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Adapt to New Technology or Die 196

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the not-an-idle-threat dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Yahoo! News is reporting that in a recent speech to fellow stationers and newspaper makers, Rupert Murdoch has stated that the 'newspaper industry needs to embrace the technological revolution of the Internet, MP3 players, laptops and mobile phones or face extinction.'"
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Adapt to New Technology or Die More

Adapt to New Technology or Die

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  • And Then (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) * on Monday March 13, 2006 @07:37PM (#14911956) Homepage Journal
    The greatest challenge for the traditional media now is to engage with more demanding, questioning and better educated consumers, adapting their products for new technology, the Australian-born media mogul said.

    "There is only one way. That is by using our skills to create and distribute dynamic, exciting content," he said.

    And then the self made man was struck by lightning.

    Seriously, with all the crap this guy has ushered into media, he can say "questioning and better educated consumers" with a straight face?

    Ok, all that aside, I think he's about 6 years late with that rhetoric. Most media are already edging, some hesitantly, others a bit faster, toward embracing new technologies. The core problem is how to make a buck at it. Traditional channels have done very well for him. I can't see them entirely going away.

    • Re:And Then (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jZnat ( 793348 ) * on Monday March 13, 2006 @07:45PM (#14912000) Homepage Journal
      If I'm not mistaken, the guy who said this is CEO (or president or something) of News Corp (owns Fox and whatnot), so I think his word should be quite influential to the other broadcasting companies like Time Warner, Turner Broadcasting, Disney, etc.

      • Re:And Then (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ackthpt ( 218170 ) * on Monday March 13, 2006 @07:59PM (#14912093) Homepage Journal
        If I'm not mistaken, the guy who said this is CEO (or president or something) of News Corp (owns Fox and whatnot), so I think his word should be quite influential to the other broadcasting companies like Time Warner, Turner Broadcasting, Disney, etc.

        Yeah, but remember, this guy made his fortune before the internet came along.

        Remember Edison talking trash against Tesla? Calling Alternating Current the Devil's something-or-other? Edison was already a success, but felt certain Direct Current was the way to the future. Bugger all the great inventor know about resistance.

        I'm not saying he's an idiot, I just think he's waxing enthusiastic on a technology he really doesn't understand, even after 6 or more years. Some companies do well in it and others founder.

        I like the internet for instant news, but would I pay for it? No. There's too many free outlets.

        Do I click on ads? Once in a while, but most of them are rubbish or things I have no interest in anyway. Perhaps better linking stories to advertising would serve them better. If I'm reading about death in a car bombing I don't think I'm going to be in a mood to look at the new Fords.

        • Re:And Then (Score:3, Funny)

          by Rei ( 128717 )
          If I'm reading about death in a car bombing I don't think I'm going to be in a mood to look at the new Fords

          What about new Volkswagens [boreme.com]?

        • Re:And Then (Score:3, Informative)

          by iamlucky13 ( 795185 )
          Edison supposedly screwed Tesla over on some patent, but I believe it was actually Westinghouse that Edison was trash-talking on AC vs DC. Brilliant intuition, but he could've used a little more education. I wouldn't dignify this Murdock guy by comparing him to Edison, though. Murdock doesn't have 1100 patents, for one.

          • Re:And Then (Score:4, Informative)

            by kfg ( 145172 ) on Monday March 13, 2006 @09:34PM (#14912595)
            I believe it was actually Westinghouse that Edison was trash-talking on AC vs DC.

            Tesla worked for Edison, but left him to work for Westinghouse. Our entire system of electrical power generation and distribution is pretty much the work of a single mind. Tesla's.

            A complaint was lodged at the time that Tesla had left nothing for anyone else to do, although Steinmetz managed to come up with a trick or two.

            And speaking of Steinmetz:

            Murdock doesn't have 1100 patents, for one.

            Neither did Edison, really. His company did. People like Tesla and Steinmetz did most of the real inventing and Edison tacked his name onto the patent application. It was work for hire, just as it is today when working for GE.

            And Murdock is talking about publishing, which is, like, his field and shit. Until recently they didn't even give patents for things like "a method for arrangeing text in columns."

