What Now? What Comes After Newspapers?

Going off of Colin's prompt, there are three things that need to be addressed in the wake of newspapers demise:

1. What do YOU see in [their] place?

2. What are YOUR content consumption habits, at that point?

3. What role do you see yourself playing, possibly even as a content creator?

I'll take them one at a time:

1. What do I see in [their] place?

Blogs, Social Networks, News Aggregators, Tech still TDB.

For starters, I get as much of my news from blogs today as I do from more traditional news outlets. In fact, anything cultural, I'll get from a variety of blogs that I've rounded up and read regularly. Film, Music, TV, etc. are all better covered by bloggers and internet only journalists than they are by any mainstream newspaper (NY Times Film section aside. AO, you're the man! But I actually think your internet-only material is better than some of your print stuff, brilliant!) The news is quicker and more personal (After art is best covered from a subjective opinion. There is nothing worse than objective art coverage). As film critics get the ax across the country, the blogosphere is filling with film writing that is really excellent: informative, insightful and passionate.

Social Networks already have cemented themselves as invaluable tools for news coverage. All you Twitter haters need look no further than the Iran Elections and the Mumbai terrorist attacks for the reason why Twitter must exist. At a time when, in Iran, the government had widespread censorship over what could be reported about the uprisings surrounding the elections, leaving, in the process, the mainstream press in the dark, Twitterers across the country became THE source for news. What followed was a tremendous amount of unfiltered, unedited information revealing the real truths behind what was happening. Combined with grainy, pixelated YouTube videos, these brave activists/citizen journalists risked their own lives to shed light on the ugly conditions of a country fighting to reclaim itself.

There is no reason to think that Twitter has seen it's peak or even, it's entire potential. This is a service that will continue to mature and evolve. The Twitter train is leaving the station and you can either choose to acknowledge its growing importance and get on board or get run over. It's not stopping once it's fully on its way. I'm not sure that Facebook will have the same importance as a news source. As the more innovative Twitter has grown in popularity and importance, Facebook has merely copied it. The new news feeds are directly modeled on Twitter's platform and as long as Facebook continues to focus on useless, time wasting apps like Mafia Wars and Social Interview rather than truly innovating as a worthy news platform, it'll stay as a nice way to stay in touch with friends but nothing else. I'm a fan of Facebook for what it does but it isn't Twitter and doesn't have the same level of excitement surrounding its potential.

News Aggregators have already established themselves as a vital and fun portion of the 'net. As newspapers bite the dust, they'll only continue to grow in importance. Rather than having to wade through pages of stories one isn't interested in (which may actually be a good thing), one can search for a single news item and get a range of coverage (which may actually be a better thing). No longer is someone forced to rely on just the Courant's (or AP's) coverage of an item. Now, you can see more coverage than anyone could possibly know what to deal with. If you're not looking for a single item, head to Google News' main page and you've got yourself the front page of a region-less, multi-sided newspaper. It'll take an adjustment for readers who like folding newsprint but it's not an impossible leap.

Finally, by 2014, who knows what'll be around? Let's take a look at five years ago. In 2004:

-Facebook was just being founded. Now, it's a widespread phenomenon that has 300 million users in 5 years.
-Digg was founded. Now it's one of the most popular social news networks on the planet.
-A small email service was launched. Gmail now has 146 million users despite being in "beta" for much of the five years.

That's just three services that are now synonymous with the larger internet. Impressive to say the least. Now, what comes in 2014? Who the hell knows and really, who the hell can guess? Was Twitter predicted in 2004? Certainly not by the just-launching Facebook, which had no newsfeed. Certainly not by a large portion of the Facebook audience who flipped their collective shit when the news feed was introduced (now, almost all of which, I'd be willing to bet, spend 90% of their Facebook time gleefully scrolling through their feed, while cursing the hand that fed them, Twitter).

My guess? Probably something along the lines of Google Wave, an even-more-instant-than-Twitter real-time-service that somehow gets news to millions in a blink of an eye. That'll actually be it's name: EvenMoreInstantThanTwitterRealTimeServiceThatImprovesOnTheIdeasOfGoogleWave. Google Wave users will hate it.