And speaking of service sectors in transition, there is this story in the New York Times -- Reluctantly, a Daily Stops Its Presses, Living Online:
With print revenue down and online revenue growing, newspaper executives are anticipating the day when big city dailies and national papers will abandon their print versions.
That day has arrived in Madison, Wis.
On Saturday, The Capital Times, the city’s fabled 90-year-old daily newspaper founded in response to the jingoist fervor of World War I, stopped printing to devote itself to publishing its daily report on the Web.
(The staff will also produce two print products: a free weekly entertainment guide inserted in Madison’s remaining daily newspaper, The Wisconsin State Journal, and a news weekly that will be distributed with the paper.)
. . .
The Web strategy, while seen as a long-term solution, is still a work in progress, [Capital Times editor Paul] Fanlund says. It revolves around a portal, Madison.com, which is owned under the same joint arrangement mandating that both Madison papers share revenues, though they are editorially independent.
The Capital Times will operate a nearly continuous Web newsroom and focus on repurposing online the cultural and entertainment material the staff will begin to produce in the supplement, 77 Square, to be inserted in The State Journal.
And so the experiment really begins.
Leave a comment