Slate is running an interesting experiment, although not exactly scientific. One group of readers will limit themselves to print media for a couple of days, and the second group will avoid newspapers and limit themselves to reading news on the web (no aggregation sites allowed). The idea is to try and figure out who is better informed after a couple of days.

This is pretty interesting. Does it make a difference that when you read a newspaper you are deciding to read and do nothing else? Is your attention span shorter when you are getting your news online and you have a hot game of Desktop Tower Defense on pause in the background?

Again, this is hardly scientific, but it’s interesting nonetheless. We may get an idea about the degree to which we can expect to be (mis)informed in the future if print goes away.

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Matthew Hindman contends that the web is actually consolidating news around just a few sources. Even though it’s easy for anyone to publish, users’ tendencies to click on one of the first few links returned by Google means that it’s becoming more and more difficult to attract readers. The numbers back up what he was saying.

Not only that, but people are paying more and more attention to national and international sources than local sources.

While much of their national and international content may be syndicated, papers like these provide regional and local coverage that the New York Times and Washington Post cannot. When Web users rely on hyperlinks, or they return time and again to a few widely-read sources, they receive little exposure to local news. To that extent, they disengage from the world around them and take in only the high-profile stories that national media see fit to produce.

There’s a little bit of an, “oh well, we’ve been defeated” tone to this article. Maybe I’m being overly optimistic, but I think there’s plenty of opportunity to be heard. At least your chances are better than they were when the only way you could have a voice was to own a printing press.

When all we had was print, radio and television, there was not long tail.

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Clay Shirky has an analysis of how news organizations did not anticipate the Internet. According to Shirky, some of the groundwork of how news utilized the Internet started with a teenager who loved Dave Barry and started sending it to other fans on a mailing list. This history he gives with the very detailed look at what has happened with news and how it was unexpected.

He calls it “Thinking the Unthinkable.”

He goes on to breakdown with a fascinating breakdown of where we used to be, where we are going and what’s going to be the next step.

Revolutions create a curious inversion of perception. In ordinary times, people who do no more than describe the world around them are seen as pragmatists, while those who imagine fabulous alternative futures are viewed as radicals. The last couple of decades haven’t been ordinary, however. Inside the papers, the pragmatists were the ones simply looking out the window and noticing that the real world was increasingly resembling the unthinkable scenario. These people were treated as if they were barking mad. Meanwhile the people spinning visions of popular walled gardens and enthusiastic micropayment adoption, visions unsupported by reality, were regarded not as charlatans but saviors.

When reality is labeled unthinkable, it creates a kind of sickness in an industry. Leadership becomes faith-based, while employees who have the temerity to suggest that what seems to be happening is in fact happening are herded into Innovation Departments, where they can be ignored en masse. This shunting aside of the realists in favor of the fabulists has different effects on different industries at different times. One of the effects on the newspapers is that many of their most passionate defenders are unable, even now, to plan for a world in which the industry they knew is visibly going away.

He’s right. The industry is not going away. I work in print and this weekend, I’ve been in a comprehensive video journalism seminar.

Why?

Because it’s necessary to learn this as it will be a tool for news, not only now, but for how I handle writing and delivering news in the future.

He goes on to write (and this essay is so good you will need to read it twice at this blog) about the rallying cry of journalists, which isn’t much of a business model to follow in the big scheme of things.

The newspaper people often note that newspapers benefit society as a whole. This is true, but irrelevant to the problem at hand; “You’re gonna miss us when we’re gone!” has never been much of a business model. So who covers all that news if some significant fraction of the currently employed newspaper people lose their jobs? I don’t know. Nobody knows.

Indeed, we don’t. So, the best thing to do is put energy and effort into educating ourselves with all the ready available tools so we can remain relevant.

H/T Laura Creekmore

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From John Robinson …

These are tough times for people trying to hold onto their jobs.

These are tough times, too, for businesses as customers keep a tight grip on their pocketbooks.

The newspaper isn’t immune to the economic downturn. When you make your living primarily from local advertising, you feel the pain.

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Zac Echola has an excellent post I found on Twitter this morning. It’s long and detailed on his observations about newspapers, media and establishing new ideas. It’s called Cutting The Cords, Bridging The Gaps:

Let’s face a few facts: Nothing a newspaper can do will stop the migration of readers (and ultimately money) from printed product to the Web. No redesign, no layoffs, no consultant will change the will of the information consumer. I’m not suggesting print will completely die. No medium has yet desimated another medium, only forced new technologies to deploy the old media. Video hardly killed the radio star, but the addition of new technology certainly changed the game–and with it, new business models were forged.

The entire post is excellent and he ends it with this gem. Read every word of it because he’s giving valuable information.

The point here is that web forms don’t need a commission, they work on holidays and weekends and they don’t ever sleep. Obfuscating the various ways we can take money from advertisers is a horrible plan, all things considered. Keeping products clear and always available is key to any future success newspapers hope to expect online this year.

H/T Ryan Sholin on Twitter

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That’s what Keith Parnell is talking about. And for the record, he thinks print has a little longer than that:

I agree the majority of media and communications are moving online. But not all and completely. Not in 5 years.

One of the interesting points brought up in this discussion is the expansion of the number of publications available online and the Amazon Kindle. I don’t have a Kindle yet because I don’t buy first generation electronics as a rule, which is a little weird for a techie-type. In this case, I’ve been tempted several times to break the rule, especially when I’m traveling.

What I’d really like is a low powered device with the “paper” look the Kindle give that’s open to the whole web, or at least Google Reader.  One of the other negatives to the Kindle in my opinion is that I can’t read everything with it…yet.

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