Don't Count Out Newspapers
OSCON Alumnus Graeme Merrall is now an architect at News Digital Media (a Rupert Murdoch company based in Australia). He dropped this tidbit in conversation:
In 2004 news.com.au served more traffic every day than we served on 9/11. When Shapelle Corby was found guilty we trebled our normal traffic and we now serve more than that every day. When Steve Irwin died we trebled our traffic again and we're already half way up to that peak every day now. It's a slashdot effect that never seems to end :)
We like to talk about the death of old media and the emergence of new models, but count out the established companies at your peril. Those growth rates are a wakeup call to anyone who pictures News Corp and other big-in-print companies as dinosaurs thrashing their last as the mammals are evolving around them.
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Wishing the established businesses to die off to make room is a typical expectation. Of course it will happen to some extent as it always does. Yet the world seldom changes overnight. As long as they maintain their ability to adapt(even if slower than the bleeding edge) they will be able to use their size and momentum.
The consumer knows the paper based brands. The papers already produce a newsstream. Establishing a web based newsstream should be a very small overhead. A new player would not have these benefits.
The question is of course exactly how consumers want news in electronic form. Will they want the traditional editorial process? Will they want individual criterial? multiple sources? etc.
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KW [12.29.06 06:52 AM]
Does anyone else find it ironic that someone from a Murdoch company would make an analogy to evolution, when these news sources typically push the ID agenda?