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.