The other day I brought up the exploding microbrew industry, and how it will no doubt be affected by the coming economic, uhh, downturn, shall we say. But I had another thought about an industry going in a different direction: Print News.
How many print news publications are still going to exist in their current forms after this? What about major metropolitan “newspapers” that have the same content online, only more up-to-date. The current news cycle moves so much faster than print media anyway, and now that no one is going out and buying newspapers, the volume has to be WAY down, in an industry that’s been waning ever since the first internet bulletin board back in the 90's.
What does Oppo think? Will this be the kiss of death for a lot of printed media? An excuse for some executives to say, “we’re not printing papers anymore?” Or will they just fire up the presses again after this is all over? I’m sure there will still be some major papers that push right through, but those are probably subsidized by online ad revenue and subscriptions at this point anyway. What about little local papers? Maybe they’re saving money by not having to distribute papers? Or are they losing ad revenue because local contractors love to fill their pages, and now that’s just wiped out?
Clearly traffic is exploding on just about every web-based news source right now, but printing has to have just about come to a screeching halt, no? Am I way off?