Monday, February 14, 2005
Meditation on Mediation...
Are Newspapers Dead?
The Scobleizer ponders this question. Which leads me to ponder further. A lot of thinking goes into gnawing on the bones of specific media--especially 'old-style' media.
But the whole framework for thinking about this may be wrong.
Aren't we confusing medium with mediation? A specific medium--newspapers--faces a number of challenges. But the act of mediation--of the careful weeding-through and analysis of information (see my recent post on that word!) remains important, regardless of the physical medium. Simply because Scoble denies himself the pleasure of ploughing through a physical newspaper, doesn't mean that he doesn't rely on newspapers, as his post makes clear.
The trick, for both 'old-line' publishers and for the new gang of blogger/publishers, is to mediate information into something useful and worthwhile--and figure out how to get paid for that.
For the record, yesterday, I read the Sunday New York Times in two forms. In the morning, I scanned my email feed, and read a few articles on-line. And then, after a day spent at a trade show, I enjoyed a glass of wine, and some quiet time with my wife, while we swapped sections of the physical paper. Both the web version and the paper version offered their own pleasures and insights.
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The Scobleizer ponders this question. Which leads me to ponder further. A lot of thinking goes into gnawing on the bones of specific media--especially 'old-style' media.But the whole framework for thinking about this may be wrong.
Aren't we confusing medium with mediation? A specific medium--newspapers--faces a number of challenges. But the act of mediation--of the careful weeding-through and analysis of information (see my recent post on that word!) remains important, regardless of the physical medium. Simply because Scoble denies himself the pleasure of ploughing through a physical newspaper, doesn't mean that he doesn't rely on newspapers, as his post makes clear.
The trick, for both 'old-line' publishers and for the new gang of blogger/publishers, is to mediate information into something useful and worthwhile--and figure out how to get paid for that.For the record, yesterday, I read the Sunday New York Times in two forms. In the morning, I scanned my email feed, and read a few articles on-line. And then, after a day spent at a trade show, I enjoyed a glass of wine, and some quiet time with my wife, while we swapped sections of the physical paper. Both the web version and the paper version offered their own pleasures and insights.
