Murdoch and the Next Newspaper
Web 2.0 amazes me. I think the things we’re doing these days online are so exciting, and not because they are different from the ways the Internet was used five or ten years, but because it’s taking us somewhere new. Because I live, breath and work in 2.0, I’m always applying it to everything else (How’s a 2.0 gas station going to function? What about 2.0 cars? 2.0 houses? 2.0 pets? etc.). Newspapers have always been part of the query for me, and can’t help but think that Rupert Murdoch may be thinking something similar (and building the next newspaper). Here’s 2 things I’m thinking about newspaper 2.0:
First, some may call them dinosaurs, but I think of newspapers as ancient temples built by history. I can’t accept the fact that they would go away, or become less meaningful just because fewer people are reading sooty, inky papers. And there’s where the 2.0 innovation might start. Maybe the papers of the future would be smart papers printed on razor thin celluloid LCD screens. It’s clean, it’s durable and its pages are updated daily (heck, why not hourly) with the latest headlines. Cool.
The second reason I think newspapers are going to be around forever is that most of them are owned by very old families who’ve grown accustomed to the wealth and lifestyle their pages have afforded them. I’m not from one of the those families, but I doubt they are going to go down without a fight. Now I know there’s a possibility that they could sell their papers and invest in something else, but I want to believe that those families believe in the papers as more than just news sources. They are beacons of integrity and truth. We need good, honest news, and they need to bring it to us.