Referring to Pablo J. Boczkowski’s 2004 book, Digitizing the News: Innovation in Online Newspapers, Jack notes how newspapers in the US were quick to buy up radio licences when radio started making a splash, dabbled in news by fax and something called Videotex. Then came the doomed proprietary online news systems:
Publishers adored the proprietary online services because they locked down the user experience to the newspaper’s benefit. A Washington Post spokesman quoted in Boczkowski’s book applauds the way Interchange “preserves the company’s direct business relationship with Post readers.”
The publishers were pretty sure that proprietary online services were the next wave, but if you remember having used one, you know how badly they sucked. Let’s say you subscribed to AOL to read the New York Times but wanted to read a story in the Washington Post. You couldn’t get to the Post from AOL because the Post was published exclusively on Interchange. What you had to do was disconnect your screeching modem from AOL, purchase an Interchange subscription, log onto Interchange, and then navigate to the Post. A return visit to the Times required the reverse of that drill.
Jack’s punchline, about why newspapers haven’t conquered the web despite being relatively early to establish websites, is this:
From the beginning, newspapers sought to invent the Web in their own image by repurposing the copy, values, and temperament found in their ink-and-paper editions. Despite being early arrivals, despite having spent millions on manpower and hardware, despite all the animations, links, videos, databases, and other software tricks found on their sites, every newspaper Web site is instantly identifiable as a newspaper Web site. By succeeding, they failed to invent the Web.
In an addendum he quotes Scott Rosenberg who says:
In the ’90s, if you were at a newspaper and learned about the Web, you were likely to grow frustrated and disillusioned with how slowly the paper’s management was waking up to how the new medium actually worked. They got on the Web, and then just sat there. So if you had any restless or entrepreneurial gene in your body, you would sooner or later give up on your arthritic bosses and go do something interesting online yourself or with some startup. The newspaper industry suffered a steady exodus of the very people who it should have been relying on to navigate the new waters.
Both comments resonate with me. I definitely have seen and continue to see news executives who are oblivious to the web, spend very little time on it and don’t see it as either a real threat or opportunity. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: you have to go online to know online. And that’s exactly what news execs should be doing if they haven’t already.
All Evolving Newsroom
Newspapers have always adapted to technology
Jack Shafer has a nice piece on Slate looking at how news companies have adapted to technology over the years.
Referring to Pablo J. Boczkowski’s 2004 book, Digitizing the News: Innovation in Online Newspapers, Jack notes how newspapers in the US were quick to buy up radio licences when radio started making a splash, dabbled in news by fax and something called Videotex. Then came the doomed proprietary online news systems:
Jack’s punchline, about why newspapers haven’t conquered the web despite being relatively early to establish websites, is this:
In an addendum he quotes Scott Rosenberg who says:
Both comments resonate with me. I definitely have seen and continue to see news executives who are oblivious to the web, spend very little time on it and don’t see it as either a real threat or opportunity. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: you have to go online to know online. And that’s exactly what news execs should be doing if they haven’t already.