Tag - newspapers

Eric Schmidt: How Google Can Help Newspapers – WSJ.com

It’s the year 2015. The compact device in my hand delivers me the world, one news story at a time. I flip through my favorite papers and magazines, the images as crisp as in print, without a maddening wait for each page to load.

Even better, the device knows who I am, what I like, and what I have already read. So while I get all the news and comment, I also see stories tailored for my interests. I zip through a health story in The Wall Street Journal and a piece about Iraq from Egypt’s Al Gomhuria, translated automatically from Arabic to English. I tap my finger on the screen, telling the computer brains underneath it got this suggestion right.

via Eric Schmidt: How Google Can Help Newspapers – WSJ.com.

Media barons demanding to be lied to

OK, here’s the definitive quote of the day:

“When someone demands to know how we are going to replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that old systems won’t break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren’t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to.”

The source is Clay Shirky, Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable.

This is particularly relevant to me now, having just participated in a new media round table on journalism, papers, and the web: New Media Round Table.

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