Name: Can newspapers survive the digital revolution?
Uploaded: 2008-01-28T19:41:58-05:00
Duration: 1 min 33 s
Description: They will, Kottke says, but they’ll just be different.

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They will, Kottke says, but they’ll just be different.

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Question: Can newspapers survive the digital revolution?

Jason Kottke: I think they will. I think perhaps part of their business will probably be cannibalized by the Web. But I think there’s still this sort of fundamental service that newspapers, and magazines, and that sort of thing provide. You know I look at the New Yorker as a good example. You know they don’t . . . They don’t really tell you what the news is. They tell you, you know, what else is interesting about the news. You know everybody knows that, you know, Vladimir Putin is the leader of Russia. Like what . . . what . . . what else is going on there that perhaps we don’t hear about online? Because they don’t have the reporting resources; or they don’t have the know-how of David Remnick who spent a good portion of his career as a reporter in Moscow covering the Kremlin and all that sort of stuff. You know newspaper and magazines are still going to have access to those sorts of resources. You know whether they publish those stories online or in a printed bundle, you know, who knows? Eventually . . . eventually it might all move online. Or it might move to, you know, tablets with e-ink paper. And you know who knows?

Recorded on: 10/9/07