            KFG
      • News Corp (owns Fox and whatnot),

        Oh, yes, indeed! All you have to do is say "I brought the world the FOX network! I hired Bill O'Reilly! Married with Children was *my* idea!", and kings and queens step aside...

    • Apparently what newspapers are really missing are:
      * Bold, primary colors to inform Americans how to feel about "the issues"
      * Big, moving, symbolic images and lines
      * Stirring music
      The real problem is that newspapers are still caught up in that "facts" fad..which totally puts their necks out on the line. What if they get a fact wrong? That would prove them "uncredible" - instead, what they should be doing is telling people what to think about topics in a way that is not legally binding!
      Presenting facts a

    • Re:And Then (Score:3, Insightful)

      by rtb61 ( 674572 )
      A lot of it has to do with restructuring the old companies, changing management and bringing in new people that have adapted to and understand the changes that have, are and will be happening in the creation and distribution of content.

      The additional ability is taking that knowledge and being able to generate an income from it. Buying what appears to be, temporarily hot Internet players has more often proven to be a waste of money rather than being a positive new addition to an existing company.

      The big

  • Facing Extinction... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 ) on Monday March 13, 2006 @07:38PM (#14911959)
    The biggest reason that newspapers have it so tough is that the delivery person keeps throwing my newspaper down the hallway. Not near my door, not even at my door, but down the hallway. On Sunday mornings, I find my paper at the bottom of the stairs after the ads been rifled through. Customer service is what needed to save the newspaper industry! I hate to see MP3 players being toss down the hallway...
    • > The biggest reason that newspapers have it so tough is that the delivery person keeps throwing my newspaper down the hallway. Not near my door, not even at my door, but down the hallway. On Sunday mornings, I find my paper at the bottom of the stairs after the ads been rifled through. Customer service is what needed to save the newspaper industry! I hate to see MP3 players being toss down the hallway...

      There's an joke in here about throwing a hotdog down a hallway.

      Never mind a rolled-up newspaper,

    • Paper Delivery (Score:5, Funny)

      by ackthpt ( 218170 ) * on Monday March 13, 2006 @07:50PM (#14912040) Homepage Journal
      The biggest reason that newspapers have it so tough is that the delivery person keeps throwing my newspaper down the hallway. Not near my door, not even at my door, but down the hallway. On Sunday mornings, I find my paper at the bottom of the stairs after the ads been rifled through. Customer service is what needed to save the newspaper industry!

      Must be past the end of the Paper Boy Era.

      When I was in my late teens I inherited my older brother's paper route. It was somewhere about 65 customers. As this was my main source of income I took a particularly aggressive view towards growing and maintaining the route. In 3.3 years I had it up to 150+ customers, much to the annoyance of paper boys of neighbouring routes. My parents always sent me out with our paper, just in case I saw someone moving into a new house -- I'd introduce myself and give them the paper free and ask if I could sign them up. I was breaking my back, but I was also raking in some decent cash for a highschool kid. I made certain papers weren't left in wet or could be blown away or anything. When I retired and left for college the newspaper said it was too large a route for any one carrier and split it.

      Now people drive past and chuck papers in the general vicinity of doors. I know what you mean.

    • Funny... same reason here, except the Chicago Tribune would put my newspaper, on the fire exit side of my apartment complex. So it would take me atleast 5 mins to get my newspaper everyday from the apartment on the 3rd floor on the other side of the building. I cancelled because of that eventually. I would have gladly paid extra if they had dropped it off in front of my door.......

  • BLEA (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    wtf is up with these "--------------- or die" analogies. Fuck you, fuck death. I'll just sit back and watch.

  • I'm kinda afraid of this. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AnonymousPrick ( 956548 ) on Monday March 13, 2006 @07:40PM (#14911975)
    FTFA: But -- and this is a very big but -- newspapers will have to adapt as their readers demand news and sport on a variety of platforms: websites, iPods, mobile phones or laptops.

    What I see happening is that information is being broken down more and more into sound bites and geared more towards the intended audience. For example, you'll hear a completely different take on a story say from Fox as you would from Salon.com. That's assuming they even cover the same stories all the time.

