More thoughts on dead tree media

Howard Kurz in The Washington Post writes on the uncertain future facing the Dead Tree media. At a time when print media face an uncertain future he notes:-

Oddly enough, newspapers are reaching more people than ever before. In 1999, The Post had a circulation of 786,000, essentially limited to Washington and its suburbs. Now the print circulation is 665,000 and The Post’s Web site is drawing 9.4 million unique monthly visitors from around the world.

As Kurz comments elsewhere in his article print media were slow to cotton on to the internet. Indeed some might say they still have not. They are not making significant money from their web-sites, yet someone is making money from the ads,without investing in the site content.

Yet there is in many respects a symbiotic relationship between print media and bloggers and other internet news sources/opinions.

Many internet commentators rely to a great degree on traditional news media to provide source material. Without the dead tree press investment in news gathering where would we get much of our information from. The broadcast media? Puh-leeze!

In Adam’s opinion an alternative viable model should be found. Perhaps it is here that the pervasive influence of Google is found in the way that it hoovers up  much of the ad revenue, which otherwise might go to the news site.

Therefore on reflection maybe Willem Buiter’s rant on Google was perhaps not so OTT.

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