The dying paper...

It's been a busy New Year. Sorry about the delay.

I'm a practical kind of person. I'm fortunate enough to get this technological "revolution" that people are so crazy over. In all honesty, I'm pretty crazy over it, too. I just don't see it the way a lot of people do. I've never seen the whole "The future is here and it is now-or-whatever-else-will-scare-people" perspective behind this new medium of communication. I really thought most of us would have seen a lot of this coming. But no matter, it's here. Now, people, organizations, businesses - they have to decide what to do with it.

Rupert Murdoch is loony. Seriously, if you haven't figured it out for yourself yet, people will get the content they want online, and they won't pay for it. The media model, specifically the newspaper, is dying and dead. There are even proponents of magazine success that seem blindly sure that a money-for-content model will continue to be viable into the future of digital media.

There are two major flaws in this mindset: 1.) Information is widely available via free Internet sources, whether it be via user-generated or freemium-based platforms. There is so much information available, and so much of it comes to the user as a value-added benefit of association with a given source. Often, user-generated content is more relevant, more accurate, and more timely than that sourced from the traditional information mediums. And if people can get better information for free, why would they pay for it? 2.) Users who generate their own content recognize the benefit in providing value to their readers/subscribers and will continue to provide better information at no cost in order to improve their own recognition. And why shouldn't they? The sphere is full of bloggers and writers and tweeters who are trying to grow their audience, and they will do so by increasing the value of what they are disseminating. The traditional print media model cannot compete with that kind of a value proposition.

Solution? Empowerment. The media model needs to empower these independent information-generation sources with what they need to stay relevant to their sphere of influence. By doing so, and harnessing the creative power of these people, the media powers-that-be can stay relevant to their audiences.