Austin360 blogs > Digital Savant > Archives > 2008 > March > 11 > Entry
Dear old media: your days are numbered
I’ve been to funerals that were cheerier and more upbeat than the last panel I attended at South by Southwest Interactive. (To be fair, they were pet funerals, but they were beloved gerbils.)
The panel “Roll Over Gutenberg, Tell McLuhan The News” (average blogger: “Who?”) was a mournful dirge declaring, basically, that old media is up the creek without a paddle, or even so much as a rolled-up newspaper.
George Kelly, online coordinator for the Contra Costa Times, said “Time is growing short” for mainstream publications who hope to utilize this whole Internet craze to keep themselves relevant.
Despite news blips like yesterday’s New York Times online explosion over the New York governor, Kelly believes old media is in for some hard times: “I’m thinking about death. I’m thinking about the end of the industry as we know it. Not seeing a rebirth.”
It made for the most depressing time I had at the festival. Audience members within an already-small turnout streamed out little by little as Kelly ran a one-man panel that invited lots of audience questions, all of which were greeted with a meaningful pause, then more bad news about why newspapers just don’t get it. To paraphrase “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” the panel had more pauses than a Pinter play.
The panel could have really benefited from a few more panelists, perhaps even someone on the new media side who could offer perspective from the other side of the equation.
The few, if any, bright spots, are for old media to find ways to do meaningful, useful reporting using new media tools like Twitter, Facebook or databases. Kelly mentioned one New York Times project that allows readers to see where U.S. soldier deaths from the war in Iraq are concentrated by the zip code of where they came from.
Finding better ways to reach users on mobile phones is also a potential area for growth.
But overall, Kelly said, old media jobs are going away and aren’t being replenished.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go see if we have any Prozac in the house.
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