    There's only a few folks who will actually want to read the whole story - whatever it might be. And there's even fewer media outlets that will come out and actually state their leanings. The only one that comes to mind is "The Economist" (they state quite often that they are "a conservative newspaper.").

    • Re:I'm kinda afraid of this. (Score:5, Informative)

      by AnotherDaveB ( 912424 ) on Monday March 13, 2006 @08:10PM (#14912155)
      The only one that comes to mind is "The Economist" (they state quite often that they are "a conservative newspaper.").

      Disclaimer - I subscribe to The Economist's online edition, and I think it's a very good publication. (The FT's probably better.:) )

      If by 'conservative' you mean ' [USA] conservative republican', I think you're mistaken. The Economist is primarily a 'free trade' supporter. That very often leads to common cause with the political right, but the allegiance is to 'free trade'

      Another Disclaimer - I let my print subscription to The Economist lapse during the early part of President GW Bush's first term as US President as I thought they had lost sight of this, and their USA coverage was offering fawning paeans to the White House, rather than the [wry] analysis I was paying for.

      The quote below is taken from The Economist's website [economist.com], so it's their philosophy in their own words.

      What, besides free trade and free markets, does The Economist believe in? "It is to the Radicals that The Economist still likes to think of itself as belonging. The extreme centre is the paper's historical position." That is as true today as when Crowther said it in 1955. The Economist considers itself the enemy of privilege, pomposity and predictability. It has backed conservatives such as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. It has supported the Americans in Vietnam. But it has also endorsed Harold Wilson and Bill Clinton, and espoused a variety of liberal causes: opposing capital punishment from its earliest days, while favouring penal reform and decolonisation, as well as--more recently--gun control and gay marriage.

      Lastly, The Economist believes in plain language. Walter Bagehot, our most famous 19th-century editor, tried "to be conversational, to put things in the most direct and picturesque manner, as people would talk to each other in common speech, to remember and use expressive colloquialisms". That remains the style of the paper today.

      Established in 1843 to campaign on one of the great political issues of the day, The Economist remains, in the second half of its second century, true to the principles of its founder. James Wilson, a hat maker from the small Scottish town of Hawick, believed in free trade, internationalism and minimum interference by government, especially in the affairs of the market. Though the protectionist Corn Laws which inspired Wilson to start The Economist were repealed in 1846, the newspaper has lived on, never abandoning its commitment to the classical 19th-century Liberal ideas of its founder.

      The Corn Laws, which by taxing and restricting imports of corn made bread expensive and starvation common, were bad for Britain. Free trade, in Wilson's view, was good for everyone. In his prospectus for The Economist, he wrote: "If we look abroad, we see within the range of our commercial intercourse whole islands and continents, on which the light of civilisation has scarce yet dawned; and we seriously believe that free trade, free intercourse, will do more than any other visible agent to extend civilisation and morality throughout the world - yes, to extinguish slavery itself."

      Wilson's outlook was, therefore, moral, even civilising, but not moralistic. He believed "that reason is given to us to sit in judgment over the dictates of our feelings." Reason convinced him in particular that Adam Smith was right, that through its invisible hand the market benefited profit-seeking individuals (of whom he was one) and society alike. He was himself a manufacturer and wanted especially to influence "men of business". Accordingly, he insisted that all the arguments and propositions put forward in his paper should be subjected to the test of facts. That was why it was called The Economist.

      • Re:I'm kinda afraid of this. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by killjoe ( 766577 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2006 @12:40AM (#14913464)
        "Another Disclaimer - I let my print subscription to The Economist lapse during the early part of President GW Bush's first term as US President as I thought they had lost sight of this, and their USA coverage was offering fawning paeans to the White House, rather than the [wry] analysis I was paying for."

        My sig says "evil is as evil does". I don't care what the economists says they are about, I don't care they profess to believe in, I don't care what they see when look in the mirror. I only care about what they say and do. From where I sit the economist has been the biggest cheerleader for this war in the world. To me advocating a war and making excuses for GW is not about free trade. If anything it's the opposite of free trade, it's waging war to invade and occupy a nation and taking control of their natural resources.

