Megatrends, megachallenges

I've been noodling on a list of megatrends that present megachallenges for newspapers. What am I missing?

  • Fractured marketplace. We don't have an audience any more; we have lots of little audiences, and some of them are really different. You can see part of that in the generational media usage changes that are killing print circulation. But it's not just that. We have wired oldsters who have no use for the tree-killing stock listings, and unwired oldsters who go ballistic if we remove the stock listings. Many people have digital cable with sophisticated set-top boxes and/or Tivo; they have no use for TV listings in print. Early adopters vs. luddites. Political liberals vs. conservatives. Feminists vs. big hair. Not only can you not please everybody, it's becoming damned hard to please anybody.
  • Info-elite moves to the Web. People who actually care about the news (and that's a shrinking percentage of the total) are finding the Internet a rich source of satisfaction. They're not necessarily getting that satisfaction from newspaper websites. The best customers are finding other information sources.
  • Word of mouth becomes stronger than the press. The net has shifted the balance of power. Gatekeeping is dead. There's an adage that says you should never get in an argument with somebody who buys ink by the barrel, but the net has given everyone a publishing platform. When we make a mistake, we get our tails kicked, hard, in public, by the public (Dan Rather).
  • Backlash against authoritarianism. Traditional media have tried to be "authoritative" but it's come across as authoritarian, and many people have resented that for a long time. Now it's payback. And that feeling is being inflamed by crass manipulators -- sometimes politically motivated (the right-wing campaign against "liberal media") and sometimes personally motivated (bloggers campaigning against "big media").
  • An explosion of microcasting. Everybody's living out there in the long tail of the demand curve. One site indexes 30,000 podcasts. Icerocket indexes 10 million blogs; BlogHerald claims there are 100 million out there. Much of this is fed by personal passion and not by capitalism (see Creative Commons, open-source software, etc.) All of this subtracts time/attention from traditional media.
  • The end of local/life in Generica. It's getting so you can't tell one community from another; Wal-Mart, Best Buy, TGI Friday's and Chile's and all the same fast-food joints have crowded out what makes a place unique. That, and migration/mobility, are eroding the value of local news, which is the one remaining major asset of local newspapers.

There have to be more big ones; what am I missing? I suppose I could mention "ourselves."

Comments

Accidents of technology that happened to favour newspapers coming to an end.

For a number of centuries, the only real option for a portable, convenient, mass medium on which to consume the news has been a newspaper, and this accident of technology has led newspapers to major on the text-based news reporting that happens to suit this technical status quo. That status quo either is coming to an end or already has come to an end: cities in the developed world are very close to being populated by always-on wifi-enabled consumers carrying converged portable devices on which they can consume breaking video, audio, text news, entertainment, games etc et al. Even as newspapers are realising they need the capacity for audiovisual reporting and taking the first tentative steps in that direction, video news originators are finding themselves in the position of being able to replace the newspaper directly. Look at, for example, the BBC's "Creative Futures" paper and the section on mobile that essentially outlines a strategy for a post-newsprint multimedia newspaper. We're only a video/iPod/phone plus a good Wifi network away from this reality. Almost everywhere, it seems likely that the change at the technology/consumer end is going to come too fast for the change at the newsroom/institutional end to meet it.

All what you listed plus the technology, that's why I'm here. No more browsing dozens of paper magazines to find a good article, just a smart search on the net, and voilá I found this blog ! I buy newspapers just occasionally, and basically just because they put local news/events easily in front of my eyes. For international news, I have my laptop or my Palm TX with AvantGo. I can read it anytime, anywhere, and if there is wifi, I can surf the net for more information, get email, and again, update my news channels in AvantGo. There are very good podcasts too, and if you have an Ipod (I do) you can enjoy listening instead of reading. My Ipod has video capability, but I don't use it a lot. However, I already installed DVD-to-Ipod-video software in my home desktop and probably will transfer a movie or two to the Ipod, to enjoy anytime/anywhere.