Certainly services like Craigslist and others that take away the “classifieds” income from newspapers, and do it quickly and effectively are a significant piece of the current problems they face (I found, contacted, and bought my Xbox 360 on the same day it was posted for sale on Craigslist at Christmas!)
But blogging, YouTube, and the collective intelligence element of fact finding and journalism is certainly not helping them either. Blogging itself has flipped the standards of who a “journalist” is, and has challenged the laws protecting the journalism trade in many situations.
All of this signals the end of the print media as we know it now. I don’t think print media will completely go away - because no matter how convenient communication is through the web, there is nothing tactile about it. A newspaper, magazine and/or book engages more of our senses through its touch, smell and appearance - and that is true “interactivity”. Displays won’t ever replace that - but they will force how print media is produced, organized and distributed to redefine itself.
This thought was spurred from an excellent article by Michael Arrington on Crunchnotes, here is an excerpt that is “gold” for all you trying to figure out the mindset difference in writing for a blog:.
“When I write, I write to learn more than I write to teach. I am not preaching to the masses, I am inviting them to have a conversation with me, where I get to set the topic and have the first word. We go from there.”