        Everybody has a distorted perception of themselves. GW thinks he is a god loving man who is obeying gods will, I think I handsome and debonair, the economist thinks it's an independent voice which cares about free trade. None of those things are true though.

        • My sig says "evil is as evil does". I don't care what the economists says they are about, I don't care they profess to believe in, I don't care what they see when look in the mirror. I only care about what they say and do. From where I sit the economist has been the biggest cheerleader for this war in the world. To me advocating a war and making excuses for GW is not about free trade. If anything it's the opposite of free trade, it's waging war to invade and occupy a nation and taking control of their natur

  • The Google Way (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RunFatBoy.net ( 960072 ) on Monday March 13, 2006 @07:42PM (#14911983)
    Traditional media needs to take a que or two from Google.

    Sergey Brin made the statement once that you need to innovate on all levels including business models. When Google first launched they were just like any other startup, cool technology but no profit model. He was determined to have a profitable business and thus Google Adwords was born.

    The point is this; the migration of print media isn't about just transitioning the text from a paper page to a website. It's about knowing the context of the environment (e.g. interactive) and finding ways to embrace that environment so that the consumer benefits (e.g. more knowledge, entertained, etc) and profits are sustained.

    • Re:The Google Way (Score:2, Insightful)

      by j00r0m4nc3r ( 959816 )
      A big problem the newspapers will face online is that they no longer gain any power from their physical distribution networks. Everything will be defined by the content itself. It used to be if you wanted the paper delivered daily, you had to get A.) the local paper or B.) some big paper like the NY Times or USA Today. Now you can get any paper in the entire world daily and all for the same price (some for free). So which will you choose? You will read the one with the best or most relevant content.

      • A big problem the newspapers will face online is that they no longer gain any power from their physical distribution networks. Everything will be defined by the content itself. It used to be if you wanted the paper delivered daily, you had to get A.) the local paper or B.) some big paper like the NY Times or USA Today. Now you can get any paper in the entire world daily and all for the same price (some for free). So which will you choose?

        If history is any guide (and this includes recent history - I.E. blo

        • If history is any guide (and this includes recent history - I.E. blogs) people chose which they will read on the basis of bias. Their only care about content is that it not annoy them too badly.

          In the US it is either R.or D.

          That is the extent of discourse.
      • What? Make companies work for their money? That's unpossible!

        Seriously, guys. Digital age means changes. Make your product worthwhile. Selling a half-assed product because there are no alternatives isn't an option anymore. Stop trying to lobby in laws so you can keep your atrocious business model and deal with it. The people you're selling to don't care if you go out of business, however they most certainly do care if you make it illegal for them to get the products they desire. *points 00100 fing

      • I think where newspapers will still have an edge is in local mid size markets, where circulation is 100,000 or less, as long as their primary focus is on local news. Many smaller papers are getting fairly technically sophisticated.

        I know I was pleasantly surprised when I started working for one a couple months ago.

    • In order to embrace the environment, online newspapers should offer user commentary ala slashdot.

    • Re:The Google Way (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Chops ( 168851 )

      finding ways to embrace that environment so that the consumer benefits (e.g. more knowledge, entertained, etc) and profits are sustained.

      The reader isn't the consumer of traditional advertising-supported publishing; the advertiser is the consumer. The reader -- more specifically, his or her fertile mental landscape, ripe for insemination with the appropriate ideas, generally about what would be a good idea to buy -- is the product.

      If newspapers competed for readers, then things like "more knowledge, ente

    • When Google first launched they were just like any other startup, cool technology but no profit model. He was determined to have a profitable business and thus Google Adwords was born.

      Brin had nothing to do with Google's profitability. Adwords was the initiative of Eric Schmidt.

      Quote below is taken from The Register [theregister.co.uk]

      Before Schmidt came along the company bumbled along without a clear idea money-spinner. Schmidt transformed Google into an advertising broker.

      Schmidt is Google's Chairman and CEO, Brin is p

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday March 13, 2006 @07:47PM (#14912016)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • ridiculous (Score:5, Insightful)

    by circletimessquare ( 444983 ) <circletimessquar ... m minus language> on Monday March 13, 2006 @07:49PM (#14912025) Homepage Journal
    old technologies don't die, they just get shoved around and reincarnated in alternate, smaller forms

    take radio. there was once a time when people sat around these giant vacuum tube behemoths listneing to serials like "only the shadow knows"

    tv killed that kind of radio, but radio came back as the medium for music, the golden age of the radi dj

    now in the internet age, and with satellite radio, radio has an even smaller niche. and yet talk shows and drive-time formats still mean radio has a purpose

    old media never dies, it just loses its lustre and fills smaller, less lucrative niches
  • Where they had P. Diddy show up with his "Vote or Die" crew.

    I can see them yelling at the PETA people "Adapt to New Technology or Die!!!!" and then shooting the whole lot of them for refusing.

    http://images.google.com/images?q=vote%20or%20die [google.com]
    One of those pics isn't SFW... but I approve.

  • Wikinews [wikinews.org] hasn't been the newspaper-killer that Wikipedia is to encyclopedias. ...but then again, people forget that Wikipedia started in 2001.

    Becoming an overnight tech success takes years :-) I still love good 'ould text [www.ifso.ie].

  • Newspaper History (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ch-chuck ( 9622 )
    There's an interesting case of a newspaper reacting to another media technology: The Chicago Tribune wanted to create a sort of alternative newspaper, and for the comic section they started a program called "Sam and Henry". The Time: 1926. The media threat: Radio. Sam & Henry went on to become the fantastically popular Amos and Andy [otr.com].

  • what again? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Surt ( 22457 ) on Monday March 13, 2006 @07:49PM (#14912035) Homepage Journal
    I remember when newspapers were facing extinction from the internet 8 years ago.

    They have a unique lock on push delivery of local advertisements. That will keep them alive.

  • You can get this on Audible.com (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Deton8 ( 522248 ) on Monday March 13, 2006 @07:52PM (#14912050)
    Funny coincidence. This was on Audible.com so I grabbed it last week. He makes a lot of sense. My favorite part was when some hopeful newspaper editor in the audience asked if he was thinking about buying any more newspapers. He burst the guy's bubble by saying "NO!" and going on to explain that it would be a bad investment. I guess that was really the whole point of the talk -- the antique news media better come up with something new or it's going to die.
  • I was halfway into writing an angry comment about how "market analists" always dramatize about the need to embraze the latest buzzwords when I actually decided to read the 'article'...

    ... which consisted of 4 Murdoch quotes, which were balanced and non-stupid.. and admittedly, what everyone is thinking anyways.

    What is interesting though, is how I expected the article to be crap.. Slashdot has linked so many obvious flame-bait stories it's ridicilous. Seriously; why, oh why, do I read this site?

  • Dial-up suits me fine (Score:3, Funny)

    by RLiegh ( 247921 ) * on Monday March 13, 2006 @07:56PM (#14912073) Homepage Journal
    I can wait for a site to load, I just go take a bath or something; and it's there when I get back. For downloading cds, I can just wge-aaaagggh.

    [no carrier]

  • Odd (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Curmudgeonlyoldbloke ( 850482 ) on Monday March 13, 2006 @07:58PM (#14912092)
    This has been his line for at least 20 years (since the dispute at Wapping) and probably longer.

    However, my (entirely subjective) experience is that the newspapers that tend to get quoted / referenced in other online articles* from the UK and Australia aren't the News Corp ones - from the UK it's as often as not the Scotsman and the Guardian, followed by the rest; from Australia it's the Sydney Morning Herald. Maybe it's my reading that tends to steer me away from places likely to quote Murdoch papers - but I'm sure that that's not the whole story.

    (*excluding Fark and The Sun, of course).
  • It's the newspaper industry...the "paper" part should have already alerted the industry to the fact that they were in trouble, couple that with steadily declining sales and booming internet usage and the message has been loud and clear for a good few years now. Still, it makes a good headline for one of News Corps papers "Murdoch says newspapers f****d!".

