Cringely: Alongside all the other bad news for traditional media, the “brutal honesty” of pay-per-click advertising could make it impossible to reproduce the ad revenue models of the print world — which would in turn make it impossible for print publications to survive online migrations.
There are of course lots of other reasons why print pubs don’t make it online as “shovelware” — going for it without “getting” the web’s unique capabilities spells doom in general. But the fact that focused digital advertising provides a level of transparency that traditional media can’t withstand is something I hadn’t considered.
Shacker’s bold and ruthless prediction for 2006: Two major newspapers will fold entirely.
Thanks Colleen
Cool: MT’s “Post to the future” scheduled posting system works nicely (we used to call this a “drip date” in the CMS we used at ZDNet).
The Newspapers which are more likely to fold will be the Papers of the Inteligencia. Here in Melbourne, Australia, The Age and The Australian.
Meanwhile, the “Newspaper for Illiterates”, the Herald-Sun will still retain it’s userbase.