"If everyone felt like you, we'd be out of business," the publisher groaned in her emailed response - when I told her I hadn't seen the article I edited because it was not one of the online offerings and I get my news from the Internet, from twitter, facebook and online news sources. The implication was - I'm killing off the publication.
Killing media? I begged to differ. People who get their news online - and who no longer depend on traditional media to clog their homes with paper and noise - are transforming media - not killing it. The future is now and while their are cadres of people who resist it, they will happily retire and eventually die like the dinosaurs did. And yes, I have a problem with articles that cannot be posted on twitter, I explained. It limits the scope of my readership.
Is there even room for traditional media in this day and age, I ask myself as I listen to my (very uncomputer savvy) mother quote radio host Michael Savage word-for-word, or watch my equally computer deficient father pour over the latest newspaper which resembles the paper version of a shrunken skull--thinner, shorter, sparser, and more pathetic than even our local Pennysaver. Publishers still producing print had better keep in mind that their readers are bound to be older, requiring BIG, bold typeface and that this last hurrah for print is just a temporary state of being.
But this doesn't mean that media is dead. It's simply changing. Just as surely as it did when I first launched myself into the workplace at Paramount Pictures Corporation, and a "telefax' machine the size of a large file cabinet was only available on every fourth floor of the Gulf & Western Building (now the Trump International Hotel) in New York City. We were warned that it was expensive to run, and only to use it for urgent missives to company brass. And now we've got email. Free, instant, complete letters and scans available in milliseconds. Life changes, evolves and we have to anticipate the changes and jump into the future.
So, I'm sorry Madame Publisher, that I don't subscribe to your printed news source...and I apologize for asking you to forward me a hard-copy--the only copy of my published article. As I explained to you, I get my news from the web. And, were that article on the web, your sending me a link to that story could have saved you so much postage. Perhaps next time...?
I worked in newsrooms for 22 years and I know that, in general, customer service stinks at most newspapers.
Her response is just one more reason print newspapers are marching toward the graveyard.
Posted by: Joan Stewart, The Publicity Hound | October 15, 2009 at 06:39 PM