Why the internet is killing traditional press, one generation at a time.

With the advent of blogs, news sites and the social press more and more people are able to get all the news they need, without ever  buying a broadsheet.

Sure, people will probably scoff when they see this article – and tell me, that with the hundreds of papers, and probably hundreds of millions of copies sold each day, the newspaper is a safe commodity.

I’m not so sure.

I live in the Uk, and have a daily subscription to the telegraph (I know, I know …), but recently they have been running a daily investigation (the front 8 pages) on Politician expense abuse . All very interesting, but by ‘The expenses Files Day 19‘ it was wearing even a loyal reader like me pretty thin.
Anyway, enough of my personal reading habits. This annoyance led me to fall back on my Google reader account for my daily news. Honestly, I doubt I’ll switch back. Google reader allows me to keep up with all my favourite news, tech, politic and world stage alike, while saving me the £1 p/day of a newspaper. It also has the added advantage of saving the planet one tree at a time – if your into that kind of thing.

Google Reader isn’t the only thing closing in on your favourite daily though. While mobile computing is getting better all the time, there’s always the issue of a too-small screen that hurts your eyes, that rather curtailed using blogs for on-the-move news, and allowed the paper to come into its own. The recent hype over devices like the Sony reader, and amazon kindle should point to the fact that this is changing, and fast too.

Now the issue I haven’t covered is of course the one of familiarity, and it can’t be ignored. The fact is that the elder generations will probably never grow accustomed to the Kindle, or an rss reader, and as long as they are around the paper has little to fear.

This is a more long term prediction then, but a prediction nonetheless. Papers, broadsheet and tabloid alike, will see a broad shift away from their printed media, and will have to adapt accordingly.

Part of the reason I’m so sure of myself, suprisingly lies in the success of twitter as a ‘real time search engine‘. Everyone from techcrunch to google has been going on about the new found niche that twitter  accidentally stumbled upon, and why no-one else does it quite so well. If you couple twitters apparent success at providing real time news (when it doesn’t go down) with people’s inherent impatience, it seems a logical conclusion that real-time news, when it really comes, will be BIG.

Imagine this then: a 3G connected kindle, with real time news updates. You can read the news over breakfast in the morning, then catch up on the days events on the tube ride home! Sounds much better than a newspaper right ?

How long do you think this transition is going to take ? 10 years, 20, or not at all ?