Smart Newspaper

Like we have smart phone, I think it is the time for newspaper to become smart too. One publisher of the newspaper complained in the AJR pieces about:

"Newspapers need to negotiate a more equitable share with search engines that are making billions of dollars by selling ads around newspaper content without the costs of creating that content.... The book industry and the movie industry don't give their content away."

It is important for the newspaper publishers to aware that it is not solely the information itself but the way one media processes, organizes and presents the information, which creates value. It is true that Google does not produce any news content, but it creates a channel for people to effectively get the information they pursue. Google is valuable to users because it is smart and you can do things with it.

Newspapers, even online, are barely organizing their content innovatively than their print products. The newspaper still functions in a way, in which they assume that they are on the top of the information food chain. But as the AJR articles pointed out, it is no longer the case:

Today journalists stand not at the head of the pipeline but in the middle of a boundless web of interconnected media, messages, senders and receivers. This is the new, right-brain, digital world. The journalist-in-the-middle is a ringmaster, a maker and a consumer, a grand impresario of a two-way information flow that has no beginning, end or fixed schedule.

The newspaper should find the right position in the cycle of information flow. At least, newspapers must think themselves as information portals rather than the fixed number of pages arrived at people’s door every morning.

P.S. Please consider this post is written by a young adult (if under 30 considered young)who finally decided to become a subscriber of New York Times and have NOT received a single copy of the paper two weeks after placing the order online.