Ghosts of Media Future and Past


Posted: January 28th, 2009 | By: Steve Mullen | Filed under: Social Media Opinion | No Comments

Over the last couple of days, I’ve listened to an interesting contrast of speakers at two separate events.  As mentioned in previous posts, I attended an appearance by Peter Shankman yesterday.  Peter is a social media guru who has a great knack for knowing “what’s coming next”.  This afternoon, I attended the monthly luncheon for our local public relations trade group, PRSA Richmond.  The featured speaker was Glen Proctor, executive editor of our daily newspaper, the Richmond Times-Dispatch.  He talked about the future of his newspaper and the newspaper industry in general.

Listening to these two men on consecutive days really gave me a perspective of where we’re going and where we’ve been.  Newspapers, as we all know, are struggling.  I agree with Mr. Proctor’s statement today that newspapers will exist in the future in print form, but I question their relevance and just how many of them will actually remain.  Who can honestly say that in 10 years they expect to be reading a print newspaper regularly?  I don’t read them very often *now*.

While it makes me a little sad, I suspect local newspapers such as the RTD will go the “way of the wind”, replaced by digital delivery (via RSS and/or other formats) and localized websites such as our local Richmond.com (which the RTD recently purchased) and Richmond BizSense.

As Mr. Shankman said yesterday, newspapers that remain will be available anywhere and any time you want them … not just in print form.  Mr. Proctor did reference the RTD’s digital edition, which less than half of the room knew about.  He also said that the paper is revamping its web strategy … which is an extremely good move.  I don’t know many people who comment favorably about the RTD’s website.

I wish I had the time to go point by point comparing and contrasting more of what the two men said, but I’m sure you can imagine how surreal these two listening opportunities must have been.

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