I had a great listen on the ride to work this morning – Eric Schwartzman of the On The Record Online’s latest interview with Duncan Wardle, Vice President of Walt Disney World and Global PR for Disney Parks.
If you have an iPod you should really go over to my Gigadial channel now and subscribe, that way when I find cool stuff, it gets loaded right to your iPod. How cool is that?
Mr. Wardle had some points that stuck with me:
- Newspapers will die soon
- The 6pm News will die before newspapers
- Within the next 4-5 years any consumer will be able to block your organization if they determine you are not relevant.
So, are you ready to switch gears or are you going to ride the boat to Davey Jones’ Locker?
5 replies on “Newspapers Have Less than 5 Years to Live”
I’m on that boat. Newspapers will evolve, not die. Sure, some won’t make the cut, but new ones will also pop up. In fact, local newspapers that innovate will become even more potent in the future.
Evening news is far from dead. Again, it will need to evolve, but there continues to be a place for local TV news. And the networks, while not what they once were, still draw millions of viewers for the nightly news — far more than watch cable news.
I’m going to try to listen to the original interview and perhaps share more detailed thoughts after that.
I agree that print newspapers are dying, I don’t know if I would give it quite the escalated timeline that Duncan Wardle does.
The print newspaper industry has been “dying” for 5-10 years already. There are far too many sources available for free on the web for print newspapers to maintain an increase in subscriptions. Additionally, advertising on the internet is much cheaper than print advertising, thus cutting in to a major revenue generator for print papers.
I worked in the newspaper archiving industry for 2 years and worked with newspaper editors from all over the country and yes, they were all looking for ways to maximize their online press. Eventually, the print business will be dead, but I would put it at least 10 years out.
[…] been a fair amount of discussion about how much time newspapers on print and the 6pm news have left. I’m planning the party for 2/26/13. Yes, 2013 is only 5 years away. Where will you be and […]
I totally agree, print will be gone soon. Like, remember when television killed movie theaters, and movies killed live theater?
Wait a second…
One medium never kills another, it just changes the use and, by extension, the model of industries based around the old use. Some forms of transitional media do die (see telegraph, fax machine… although there still are a lot of fax machines around, aren’t there?) but I believe print is too fundamental to just vanish. The people in print industries who are unwilling to recognize the changing world, on the other hand…
Yeah, I conceded complete defeat when Chip pointed out that AM radio still exists.