In this article, Steve Lohr seems to ignore the increasing social value of the Internet. He writes off new media, and cites Barry Diller, who regards “searching and shopping” as the only functions of the Internet. In doing so, he ignores the potential and power of blogging (believe, me, I am cringing, as I note my cheesy enthusiasm in this sentence). Perhaps, I’ve bought into Dave’s vision of the world. It appears that the FCC is close to allowing big companies to take up larger ownership stakes in local media markets, further reducing the diversity of news services available to the public. This prospect unnerves me, and the idea of community bloggers who mobilize to provide local news coverage, offers some hope.
Internet is also for the lazy or busy people to communicate. While the other technological advances of news and media… well, some of it is already there, but not recognized yet because the generation that still reads the newspaper in hard copy form is still around. Another problem is that there’s no way to authenticate various sites for their information, while newspapers are established. But I think things are moving towards it since 9/11, where people wants up-to-date news.
Another problem is staring at the screen. TV you can stare all day, but you aren’t really concentrating that hard like reading. People aren’t used to that yet. I think that explains the shop and search, and blogging can be included.
Online security would be the issue with selling published material online. I guess online newspaper gets enough visits and newspaper sales that they can keep it maintained.