    I liked the bit at the end of the article which credits the News Corp move to Wapping as "paving the way for developments such as colour printing, suppleme

  • Sorry Rupert... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by carlmenezes ( 204187 ) on Monday March 13, 2006 @08:02PM (#14912111) Homepage
    ...but until there are some pretty radical advances in power storage, display and user interaction, there will always be a place for the newspaper. You can get the info anywhere, true. But right now, for a really small price, you get a very large "paper screen" with the info on it that you can browse through at your own speed regardless of battery life, internet connectivity and how much space you have around you. Yes, you can get the info in a browser, but have u ever tried lying back in bed and browsing with your laptop or other mobile device? How long is it before you get tired looking at the screen, get tired of the weight or notice the heat? Or how about just get tired of the position you have to be in to use the darn device?

    Until those problems in technology are solved, I'm sorry Rupert, newspapers will not die.
    • Until those problems in technology are solved, I'm sorry Rupert, newspapers will not die.

      The broadsheet newspaper is one of the all-time greats of distribution formats, sure. But don't forget that the ultimate goal of a newspaper is not to benefit the reader; it is to benefit their ADVERTISERS. And many traditional newspaper advertisers are starting to realize that they can get a better product, and a better ROI, if they move to Internet advertising.

      If I'm a car dealership, I shouldn't be spending my adve
    • notice the heat?

      What, me worry?

    • Until those problems in technology are solved, I'm sorry Rupert, newspapers will not die.

      Wrong.

      Until those issues are addressed, some portion of the readership will still want a newspaper, but that does not necessarily mean that enough people will want it to make operating a newspaper profitable. Already there is a non-trivial fraction of the populace who doesn't take a paper because they can read the news on-line, and that fraction is growing. Even worse, advertisers are discovering that the effecti

  • Someone forward the message... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Omicron32 ( 646469 ) on Monday March 13, 2006 @08:09PM (#14912150)
    ...To the RIAA/MPAA

  • Guess not (Score:3, Interesting)

    by hsbis ( 960263 ) on Monday March 13, 2006 @08:18PM (#14912212) Homepage
    Didn't they say that post offices would die within days (exaggeration on purpose :)) after email became accessible to almost everyone ? I dont know about you but I still prefer the newspaper when I go on the toilet in the morning. Not only because that damn battery on my LAPtop gets way too hot for my LAP, but also because of it's great re-usability, like if I run out of toilet paper. :D But seriously, I prefer newspaper over RSS-feed any day, it's just so much better reading off paper then off monitors, I think we can all aggree on that. At least I still buy the local newspaper and I intend to do that for as long as I can.
  • Rupert Murdock is a serious creep. It would be worth going without MP3, internet, and mobile phones for a while just to get rid of this guy. Unless, of course, he's just blowing smoke. Who knows? Maybe he does seriously believe what he's saying. If so, he's the only one who believes anything that he says.
  • Rupert Murdoch is not a good man. And if these comments are to be taken seriously he is not a smart man either. The internet is not simply a means of distribution of information. It is freedom of information. It allows us to be free of the "qualified" news source. Ten years ago, people like Rupert Murdoch thought they could dominate the media of the world. Today no one dominates the media of the world. On the internet (as it is now), that's simply not possible. So I expect by embrace Murdoch means d
  • He puts the genius back in "Evil Genius."
  • He's just saying that i'm going to take over profitable web based companies in a nice way. He has done this since he started out in business. Bought companies and turned them into his own agenda pushing propaganda machines. Myspace's featured profile would always come up as The O'Reilly Factor, any dissention about George Bush on a blog would lead to accounts being suspended etc etc. He's done it throughout his media mogul life.
    • I've always found it more than a little ironic that the vehicles for which hes companies are best known in the US are Fox News, The Simpsons, and Married with Children (perhaps I'm a little behind the times--while I know StarWars and Myspace are more popular than some of my list, most people wouldn't associate them with NewsCorp or FOX). I think he's really hoping that the TimeWarners and Viacoms of the world bid up other web properties so he doesn't look like a lone idiot for paying so much for myspace.
  • There was a cartoon that someone once wrote that had Easy Reader from The Electric Company, a TV show for children on PBS that was educational, say that "print is dead".

