Blogging Keith Herndon’s paper on newspaper industries and the Internet (full disclosure; Keith is one of my graduate students) Keith’s research is important for providing the ‘long history’ of newspapers and electronic information technologies (note, print news was itself an information technology!). Notes the 1970s – emergence of commercial databases, and the electronic publishing paradigm. 1980s – attempts to establish videotext as viable business model – Knight-Ridder, Viewtron “primitive by today’s standards, but cutting edge at the time”. Fails – not adopted by “early technology adopters”. There were similar projects. These projects – both experience of them and failure – left newspapers wary about investing in electronic ventures and perhaps meant they were unprepared for Internet and, indeed, resistant of it. Resistant, in particular, of the telecommunications industry moving into this field which was seen as ‘belonging’ to the news; then also attempted to defend their interests by creating alliances with companies like Prodigy. This is why new media is not new; new media is a phrase that could easily describe events from 1970s onwards, not just the Internet. Moreover, the Internet disrupts what was already being done with ‘new media’. In the 1990s, as the INternet emerges as a … Click to read more →