Saturday, December 13, 2008

What happens to the paper boy?

Season 5 of The Wire, this article and common sense suggest that the newspaper industry is in decline.  Whether or not something might pull up the industry's bootsraps or not, the days of early morning newspaper deliveries seem to be dying.  The internet probably started the trend, and blogging seems like its accelerating it.  At least you could say, as these graphs do, taken from here and here respecitvely, that the two 'industries' (blogging and newsapers) are trending in opposite directions.



The industry I'm currently concerned how this affects is paper delivery.  Now that no one wants a paper delivered to their doorstep in the morning, what can adolescents do to replace that economic opportunity?  What made newspapers a good product for daily delivery? It must be that they are a cheap, massively available and continuously expiring physical good.  Milk's been done before and it didn't last...But my senses tell me this has to be some kind of an opportunity. Ideally it would be for locally grown, organic produce, or some sort of renewable energy packet. Neither seems sufficient to offset the loss, at least not in the immediate future (especially given one doesn't even exist). I guess I'll have to keep pondering this one, and maybe make a lesson out of it.

No comments: