How long before Newspapers die?

Yeah, but I'm figuring people won't actually be astonished until 10 years later.

 

Why would they be astonished? I would not be astonished if a 70-year-old man told me he once delivered telegrams for Western Union. It used to be a job.

 

Let's say newspapers never embrace the Internet. Or that they charge from the beginning for content on the Internet.

How are things different today?

 

I think the only thing this might have done is it might have slowed the process of what is happening. Giving it away for free for so long was stupid. It allowed competitors to invest nothing, catch up quickly and evolve into legitimate media. Maybe it slows the death of newspapers by 10-20 years? It's a good question and I don't have the perfect answer. But one thing is for sure, newspapers did not make the right decision when it all started.

 

That's an interesting question ... but the reality is there's no way newspapers were going to ignore the possibilities of the Internet. It was like a siren song drawing them in, for two main reasons:

1. Creating a web site is a relatively cheap way to attract younger readers.

2. Did we mention it's cheap? It doesn't cost much money!!!

As Doc mentions above, newspaper readership among younger adults was already slipping in the 199os (anyone else remember AP's Under 35 daily advisory budgets?). Then the Internet came along, something young people were obsessive about, and the chance to attract younger eyeballs with free content was a sure way to reap quick online advertising revenue. And it didn't cost much money! Just put the same content from the print edition online and add a comments page! No way this could fail!

 

I think an online subscription model could have worked if it was in place for all papers from the beginning.

Some people downloaded (stole) music for free in the early part of last decade. Then the iPod and with it iTunes got really popular. Some of those people who previously ripped off music for free starting buying music in iTunes. A bunch of people who had never used an mp3 player before (me) thought nothing of paying .99 cents a song in iTunes from the start and never really even though about ripping it off of some other site. And now even today, where you can probably get any song you could ever want by ripping it off Youtube, most still buy it from iTunes, Amazon or wherever.

If papers had kept their sites for subscribers only, it may have been a permanent solution. But as other have said, most sites were free for year. Then all the Huffington Posts, etc. came along. Now people expect news for free.

 

1. Some papers did charge "in the beginning" (Washington Post among them)
2. There was not a good pay system for the Internet in the 1990s.
3. How many people actually were comfortable buying things off the Internet in the 1990s? Hell, I'd say a lot weren't until just recently.

More reading on the subject: Revisionist online journalism history and the 'original sin' myth | yelvington.com

 

Something else about newspapers and putting the content online ... for more than a century, one of the important roles of print is its ability to preserve/record history. An evolving "rough draft" of history, sure, but nevertheless, you can pull out microfilm or even old, yellowing bound volumes and find information from the early 20th century.

Good luck finding out any information from 2015 in future decades. Hell, how many computers/gadgets of today can access the discs or zip drives of 15 years ago? The technology is changing so rapidly, and while that's great for helping us obtain current information, I have doubts about preserving data for future generations. The print edition of newspapers did that well.

 

To point two, pornography companies seemed to figure it out. To point three, Amazon and Apple among others have been raking in cash for online purchases for the last 10 years.

And though I know there were many net users in the 90's, when did it really become mainstream? For my memory I think 2000 or 2001.

 

Come on man, this is true but far from a fair comparison. Nothing comes close to the consumption of porn on the Internet. . Saying newspapers could have followed porn's lead in attracting paying customers is absurd.

 

Great point. The president of the Ohio Sportswriters Association just mentioned recently that we are starting to lose our history of some records as school/league information is purged from internet sites. If they were in print, we still have them,...but for those internet sites, whether newspapers or league sites, they are purged as time goes on and lost forever. As you mentioned, no one is going to go back and try to download old zip drives that are unsupported in todays technology.

 

I think there are stories about how porn has suffered financially for the same reasons as newspapers have, though.