Major Newspaper Layoffs Imminent. Revenues Down. Let’s Not Change a Thing.
April 25th, 2008 | by Brad King |I’m completely baffled whenever I read stories about the changing media landscape and layoffs.
The world has very clearly changed dramatically in terms of media, consumption, creation and audience. We know this. We know that it’s left the realm of the technophiles and moved into a more mainstream place. We know that because we continue to read stories like this, which remind us that while some people are making money, the traditional media outlets are not.
Even places like the New York Times and the Boston Globe have been forced to cut back, lay off or fire — depending upon your point of view — employees. And this is a 10-year trend for the industry as a whole.
Let me repeat that: the industry has lost more jobs than it’s created in past 10 years. The Web has continued to grow at astounding and exponential rates.
I don’t want to be flip, but how can anyone who has paid attention not be a little smug.
The idea that this has happened all of a sudden, out of the blue or whatever cliched description you’d like to use is simply not true. We’ve watched the growth of the Web. We didn’t mock the first bubble (we mocked it a little); instead, we realized that while people who hoped the world would never change celebrated the demise of the Bubble in 2001, the world was forever changed by the immediate and intense adoption of technology.
The very people who believed the technology revolution had failed sent emails to their friends or called them on cell phones or sent texts or instant messaged them or got in their cars, which were monitored by sensors, and drove on roads with built-in sensors that track traffic patterns and stopped at ATMs to get cash — or maybe just used a swipe card to pay for gas — and used the GPS systems to find the place where they could assemble with their friends to talk about the demise of technology…
And the rest of us watched in horror, knowing that this was not going to end well because the traditionalists believed the crash was the end. The digerati knew that this was only the beginning.
Some traditional media folks got it — Chi-Town news is a good example and the St. Louis Beacon looks like another — but you have to wonder if it’s even too late to truly salvage the media companies. If they can embrace the very technologies they once mocked, or worse, ignored.
These newly launched, community-focused news websites are still made up of journalists hoping to replicate the past. The Chi-Town news site offers the best hope, combining citizen journalism with editorial oversight. The question is: can it build enough software tools to engage its local audience?
I hope the answer is yes. If it is, we’re going to see the dawning on a modern age of journalism.
