Akkam’s Razor

I was just reading an article on the economist, titled American media - On the brink. It’s a favored topic on the internets - that the newspaper as we know it will not survive. Conversely, a favored lament from the newspaper industry is that bloggers are parasites, aren’t trustworthy, and use naughty words.

When looking at the print landscape, we see declining circulation, dropping revenue, and rising costs.

Declining circulation could be the cause of competition from other mediums - including radio and television, as well as the population’s shift away from big cities and urban areas towards suburbs and exurbs, followed by the switch from public transportation (where papers could be read) to the individual person driving in a car. Advertising has shifted from being away from mass audiences towards niche and targeted marketing, which is not conducive to the print format. The changing tastes of younger consumers, the lack of inter-industry competition, and the aging, risk-averse nature of those in the newspaper industry, all have a hand in the decline of the newspaper. The internet isn’t the smoking gun to all those problems, not all of them.There’s a couple of systemic problems with newspapers - they have 2 customers to satisfy - advertisers and readers. Their second problem being that they think they sell content and advertising, and what they really sell is attention and the solution to problems.