Silicon Insider: The Next Step in Web Media
Sept. 28, 2006 — -- Here, take a look at the future: http://www.ibctoday.com/News/Home.aspx
But be sure to come back or ABC will never let me do a link again.
Now, I don't know how long you hung around there, but I'll bet you spent a while.
Interesting, isn't it? Trust me: it's going to grow a whole lot more interesting the more I tell you about it.
A couple years ago I got into a lot of trouble when I used this column to announce the death of newspapers.
At the time I said that even as a veteran newspaper reporter I had realized that I didn't really read printed news anymore, that it was so much quicker, more efficient, and ultimately more balanced for me to gather my news by hopscotching around trusted news sources on the Web.
My analysis was anecdotal, I admitted, but if a guy who made his living from newspapers didn't read them anymore, why would anybody else?
Well, the reaction was pretty intense. I was accused in trade publications, columns and across the blogosphere of being biased, ignorant and a lousy business reporter -- after all, didn't I know that the newspaper business was still highly profitable?
Newspapers, I was told, usually in a pedantic tone, would be around for generations to come because they were institutions, because they'd already been around for centuries. Besides, what would mornings be like without a cup of coffee and the paper?
My answer to that: "I dunno, ask anybody under 25."
Luckily, Rupert Murdoch came to my rescue a week later when he gave a much-publicized speech that made a similar prediction. Now it wasn't some nobody tech reporter announcing the death of newspapers, but a media mogul.
I could be dismissed, Murdoch could not.
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