by Ray Charbonneau

Created on: April 22, 2009

Newspapers are dropping like flies, and the shadow of the flyswatter is starting to darken the future of some of the bigger flies that remain. Trying to figure out what replaces newspapers and how to fund that replacement is a topic of much discussion these days. The topic is especially important amongst those who work or until recently worked at newspapers, and among those who are busily trying to replace them.

A newspaper is a mass media delivery system, not just a way to deliver news. All mass media are forms of communication designed to reach large numbers of people, so they have certain qualities in common. Any mass media needs to be cheap to access and easy to use, but most of all they must provide the sort of content that a sufficient mass of people want to consume.
That content may be informative, but to succeed in capturing the hearts of the people any mass media needs to be entertaining.

Today computers and the Internet mix all kinds of mass media content together into something new, a mass multimedia. Mass multimedia is different, not only because the new tools allow consumers to access a much wider range of content, but because those same tools allow anyone to contribute their own content to the stream of mass multimedia. Content production capability has spread beyond the control of a few publishers to anyone with the urge to communicate, and an enormous number of people have that urge.

Technology has always driven mass media. The delivery system is what distinguishes one form of mass media from another. The printing press made the first mass media, distribution of text and still pictures, possible in the form of newspapers, magazines, and books. Over time, advances in technology have made new forms of mass media possible. When radio and records were invented, it became possible to distribute sound to the masses. Movies and than television added video to the mix, with magnetic tape and digital discs doing for the more complex audio/video signals what they, along with wax and vinyl, had already done for audio. Computers just take that a few steps further.

Each mass media format goes through a life cycle. First, someone invents the technology. Some early adopters start using the technology while it's still too complex and expensive to be a true mass media. Many of the competing implementations die out at this stage. But if it's destined to be a successful mass media, enough people use it to fund further development. The market gets large enough to drive

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