Today, many people are mourning the passing of the Rocky Mountain News. A highly respected paper found itself unable to compete against the shifts in individual in media consumption from a daily/off-line event to a real-time/on-line activity. While the Rocky Mountain News attempted a number of ways to extend its paper to the on-line work, it was a little too late to survive.
I am attending a United Methodist Communication's meeting as part of the Global Council on Communication at Southern Methodist University. It was interesting to here the reaction of one of the journalism professors to this crisis. At the core of his message was that news is becoming a deafening noise of clutter vs. a clear signal of the truth.
In other words, he believes that news is becoming trivialized, unverified, and deafening. The extension of the argument was articulated with a video talking about "Google-zon" produced a few years ago. Take a watch here...
Why are people ignoring well written papers that are very insightful failing as a business? Why are people choosing "crowd-written" blogs over "professional journalist" analysis? I think that consumers have decided that they want it real-time, on-demand, and participative so people can co-create ideas and thoughts.
There is a new belief that we are "smarter together" than one individual or institution on its own. People want to access information on their own terms and then participate in true dialogue to uncover the meaning together.
Consumers habits have shifted. The Internet helped accelerate the shift. How will newspapers adjust? How does the shift in consumer trends impact your business or organization?
The wave is coming. Will you surf it or get smashed by it?
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