From the desk of Robert Rappaport on Tuesday, December 9th 2008 at 6:40

DEATH OF THE NEWSPAPER?

I wasn’t shocked to hear about Tribune Company filing for bankruptcy this week. It’s just more proof the industry is outdated and the business model no longer works.

Tribune owns a number of well-known newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, along with a number of TV stations and the Chicago Cubs.

Do you still read the actual printed newspaper? Would you read it if your workplace didn’t supply it? If you answered “yes” to these questions, I’d bet you’re in the minority. I DO read the paper, but it’s practically delivered to my radio studio. This is not to say I don’t care what’s in the paper, I do. However, there are so many other choices than simply flipping pages.

Both of our local newspapers have decent online sites, at least in terms of content. The news is there, peppered with a bunch of ads that my mind doesn’t even register anymore, even though the actual websites are a bit clunky to navigate at times.

Speaking of ads...does anyone still read the newspaper classifieds the companies once relied on for revenue? People can post and read the ads for free on so many websites, such as craigslist, so why bother finding a newspaper?

Looking for a job? Go to a specialized website. Looking for a car? Go to a specialized website.

I think our brains are being re-programmed to skip all of the extraneous stuff forced on us by websites to generate money. I’m sure I see lots of ads everyday, but I ignore them. I co-own a business and I would never advertise on the web. We rely on word-of-mouth.

Did you even notice we at AZPM have (less-obtrusive) ads on this website? Sure, we call it “underwriting,” but they’re ads, plain and simple, and I bet you don’t even notice them.

What’s the answer for newspapers? I have no clue, but something needs to be done and they need to further evolve. Simply laying off people won’t work in the long-run, unless the goal is to go out of business.

I could go on about the future of radio and TV too, but I’m running out of space on this high-tech blog.

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