The media is the message

Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review.

I've been thinking about how technology would affect newspapers for about 20 years now. Most people thought the internet would kill newspapers. I never bought this notion because I could never make it pencil out: Newspapers paid for websites, not visa versa.

The way to compete was to accentuate the things newspapers could do better and not to compete in things the internet does better: Databases, speed of publication, interactivity and archives.

I've written essays on the topic, like this one I wrote in February 2009, and I invited readers to write in five years and show me how wrong I was. Guess what? I just reread it and so far, I'm right on the money with everything except online coupons (think Living Social) and micropayments. (And it's still premature to call me wrong on this one—99 cent subscriptions anyone?)

The only thing that was killing newspapers was suicide—newspapers' inability to evolve to meet existing market conditions. The titans of newsprint couldn't turn away from the icebergs of free online classifieds, national internet advertising, and the lie of social media advertising and public relations.

But I recently bought the Nexus 10 tablet. This is the future. I can read a tablet newspaper in bed as easily as I can read a book, something I could never do with a laptop or desktop or cell phone. I've been watching the two technologies of smart phone and tablet evolve toward each other—cell phones increasing in size for videos and games, and tablets shrinking for portability. There is still not a digital analog for local display advertising that works as well as a newspaper, but think about it—if the content has already been read on the tablet, why would anyone pick up a newsprint newspaper?

It's time for me personally to learn to build apps. And it's time to seriously consider embargoing stories from the web. Let's see how suicidal newspapers are in the face of this sea change.