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Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Ride this cycle

I am amazed how fast the news cycle has shortened. I just received an email from the City Paper reporting the breaking news that John Wilder is no longer speaker. My first thought was that this news is no longer breaking because I read about it 150 minutes ago. Granted, I'm a news junkie, so I'm essentially wrong: This major, first-time-in-35-years news is still breaking, and plenty of people still haven't heard about it. Note that I just wrote "still."

Newscoma has an interesting and related post today about, among other things, how news is (or isn't) evolving. It begs the question, what is all of this going to look like in 5, 10 and 20 years?

Marrying the new media with the old media is a conversation I’m having with a lot of folks. You see, I may run a bi-weekly paper but the thing is, I would like to see how to arrange this effectively where everyone wins.

There are people in this world (I’m one of them) that loves the smudged ink stains on the tips of my fingers, the smell of a newly printed paper still toasty from coming off the press, reading the cutlines with an editor’s words describing their interpretation of a picture and opening the box of a newspaper box, the change clicking into the small box offering me a little slice of the world.

I also love the blogging community I’m in. Instant feedback, intimacy, dialogue and slices of worlds that I used to not have access to.

There has been plenty of ink and plenty of pixels devoted to the notion that newspapers are gradually dying out (some claiming not so gradually), but I'm not sure that's the whole story. Too many of us still like to read, even if a future newspaper doesn't look the way Newscoma describes above sooner or later, so I don't think we're headed toward an all-video future, as some have suggested. Hopefully, there will always be room for the written word alongside the spoken word and the image (moving or still).

[Thanks to Nashville Is Talking for pointing this post out.]

Related case in point: Even the media we choose to consume is changing. Despite the drawbacks that come from an encyclopedia that anyone can edit, Wikipedia is a favorite site of mine. The entry regarding John Wilder that I have been referencing recently in my posts has already been edited to refer to his tenure as speaker in the past tense. Aside: Does Wilder know about the series of tubes??

4 comments:

Newscoma said...

Agreed.
I think there is a place for both newspapers and for the realm of digital media.
Pondering it all though makes the 'coma's brain hurt.
And the Wilder shootout today was about as good as news gets.
Unfortunately, I missed the video stream because I was working on a homicide story for ... a newspaper.
Ironic?

Rob Robinson said...

That's definitely ironic. You should check out the video feed, if for no other reason than to hear Senator Kurita say "Ramsey." You can hear the room shift in near silence because everyone realizes what it means.

My brain hurts, too, especially after seeing how cool the iPhone is today. We're farther along the road than I thought. ;)

Newscoma said...

Wonderdawg came to visit me and I saw his really mondo cool phone thingie (man, am I a master of words) and we watched the news on it.
I was mesmerized.
I love technology but I'm sadly lacking in mad skillz.
BTW, I really love coming over here to visit. Thought I'd let you know.

Rob Robinson said...

Mondo cool phone thingy sounds about right. It's magic. ;)

Thanks! I feel the same way when I'm in your neck of the woods.