At one point, the media wasn’t sure how to approach the web - should they ridicule it, ignore it and wait till it goes away, or see it as a threat to be dealt with? The Internet and those who populated its content were seen as unprofessional, unreliable, unreadable and apparently a waste of time. Now that it’s making an impression, however, mainstream media still may not be entirely sure how to harness the Internet, but they’re at least making cautious approaches.
In his assessment of the State of the News Media report released earlier this year, Steve Johnson at the Chicago Tribune has found that media companies are terrified of the Internet. The upside, he says, is that they’re finally taking the web seriously and making moves to exploit it but, being 10 years behind the curve, there’s a bit of work to be done.
“…journalists now see the Internet as a possible salvation and not this horrible threat to their standards. They are experimenting wildly, but no formula has emerged and maybe even less of an idea of how to pay for it.
And as always, how to pay for it is the problem. With global newspaper readership in decline (except in China, India and a few other parts of the third world), the media have to figure out how to harness the precious advertising dollar on the web, because almost nobody is prepared to pay for news content at this point.
See the State of the News Media report in its entirety.
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