2.7 Survival of the fittest
The times when I had no clue about the existence of the online way to get my news (or when this way still didn’t exist) indeed seem like ages ago. But consider the timeline given by Christopher Harper in his book And That’s the Way It Will Be:
“Bear in mind that news and information, let alone computers, are actually quite new. If you consider the time frame of human life on Earth and imagine it as a twenty-four-hour day, the information age is a miniscule fraction of that day. The invention of speech, which occurred about 100.000 years B.C., would not take place until 9:30 P.M. Writing would begin about eight minutes before midnight. The ability to store and transmit speech and writing electronically through the telegraph, telephone, radio and television would happen about eleven seconds before midnight. The digital computer would just make it under the wire: two seconds before midnight in our communication day” (1998, p.5).
Old or new, the news online have played a huge role on the way we get our daily information. Ever since the newspapers have switched from publishing content on teletext and various typed of videotex to publishing on the Internet, a constant history of innovation and improvement was a “side-effect” of this development. Well, except for when no lessons were learnt and no improvement was done. But the fact that the users are given increasingly more voice online results in the survival of the fittest – only the ones with a faithful audience will also have faithful advertisers.
One thing is for sure: to survive (either in print or online) magazines and newspapers will need to adapt to the environment in the most optimal way. The ones most able to adapt will continue their struggle on the financial market, while the ones less able (or reluctant to change) will be forced to leave the game. All the fun lies in trying to figure out what it is that needs to be changed, since the environment shifts so quickly. As the readers are the ones who come up with the game rules, Web 2.0 gives the editors an excellent tool to monitor the popular demand. Simply monitoring and reacting to negative remarks on the online forum of a newspaper/magazine is a very good first step in becoming the fittest. The future of online news can of course only be speculated about at this moment.
