Scott Donaton writes an important column in AdAge — important especially because of his audience: the advertisers who, together with publishers, cling stubbornly to old media and thus hold back the transformation to the new. He takes off on the Wall Street Journal’s strategic planning and asks when — not whether — the print version should die:
But certain forms of media that are currently print-based, particularly daily newspapers, must explore the possibility that there are more reader-friendly and cost-efficient ways to produce and distribute their content.
It’s still surprisingly difficult to get traditional media executives to admit this. But their resistance seems based on an emotional attachment to ink on paper, a deeply held — if largely indefensible — sense that a newspaper’s soul is inextricably linked to its format.
Which is nonsense. Scary as they are, some things must be confronted, including our overly romanticized notions of what a newspaper is.
