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R.I.P. Ink and Paper: Greatly Exaggerated? |
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Dr. Samuel Says -
Bidness
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Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
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Wednesday, 18 March 2009 |
It feels like I’ve been writing about this story for 10 years. Wait a sec, let me check my notes. Hmm. Actually, I have. The cutting edge tech guys have been presaging the death of ink and paper since at least 1994. According to these reports, filed over the last decade, newspapers and magazines will be supplanted by the Internet, and portable devices, and eventually by crazy sci-fi devices like foldable electronic displays.
 Well, those crazy sci-fi days may finally be upon us. Not so much out
of the spirit of innovation as the stench of desperation. Newspapers
are hemorrhaging money and we may very well be witnessing the death of
an institution here. The newspaper has long been our chief bulwark
against government malfeasance via investigative journalism. For the
most practical of reasons, too. For years, newspapers were among the
most profitable businesses you could buy. They generated insane profit
margins, which could be used to subsidize “altruistic” advocacy
journalism.
Only now, with real print reporting ceding territory to online
information as ubiquitous as it is dubious, are we coming to realize
how valuable that variety of professional journalism really is. Anyway.
I could go on and on. I fear for the Republic, friends. Which is why I
maintain a series of secure undisclosed residences worldwide.
All of which is my extremely roundabout way of recommending this recent
and excellent article from Fortune magazine. Author Michael Copeland
drills down through the emerging generation of “e-paper” initiatives,
with an eye toward hard-nosed business realities. The article suggests
there may be a happier alternative, in which e-paper solutions (like
Amazon’s Kindle reader) preserve the traditional distribution and
revenue models of print, minus all that expensive ink and paper.
Let’s hope so.
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