Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Dear budding journalist,

Thanks very much for your email! I’m always happy to meet just about anybody, and would love to find some time to have that coffee with you.

Of course I’m also very flattered by the lovely things you said about me, and about how you’d love to have a career in journalism where you might be able to do the kind of thing that I do.

But you won’t. The job I’m doing now was inconceivable when I was your age, and, similarly, if you’re lucky enough to have done well in this industry by the time you’re my age (I’m 42), then you’ll almost certainly be doing something which almost nobody today could foresee....

...When the press writes about the current dislocations, they must insist that no one knows what will happen. This pattern shows up whenever the media covers itself. When the Tribune Company recently got rid of their newspapers, the New York Times ran the story under a headline “The Tribune Company’s publishing unit is being spun off, as the future of print remains unclear.”

The future of print remains what? Try to imagine a world where the future of print is unclear: Maybe 25 year olds will start demanding news from yesterday, delivered in an unshareable format once a day. Perhaps advertisers will decide “Click to buy” is for wimps. Mobile phones: could be a fad. After all, anything could happen with print. Hard to tell, really....