Dead Media? Not So Fast, Bub

Has it ever occurred to you that everything you read on the Internet about the future of the media is written by people who are writing on the Internet about the future of the media? They say that history is written by the winners. Sometimes it's rewritten by the winners. And at this point, it's quite possible it's being pre-written by guys who have way too much skin in the game.

Likewise, has it ever occurred to you that a lot of what you read about the death of newspapers is written by people who were recently fired from their jobs at newspapers? Does this seem fair to you?

I flew with this friend of mine the other day. He's a big Internet nabob. He certainly knows what's going on in that space, and I bow to his wisdom on just about any related subject. But without too much prompting he declared that magazines were dead. That caught me up short. Then I thought, hold on a minute. I'm sure he believes what he's saying, but he's in direct competition with a bunch of magazines that are trying to hold up their own piece of their sector, and most of his staff used to work in magazines and now, you know, don't anymore.

So I thought, okay, magazines are in pretty tough shape all right. But dead? You go to an airport and all you see is magazines. Even the books look like magazines. There are at least seven separate magazines still interested in Jon and Kate. A bunch more seem to be about boats and cameras and computers and sex. I generally buy one about cars. Dead? Magazines? Who says so? The Internet.

I'm going to keep on believing in most of what I read, of course. Except for one specific area: I'm not interested in anybody who says anything that I like is dead. Liquor. Meat. Books, magazines and newspapers. Personal computers that do not depend upon the cloud. I'm not going to consider anything dead until I'm no longer interested in it, and I'm going to watch out for emotional conflicts of interest on the whole subject.

Comments

[Sungkyu Lee]

I agree

[jpditri]

If it isn't a dead medium why didn't you just publish this in a magazine? Surely the audience would be larger?

And to paraphrase an article I just read, "Likewise, has it ever occurred to you that a lot of what you read about the life of magazines is written by people who are trying to justify their dying medium? Does this seem fair to you?"

[CalexenderJ]

Soooo because the majority of people who travel don't have laptops or can't access the internet while flying you assert that the reports of the demise of the magazine industry is greatly exaggerated? I'm going to have to disagree with you. Look there's certain places where newspapers and magazines have a clear advantage over new media: Airplanes, the beach, the bathroom. But dead doesn't mean extinct, it means relegated from ubiquity to a small niche. You can find places and professions were people still use beepers and typewriters but that doesn't mean they aren't dead.

[cadsuch]

The media members who are filing for bankruptcy are not writers on the internet.

Jon and Kate who?

[RaderBarbarian]

Mr. Bing, try this experiment. I just did. Call 10 of your friends and ask them how many current issues of magazines they have in their house. Then ask them if they have a computer. The result of my survey was 2 magazines - that's it. Two. And ten have Internet. Draw your own conclusions, but if you insist of being blind, well then, we'll see you in a few years maybe.

[larry278]

Mr Bing may be unaware of the site: Propublica, & sites which began as news aggregators starting to attempt to do their own investigative reporting. His own blog is evidence that sites post origional(sp?) reporting, analysis & comment & this content is witty & perceptive.
Print MSM continues in attempts to destroy itself. Mr Bing's blog further weakens the financial MSM.

[BlackJAC]

Plot Hole: not everyone has an Internet connection. Further, what happens when the power goes out?

[larry278]

Those who don't have computers or access to the web are not likely to be magazine users or subscribers. Power failures are rare. BTW, how do you manage to read when there's no electricity to turn on the lamps? It's hard & dangerous to use candles or coal oil lamps. LOL Are you from Mo's boot heel, BlackJAC? How about rural NJ or Philipsburg, Washington, Camden? There's upstate NY & fly-over country too. Hurricanes can leave you without electricity for days.
Some of us degenerates who live in the boonies have Japanese generator to give us power when a local power co goes off line.
Where have you been? It is 2009. Regular users of newspapers & magazines are dying off. Younger people don't use newspapers or magazines. It's difficult for a paper to survive if nobody buys it or advertises in it. The same thing goes for magazines.