Adapt, or DIE ! ! !

It was the subject of my presentation last week – the future and nature of newspapers in the modern state of the world. I prefer not to cull from my presentation to explore this idea, but suffice it to say the very necessary model is one common in the animal kigdom – that of adaption (or evolution).

In truth, evolution is of little use to the newspapers question because evolution requires generations – time that traditional papers no longer have. Adaptation is simple; a challenge presents itself in a given environment and the parties of that environment either move away from, or along with said challenge and thus extend their own chances of survival ... or they fail to do so, and are made useless.

Newspapers labor under the challenge of competing with a media they can never defeat. The Internet has the twin advantages of dynamism and immediacy. Other than streaming video – which is, of course, live and in the now – the ability to receive instant updates, even the receive those instant updates in one's email or by way of a cell phone blow the stodgy nature of a paper and ink production entirely out of the proverbial water.

The only ways in which papers stay afloat, if you will, are via cross-purposing, e.g. creating an online presence the advertising revenue of which will feed and inform the tradition paper format. Eventually, logic indicates the traditional papers would die out entirely – the few reminaing being the stalwarts such as the New York Times, London Times, and le Journal in Paris. Only the oldest and most venerable would reasonably exist – kept alive by way of an honoring of bygone ways and an appreciation a few of us still have the feel of newsprint and the smell of stale ink with our Sunday cups of coffee.