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Adapt to New Technology or Die

An anonymous reader writes "Yahoo! News is reporting that in a recent speech to fellow stationers and newspaper makers, Rupert Murdoch has stated that the 'newspaper industry needs to embrace the technological revolution of the Internet, MP3 players, laptops and mobile phones or face extinction.'"

13 of 196 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Analog data distribution is dead... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Soon, I will be able to download my news every morning... bittorrent of course.

  2. BLEA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    wtf is up with these "--------------- or die" analogies. Fuck you, fuck death. I'll just sit back and watch.

    1. Re:BLEA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Adapt to new anologies or die!

    2. Re:BLEA by ZachPruckowski · · Score: 4, Funny

      Adapt to new anologies or die!

      Adapt to new spelling or die!

      (Sorry)

  3. Paper Delivery by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Funny
    The biggest reason that newspapers have it so tough is that the delivery person keeps throwing my newspaper down the hallway. Not near my door, not even at my door, but down the hallway. On Sunday mornings, I find my paper at the bottom of the stairs after the ads been rifled through. Customer service is what needed to save the newspaper industry!

    Must be past the end of the Paper Boy Era.

    When I was in my late teens I inherited my older brother's paper route. It was somewhere about 65 customers. As this was my main source of income I took a particularly aggressive view towards growing and maintaining the route. In 3.3 years I had it up to 150+ customers, much to the annoyance of paper boys of neighbouring routes. My parents always sent me out with our paper, just in case I saw someone moving into a new house -- I'd introduce myself and give them the paper free and ask if I could sign them up. I was breaking my back, but I was also raking in some decent cash for a highschool kid. I made certain papers weren't left in wet or could be blown away or anything. When I retired and left for college the newspaper said it was too large a route for any one carrier and split it.

    Now people drive past and chuck papers in the general vicinity of doors. I know what you mean.

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  4. Dial-up suits me fine by RLiegh · · Score: 2, Funny

    I can wait for a site to load, I just go take a bath or something; and it's there when I get back. For downloading cds, I can just wge-aaaagggh.

    [no carrier]

  5. Re:And Then by Rei · · Score: 2, Funny

    If I'm reading about death in a car bombing I don't think I'm going to be in a mood to look at the new Fords

    What about new Volkswagens?

    --
    By a scallop's forelocks!
  6. Re:Analog data distribution is dead... by msobkow · · Score: 4, Funny

    Interesting. I find that most of the online newspapers I read only make a few key headline articles available, not the entire content.

    Besides, I hate dragging a 19" monitor with me to lunch, and people keep tripping on the cables... :)

    --
    I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
  7. Dear Rupert by pandrijeczko · · Score: 5, Funny
    Tens of thousands of years ago, a scruffy bloke with long hair who smelt of rabbit skins & said "Ugh!" rather a lot, was sat in his cave pondering a particular problem - how to move a very heavy rock from point A on the Earth's surface to point B. Although this bloke wasn't to know it at the time, he had to find a way of overcoming the friction that the rock exerted on the Earth's surface due to it's mass and surface area.

    Perhaps more by luck than chance, he found that if he could lever up the rock and place cylindrical logs under it, he could move it...

    Some time later, another bloke less pre-disposed to living in a cave, decided to create circular discs, probably of wood, that could be placed in each corner of a heavy object by connecting them in order to move it easier - and so it was that "the wheel" was born...

    And as we leap forward through the millenia to our present day, we see that the concept of the wheel remains fundamentally unchanged - it's still circular, probably has an axle and is best used in numbers of four or more.

    The wheel, and numerous other technological developments over the centuries, serve to demonstrate that some inventions can be pretty much designed correctly from the time of their inception without the "need" to replace it completely purely for the purposes of technical advancement.

    Besides, as the owner of "The Sun" newspaper in Britain, a journal aimed specifically at those modern-day individuals who are pre-disposed to cavemanhood & writing with crayons, can I suggest that you, sir, are a complete and utter gobshite who is totally out of his depth and has far too much money for his own good.

    In summary, therefore, may I suggest that you continue publishing stories about "Lesbian Vicars" for those knucklescrapers who continue to find amusement for their unicellular brains in your newspaper & leave those of us who are more pre-disposed to understanding technology to make decisions about whether we still want paper newspapers or not.

    --
    Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
  8. Rubert Murdoch by virgil_disgr4ce · · Score: 3, Funny

    Rupert Murdoch has said a lot of memorable things, among them, "Silence! Sieze them!"

  9. "You Decide" by morscata12 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Apparently what newspapers are really missing are:
    * Bold, primary colors to inform Americans how to feel about "the issues"
    * Big, moving, symbolic images and lines
    * Stirring music
    The real problem is that newspapers are still caught up in that "facts" fad..which totally puts their necks out on the line. What if they get a fact wrong? That would prove them "uncredible" - instead, what they should be doing is telling people what to think about topics in a way that is not legally binding!
    Presenting facts and statistics is too complicated for the modern enlightened viewer. They need graphics!!

  10. Oh, please... by Illbay · · Score: 2, Funny
    Rural areas still have some people who are thankful to have a phone line most hours of the day.

    With respect: Spoken like someone who probably never ventured far from suburbia--who only *thinks* he knows what "flyover country" is like.

    Technology is embraced with open arms by "rural people" my friend. Not only do they all have 24/7 telephones, they were early-adopters of satellite television and broadband internet (over their satellite dishes, a la "Starband").

    And H*ll, most of 'em even have 'lectricity and wear SHOES, if you can believe it.

    Sheesh.

    --
    Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
  11. Re:I was about to call bullshit by jackcarter · · Score: 2, Funny

    Ah, how I wish there was a "Pedantic Shmuck -1" mod tag.

    Actually, that should be "... how I wish there were a...." It's the hypothetical subjunctive.

    Look at it this way: if they ever implement such a tag, you'll have someone on whom to test it (whew! I almost ended my sentence with a preposition!).