How am I supposed to discipline my dog?

A lot has been written lately about the death of the printed newspaper. With a handful of very large newspapers filing for bankruptcy recently it seems that the printed newspaper is in it's death throws. Is anyone really shocked by this? Probably not. With the amount of information and the speed at which you can get it on the web increasing at an exponential rate it's a wonder they lasted as long as they did. What I'm having trouble with though is why the newspapers are dying completely and did they help cause their road to extinction?

Let's address the first part of that question. Most of the major newspapers have been around for what seems like an eternity. As long as people have needed information, the newspaper was there to deliver it. But something happened through the 90's and into the 2000's, the web became a much more mature medium. People were able to get information in a flash and more of them were using it. It seems only reasonable that the news organizations would take advantage of this wouldn't they? After all they are in the business of supplying information as up to the minute as possible. Why wouldn't they take advantage of a medium that offers this? It seems that most did or are doing so now. But if they did take advantage, how is it that they're going out of business. It would seem that the old antiquated business model of subscriptions didn't work for them quite as well when it came to internet readership. While their paper medium subscription base kept falling at a rapidly increasing rate, the internet subscription readership didn't increase nearly as much. Part of that is because some newspapers simply gave away their news for free on their web site. While others just couldn't find the hook to bring their subscribers back to them in this new medium.

So given that electronic media conflicts directly with their print media, did the grand old news organizations ultimately cause their own demise. Not hardly. Since the large news paper organizations only make up a very small percentage of the news sites out on the internet, they simply can't be the only reason that readership was lost in print media. The answer to this is simple, it's the volume of news sites out there now. So not only are they competing with themselves, but they're also competing with news organizations from around the world.

From what I can tell the death of the printed newspaper is simply an evolution. An evolution similar to the death of Beta and VHS in favor of DVD or 8 track and cassette tape in favor of CD. We're even in the midst of the movement away from those 2 mediums. Newspapers are big and clunky and hard to carry around, they aren't nearly as accessible and aren't nearly as up to date as other mediums. It's not like this change happened over the course of a day or even a week. This has been a long time coming. The Newspapers just didn't evolve with everything else. Hopefully other news industries take a lesson from this and don't assume that just because they have the reader/viewership now they will forever. What about magazines are they next? Maybe. Because they don't promise up to the minute news I doubt they will go quite as quickly. But as the ways to get information become smaller, more portable and more accessible, even magazines will need to evolve or they'll suffer a similar fate.  

I'm still not sure how to discipline my dog.  I don't think spanking him with my laptop will go over so well.