thenewnewmedia.com

Ray Hartley, Editor of The Times, has finally penned some logical thoughts about the “newspapers are dying” mania that resurfaces every few months/weeks/days.

The concise summaries of the arguments everyone has an opinion about:
“They’ll be gone in five years.”
“They’ll exist forever.”

It cannot be this simplictic. Nor will it ever be.

All of the evidence so far comes from very established newspaper groups in the US and (western) Europe. Most of these companies run dozens of newspapers across multiple states and countries, with massively inflated staff numbers, vice presidents of all sorts of things, and very badly managed editorial processes (bureaux all over the place). Layoffs, pension fund mismanagement and employee buyouts have meant a massive financial overhang for these companies.

Of course the financial, auto industry and real estate slump in the US and UK isn’t helping at all.

Hartley offers three thoughts on how newspapers can survive/flourish:

• The first is that they must speak to the growing visual intelligence of their readers by giving pictures the same status as words in presentation. This is not an easy battle to win in an industry where words have always dominated. Words that do not attract and retain the attention of readers through presentation will be ignored.
• The second rule is that newspapers must offer interactivity. They must do so within their pages, but this will always be limited by space. The internet has no such limitation. A close relationship with a news website opens the way for much greater participation by a newspaper’s readers.
• The third is that newspapers must chart a course through the sea of information. If they add to the clutter, they will have no place in a world where attention is in short supply.

Couldn’t have said it much better…

With Vincent and Matthew, the two co-founders and creators, gone – has anyone else noticed that Amatomu seems to have almost completely lost its sense of community? It’s become almost sterile… a directory, like Yahoo when it first started. Plus it’s become flooded with some sites that really aren’t blogs who are clearly using Amatomu for its analytics functions (and to see how they compare to the mighty keo).

Whether this is because of the two creators leaving, or the local blogosphere becoming boring, static and less-engaged with itself, remains to be seen. A-list bloggers (Mike, Nic, Charl, Tyler, Eric and even Matthew and Vincent) do seem to be blogging less these days. Although all of them have real business to run, or at the very least real jobs.

I’m not for a minute suggesting that Jason Norwood-Young is not an adequate replacement… far from it… I haven’t met him (at least I don’t think I have), but everyone I speak to speaks very highly of him.

It’s just that with the hype-duo of Matt and Vin gone, it feels like Amatomu has lost a very important part of its DNA – it needs some sort of reinvention.

btw… Nic has a very interesting post about bloggers all blogging about blogging.

…and Mandy’s also noticed that nobody seems to be home at Amatomu.

Despite the hype, a local idea - Eyeballs - could end up cracking it and becoming a world leader in cellphone advertising…

It’s not often that an inventor of a product cries at its public launch. Nathan Levin, founder and inventor of Eyeballs cried at the product’s flashy launch at Sandton Isle’s Aston Martin dealership last week. He says he cried the night before in Cape Town too. Levin had a reason to cry. For as long as he can remember, he’s been trying to crack “it”. He’s an inventor in the old-mould. His work started around a decade ago with an idea based on displaying ads while people dialled-up to the internet. After years of research, reworking, brainstorms and tireless effort, Levin seemed to have actually cracked it. It took a few more months of all-nighters, seven-day weeks and some chance encounters with people like Larry Katz (now MD of the company) to actually bring Eyeballs to market.

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