    Still I find newspapers good for coupon sections, and I like to read stories on paper format over screen format.

    Newspapers are slowly being replaced with blogs, and blogs are popular because anyone can write them. The problem is that blogs have no jounralistic standard and don't always check the facts, it is style over substance, and most bl

  • Has anyone told him (Score:3, Interesting)

    by soupdevil ( 587476 ) on Monday March 13, 2006 @08:40PM (#14912321)
    that the broadband video-on-demand revolution is happening right now, and that television networks are extinct? And that telecoms are scared spitless by Skype and Vonage? Predicting the end of newspapers is so 1997.

  • "A new generation of media consumers..." (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Aqua OS X ( 458522 ) on Monday March 13, 2006 @08:41PM (#14912323)
    "A new generation of media consumers has risen demanding content delivered when they want it, how they want it, and very much as they want it."

    Or in NewsCorp's example, consumers can access their propaganda, censored news, and op ed / tabloid trash when then want to, how they want to, and as frequently as they want to.

    Mod me a troll if you must, but Rupert Murdoch... you truly suck.

    When are we going to get a Borg / Murdoch icon for Slashdot?

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday March 13, 2006 @08:56PM (#14912402)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • "24" On Demand? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tholomyes ( 610627 ) on Monday March 13, 2006 @09:02PM (#14912437) Homepage
    Perhaps he should be taking his own advice. Why can't I get caught up on last week's "24" on On Demand, or iTunes? (Or any other Fox content, for that matter...)

  • The hidden meaning in Rupert's words. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Mr_Tulip ( 639140 ) on Monday March 13, 2006 @09:17PM (#14912497) Homepage
    Just search for the words "news", "sport", and "content" and replace with the word "advertising" to really understand what's going on in the online 'news' industry.

    Every day, I log onto a site affiliated with Fox or MSN, and every day, I see a new way of obscuring articles with advertising.

    Then the site is designed in such a way as to be rendered unreadable if you disable those moronic flash advertisments that float around and make you wish you'd just bought the plain old newspaper.

    aarghh!

  • Rubert Murdoch (Score:3, Funny)

    by virgil_disgr4ce ( 909068 ) on Monday March 13, 2006 @09:22PM (#14912522) Homepage
    Rupert Murdoch has said a lot of memorable things, among them, "Silence! Sieze them!"

  • Not Everyone Has A Computer (Score:3, Insightful)

    by wideBlueSkies ( 618979 ) * on Monday March 13, 2006 @09:49PM (#14912685) Journal
    I know that a number of folks on /. might find this hard to believe, but there are a LOT of people out there who:

    1. Do not have a computer at home or are employed with one (yes, it's true)
    2. Have a computer at work or home, but only use it for work/bookeeping, and don't know rss from css.

    In either case, these people can not be reached by digital media. It just aint happening. This core group of "non computer enthusiasts" is the base market, and the target of traditional media. And these guys aren't going anywhere.

    Blue collar types generally don't picture themselves sitting in front of a PC downloading the season finale of Galactica, or reading about the RNR Hall of Fame inductions on Billboard.com ....but they do read the Daily News on the ferry on the way to work. Not that I want to generalize, but most tradesmen, cops and fireman I know have nothing more than a passing interest in computers...and even then it;s because they have to buy them for their kids.

    The media industries need to both adapt and create new content (and figure out how to make money) for the computer literate, and balance scaling back the more traditional delivery (newspapers, CD's, etc) methods. Neither side is going anywhere, though it may be a few more years before things balance out.

    wbs.
    • I know my RSS from my CSS but every morning (that the delivery guy shows up) you'll find me with my copy of the Journal riding the subway to work. I much prefer the paper copy to the online copy for one thing I can stand and read it much easier than on a Laptop. Also it is much harder to scan an entire page worth of articles online.
    • but most tradesmen, cops and fireman I know have nothing more than a passing interest in computers...and even then it;s because they have to buy them for their kids.

      One day they will realize that they pay subscription fee to read garbage news professionally spewed by professional garbage writers. Nobody in newspaper industry has time to research a subject; more often than not a journalist has 3 hours to fill a spot with 800 words, and here you are.

