It’s the ink manufacturers that should be worried.
As I’ve said before, I’m not skilled in the professions of journalism and public relations. In fact, I seldom read stories about the seeming demise of journalism because of the Web and other technologies like blogs. For whatever reason, I found this article (The New Old Journalism) compelling enough to lead me to this article (The Migration). I have a hunch I’ll learn much more from your comments.
Because whether we’re talking today or 10 years ago, it’s not the medium, it’s the reporter. — Adam L. Penenberg
Throughout this read, I kept thinking about digital paper - and if we had a cheap source of digital paper (cheaper than real paper), that could be “printed on” reliably and at near-zero cost, what would the world of news be like? How would we get our news? How would we interact with news information?
I suspect we wouldn’t run to 75 pound monitors to read what interests us. We wouldn’t wait until we hit Starbucks (and a hot-spot) to get the daily dose of sports scores from a laptop. Instead, we’d read it like previous generations read it - by opening our “newspaper” - the one that was created based on our interests and beamed to the nano-thin, durable tranluscent pages in 16 trillion colors with photos and embedded high-speed video snippets regardless of where the paper lay. We’d come to rely on this “paper” to bring us everything we enjoyed about being informed.
The digital domain of paper, coupled with advances in device awareness, and translucent display technology will once again make newspapers the most prefered way to stay informed. When Penenberg said “it’s not the medium, it’s the reporter”, he was right and will continue to be right long after the last drop of ink has been applied to the last sheet of newsprint made from the last tree cut.
5 comments
4/30/2005 at 10:52 am
Stephanie
That’s amazing. I’m not quite even sure if I understand the digital paper–but from what I see of it in that link, that amazes me. I can see the future of newspapers being catered to our every personal demand. But, for some reason I just don’t see it happening anytime soon.
It really disappoints me though that in the New Old Journalism page, there is a link for an article called “We’re all journalists now.” I mean, sure, now everyone is allowed to post their thoughts on the internet, especially through blogs. But there are still people out there who have studied and wanted their whole lives to report the news in an objective way. It just bothers me that people take that for granted and call themselves a journalist when in reality, they probably know nothing about the art of reporting.
4/30/2005 at 11:16 am
BillFrench
Stephanie:
But there are still people out there who have studied and wanted their whole lives to report the news in an objective way.
Agree - but we all have biases.
So, nothing is truly objective, but it would be nice to know that every attempt is made to report objectively. I think trained journalists have a better chance of doing that.
It just bothers me that people take that for granted and call themselves a journalist when in reality, they probably know nothing about the art of reporting.
Yea - I agree, but lets not forget why the vast majority of people *haven’t* been quasi-journalists in the past. The notion of ordinary folks (like me) writing for the masses wasn’t possble until about the year 1999. The same is true for music, photography, piloting a plane, traveling into space.
Non-professional musicians can create a back-up string section in an instant, digital photographers can apply a special filter after the shot was taken, new pilots can learn to fly without ever setting barometric pressure (e.g., glass cockpits).
All these activities are opening seemingly ordinary (and very biased) people to endeavors that were once the domain of professionals. And although a journalist is trained in the “art” of writing, they may not be pasionate about flying planes. These trends will continue and may astound us in the very near term -
- We will soon be able to invent (and manufacture) our own chemistries for perfumes, toothpaste, cleaning products, and even our own softdrinks.
- We will be able to manufacture repair parts for nearly any device through nano-tech and ploymer technologies.
- We will be able to repaint our homes (interiors and exteriors) without ever spreading a drop of pain.
- And we will carry a newspaper on the train to work - we just won’t throw it away.
4/30/2005 at 11:23 am
Dawn Eason
I think the digital paper is one of the coolest things I have ever heard of. I would use it in a heartbeat. I don’t like computers that much because after surfing the web for a while my eyes really start to bother me. As for the comment that “it’s not the medium, it’s the reporter,” I think that is true. No one wants to read a crappy story by someone that has no credibility no matter what kind of medium they are using. People want facts from someone that they can trust. Reporters in newspapers have this trust from the people because the newspaper hired them so the people think they must be credible. This is probably how people would think of a digital paper also.
5/1/2005 at 7:08 pm
BillFrench
More on E-Ink…
5/4/2005 at 10:20 pm
ElizabethWood Rodgers
I enjoyed this post because I at one point in my younger days (jr high/high school) I had always wanted to be a journalist. I loved writing, I wrote for the high school newspaper, wrote journals, I just wrote!
As I got to high school and college, my opinions changed about journalism, but my thoughts on the newspaper didn’t. We always learn that the newspaper was/is always the first source of information that we get our news. Newspapers are the place where we can continue to get our news and always have it there to look at.
I know I’m rambling but I just enjoyed the post because all this digital and new technology with the news is great. It sounds fascinating and I can’t wait to see what happens! Thanks for the information, I thought it was great!