In an
post on the Rebuilding Media blog at
Corante.com, Bob Cauthorn tells the tale of large newspapers announcing major layoffs as their circulation continues to decline at an accelerated rate. The author makes a very compelling argument that the newspapers have only themselves to blame. Readers are getting more of their news content online, and while many newspapers are offering online editions for subscribers, they aren't presenting a compelling multimedia experience to their readers, who will go elsewhere to get it. Newspapers are clinging to a model that has served them well in the past, but if they fail to adapt, they will quickly become extinct in the digital age.
In an ironic twist, MSNBC is
running a story from the September 26, 2005 issue of
Newsweek International Edition about how reading is declining as visual media takes off.
Visual media are, if anything, a more natural mode for humans than the written word, at least according to neuroscientist Marcel Just of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
David Rothman from
TeleRead weighs in:
Digitizing books isn’t enough; we need linking, multimedia, you name it, to keep books popular in a Net-oriented era. P-publishers and authors should spend less time whining and more time adjusting to the new realities.
I myself am an old-time text guy and will do all I can to encourage reading. But to ignore multimedia, in 2005, to the extent that most newspapers have, is sheer folly. Book publishers should heed the lesson.
Is reading text on paper, as these two articles would suggest, a dying form of media in the digital age? Is visual digital media a better, more natural way to tell a story and provide information?
Related:
E-books could be more than just type