      Or it may be that these people will never realize that t

  • Digital age meet gutenberg age. How about something like a TiVo, but for dead tree media? A programmable dedicated printer/box/appliance that automatically printed out YOUR idea of what should be in your "newspaper" or magazine? Every morning, get up, there's today's "news" all printed out, updated, and waiting for you? And your monthly magazines, and updated tech manuals, or latest novel or short story from your favorite writer, and so on? Leave it up to the subscriber what they really wanted on paper, not

  • Not just newspapers (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gone.fishing ( 213219 ) on Monday March 13, 2006 @09:58PM (#14912732) Journal
    It isn't just newspapers that need to embrace new technology, the same thing could be said for almost every industry. Technology's purpose is really to solve problems and improve on things. Any company that ignores those solutions and improvments will soon be left behind. Can you imagine the medical industry ignoring the X-ray machine, the CAT scan, and the MRI? Could you even imagine the manufacturing industry without the assembly line? No, yet in their day, these ideas were cutting edge technologies that before they came along, could hardly even be imagined.

    Business has been forced to adapt or die ever since the first trader figured out how to move more product cheaply in order to out-sell his competition. That probably happened hundreds of years before Jesus walked the earth. This is NOT new news folks. Newspapers aren't immune and they have adapted and changed with the times. It wasn't all that long ago where color pictures were rare in a newspaper but today, color is common, especially in the larger papers.

    I think Rupert's warning should be heeded, not just by newspapers but by all media. The most vunerable right now may be the folks that are higher-tech than the print media. It seems that the RIAA and the MPAA feel more threatened by technology than the newspapers. Thier resistance to the new kids on the block seems to be making them drag their heels in even trying to adopt the new ways in any meaningful manner.

    Those that don't learn to adapt will fall behind. They will dry up and go away. Just like they have every generation before. It is the way it is, it is a dynamic that can't be changed or protected out of existance. Adopt or die is simply a fact of life in the business world. They better damed well get used to it.
  • Oh Noes! All that prechewed pablum GONE! Whatever will we DOOS!!
  • I haven't seen anyone point out the most dire threat to newspapers - Craig's List. Newspapers used to provide news, comics, sports, etc as a means of getting revenue from advertisers, yes, but more imortantly the classified ads. The 25 cents (or whatever) you pay for the paper just barely covers the printing costs.

    It's not clear to me you can have a viable paper without that classified ad revenue. Murdoch is right - unless the papers get a piece of that revenue they're doomed. It really doesn't matter i

  • With So Many Like My Wife... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Illbay ( 700081 ) on Monday March 13, 2006 @10:55PM (#14912986) Journal
    Not to worry. My wife's immediate response to finding something "meaningful" online: "Print it out and save it!"

    And I KNOW there are millions more like her.

    H*ll, how do you think the inkjet printer business grows by leaps and bounds every year?

  • Has anybody else noticed the ballooning number of things we either have to do, or we die?

    First, it was simply Join or Die. Then Skate or Die. Vote or Die. Now this!

    Somewhere in there we had the much more lax Live and Let Die.

    I'm just glad to have made it this far.
  • FTA: Rupert Murdoch has stated that the 'newspaper industry needs to embrace the technological revolution of the Internet, MP3 players, laptops and mobile phones or face extinction.'"

    ...I..agree..with...Rupert Murdoch? Repent! Repent! It's a sign of the end times!
  • "Die Murdoch Media"

    I couldn't agree more!
  • Rubbish. Bring back the old fashioned hot metal type. In the days when it was widely used, people used to READ newspapers, not just look at page 3. (And we used to walk to school in th' snow wi'out shoes, an' it were uphill BOTH ways.)
  • whose industry is trying to cling to an outdated distribution model, trying hard to ignore the internet as a medium to distribute content? The very same industry that tries to buy laws to prevent this from happening? The same industry that tries hard to outlaw ad-skipping procedures and force us to view what we don't want to?

    Calling the kettle black, Mr. Murdoch?
  • Those who adapt new technology are facing extinction.
    Don't you see whats happening, and who gets to spread their seeds?
    Its certainly not the most technology aware population.

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