Convergence is now occurring in the collapse of the print newspaper industry with newspapers, if they survive at all, migrate to the Web (e.g., Seattle Post-Intelligencer).
Well, along comes Global Post, started by print-era journalists but with no such baggage. Visit www.globalpost.com and bookmark it for regular visits to see how it develops. (Full disclosure: One of my colleagues in our consulting firm, The Global Capital Strategic Group, advises them but independent of that group.)
GlobalPost is hiring "stringers" (or freelance journalists) around the world ffor a modest stipend, who then post on key issues in other markets. Their coverage is pretty good--part news, part commentary.
By the time this blog is posted, more digital ink will have been spilt over the "death" of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer print edition than real ink that was used in that paper. In case you missed it, Hearst Corporation, the P-I's parent, pulled the plug on the print edition as of St. Patrick's Day. The paper is now web only, with twenty in the newsroom, down from about 160.
Just last week, another group announced a plan to create specialized printer for subscribers to print their own version of a newspaper right in their own homes. Uh-huh. And Plastic Logic's new digital reader (think over-sized Kindle) is aimed right at the newspaper and magazine market.
But back to the P-I. What is interesting is not that the paper version died (it was about time), but the plans for the online P-I. The plans strike me as weird. Here are some highlights (in italics) with my comments:
