newspaper. Also, she brings up the point that the program pretty much discredits writing for blogs or Web sites. I find that odd since newsrooms are turning their focus to the Web. They are trying to find ways to generate revenue from the Web. Newsrooms are trying to beat out their competitors to have breaking news on the Web. I just do not understand how a program in the number one media market could be so narrow-minded.


Taylor goes on to say, "Obviously, I am being a bit facetious here, but the truth of the matter is that by the time my generation, Gen Y, gets into the real world there will be a much higher demand for web-savvy writers and thinkers than traditional Woodwards and Bernsteins." I thought this stuck out to me. She is saying by the time she graduates, but I think that high demand is now.


As I touched on earlier, all the newsrooms are trying to be the first with new information. Relying on the newspaper at this point in the media age will have you far behind in the competition standpoint. Even waiting on a television report is pushing it nowadays.

She touches on no one in her class of 16 students had a blog besides her. I thought this was interesting because it seems like an almost essential part of being a serious journalist nowadays. Blogs give a journalist personality and a better connection with readers. I admit I did not have my first blog until I started my graduate program with VCU. I wish I would have been blogging before this program though. I did not have much knowledge about blogs until this program anyway.


I find it very odd that these students are being asked to bring the hard copy version of the New York Times every class. It seems like they have to prove that they are reading the paper and from Taylor it seems as if they are only supposed to read news from the Times.


She goes on to say, "I don’t understand why they don’t let us access the online version, get our current events news from other outlets, or even use our NY Times app on the iPhone. Bringing the New York Times pains me because I refuse to believe that it’s the only source for credible news or Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism and it’s a big waste of trees."


I agree with her suggestions. Internet is so much easier and cheaper than getting the hard copy version. You are essentially receiving the same information. I think also the ability to get information from other outlets lets you have more access to different stories. Some stories deemed important to other newspapers in the country, may not be important to the Times. Students would miss out on more stories if they only trusted one outlet for news.

Taylor brings up very valid points in her post. I think sooner or later all journalism programs have to incorporate classes catered to the digital age. We are at the point where nobody reads newspapers. The late breaking news is on the internet. Blogging is the new fad. It's pretty much get with it or get left behind.

It's Back!!

I have regained my love for sports. I really never lost it, but I just took a little break. Maybe because of the season I started my blog. The only major sport was baseball. Fortunate for me, football season is back. I always enjoy watching the sport and I think there are Web sites that do a good job of covering the sport. ESPN is one of them. Having the ability to follow your own team online is fun. It is better than not being able to keep up with them all. I am a fan of the Jacksonville Jaguars and the San Francisco 49ers. I rarely see 49ers games televised in this area, so in order for me to follow the game I have to look at play by play on ESPN. As we speak, I am following the Jaguars game. They play the Tennessee Titans this week. The 49ers game does not start until 4:15 p.m.

I love the main page of ESPN. At the top you can get quick score information on games around the league. At the top of each score, the channel is listed if viewers want to watch. Depending on your area you can only get certain games. In the future, when I get more dinero or money I would like to get NFL Sunday Ticket. This allows you to watch all games played on Sunday, so I could always follow my favorite teams.

Anyway, back to the site the front page has a nice photo of four top quarterbacks in the league. I do not necessarily agree with the bottom right quarterback, who is Vince Young. He is the Titans quarterback and they play the Jaguars today. So boo to him. David Garrard, the Jaguars quarterback, was a better player last year, so he should be on the front page in my opinion.

When your team is not televised on your local Fox or CBS affiliate, football fans have the option of following live play by play online with ESPN. There is a digital field, where you can follow precisely where the play is taking place. Updates are instant on each play showing who threw the ball, ran the ball and caught the ball. The updates tell you how many yards on the play, total yards overall, current position of the ball, how much time left in the game, current score, team statistics and individual statistics. This is a good technique to keep fans involved with football even if they are not watching it on television.

Even though I do not care for him today because he is playing one of my favorite teams I still think Young is a great talent. I am sure if you do not know about him then you will get a good idea of what I am talking about below.

First Podcast

Embedded below is my first podcast on general news. I covered topics on Tropical Storm Hanna, the Nascar Sprint Cup Series and a breast cancer golf tournament in the Richmond region.

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On the Rise

Last month, people-press.org posted a study done by the The Pew Research Center about internet usage. One of the first and main point from the report is that online usage has increased and this means the internet is not going anywhere in the near future.

The report stated, "Overall, 37 percent of the public - including more than half of those who go on the internet (55 percent) - say they regularly get news online. A decade ago, just 13 percent of the public, and 35 percent of internet users, went online for news at least three days a week."



Commentary: These stats prove the internet is still a growing outlet. There are still many places around the world where there is no internet access. Eventually these places will have to get with the program. News is becoming so fast paced with the use of online as an outlet. Newspapers are becoming out of date because they can only report yesterday's news. The internet allows the opportunity to report up to the second news. The internet outlet can be changed and modified, before a newspaper can print one story about a topic. Once everyone has access to the internet, then more people will be knowledgeable at a faster pace.

One of the most important statistics would have to be the amount of African-American users. The amount of users have tripled, but white users of the internet still dominates compared to black users. Whites use the internet for online news consumption 38 percent of time compared to blacks use for online news 24 percent of the time.



Commentary: The amount of broadband usage in personal homes for blacks has increased according to the Pew Research. Even though there has been an increase, whites still have the advantage because their internet usage continues to grow. African-Americans started out behind on this outlet. Ultimately, they will never be able to out grow their white counterparts. Blacks are still lacking on the concept of using the internet for news and they are more interested in watching videos, listening to music or checking out their social networking profiles. They do dominate whites in the aspect of using social networks.

The use of social networking is one the biggest things on the web right now. From the report, "Fully 65 percent of people 18 to 24 - 82 percent of those who go online - say they have a profile on MySpace, Facebook or another social networking site." Another point about the social networking is that blacks are more likely than whites to have a social networking page. Blacks use the internet for social networking 44 percent of the time compared to whites who use it 29 percent of the time.



Commentary: Social networking is popular because people are able to keep up with friends and make new friends. They are able to connect with people around the world and promote themselves. Blacks use these social networks to promote them self as an artist. Myspace allows people to post original music and expression and people all over the world can view their page.