Tipping point (continued)
: More evidence that we’re at the tipping point in media (see earlier posts here and here):
: The Economist marvels at Rupert Murdoch’s speech to newspaper editors:
The speechóastonishing not so much for what it said as for who said itómay go down in history as the day that the stodgy newspaper business officially woke up to the new realities of the internet age. Talking at times more like a pony-tailed, new-age technophile than a septuagenarian old-media god-like figure, Mr Murdoch said that news ìprovidersî such as his own organisation had better get web-savvy, stop lecturing their audiences, ìbecome places for conversationî and ìdestinationsî where ìbloggersî and ìpodcastersî congregate to ìengage our reporters and editors in more extended discussions.î He also criticised editors and reporters who often ìthink their readers are stupidî.
I, too, said the speech will be seen as a tipping point.
: Ruth sends me a link to George Will’s column tomorrow:
If you awake before dawn you probably hear a daily sound that may become as anachronistic as the clatter of horses’ hooves on urban cobblestones. The sound is the slap of the morning paper on the sidewalk.
The circulation of daily U.S. newspapers is 55.2 million, down from 62.3 million in 1990. The percentages of adults who say they read a paper “yesterday” are ominous…
Perhaps we are entering what David T.Z. Mindich, formerly of CNN, calls “a post-journalism age.”
No, I think we’re entering a new journalism age.
: Will quotes the latest issue of the Wilson Quarterly, which I’m headed to a newsstand to buy now. The cover story: The Collapse of Big Media.
