Friday, July 24, 2009

It the newspaper was a new idea

What if the newspaper didn't exist?

What if just recently someone came up with concept of printing the latest information on paper and making it available in local shops, street stalls and via subscription?

Would in succeed?
Would anyone buy it?
Would be the 'killer' analogue app?
Would anyone invest in the infrastructure to support it across towns, counties and countries?

I guess not. Which does raises the question of why the press now has the distinguished position it does..

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Which is why they should be working a lot harder to may money out of online publishing. As most of the UK press make very good websites. Which really is a newspaper you can click around. But they have mostly failed to try custom delivery to customer via interest and trends. They let offline pay for it, and wait.

Hayden Sutherland said...

Tristan
You're quite right, newspapers can't rely on the paper-based product to give them the revenue they once had (and the dominant opinion leadership they assumed).
Whether personalisation is the key to their survival remains to be seen...