The future of Newspapers

As I flipped through the newspaper over a bowl of Cheerios this morning, I came across two articles. The first described the demise of magazines, illustrated by the number of publications that have ceased or seen a precipitous drop in circulation in the last five years, and how easy it is to just read them online instead.

The same has been said of newspapers. Many point to the moment news organizations began offering their content online for free as the moment newspapers and magazines began their slow death march. As for myself, I can’t imagine not having a hard copy of the paper to read. I know it’s an ‘old school’ perspective, and that many young people get all of their news from the web, twitter, and to some extent, online television.

But I believe, as the second article may have illustrated, that there is still hope for the paper and ink newspaper. The article was announcing that a ‘2D Code’, or ‘tag’, would be appearing in one of that day’s comic strips. The code looks kind of like a UPC code, and if you scan the code with a reader application on your iPhone, you are linked to video, websites, or any web content. In this case, scanning the code would allow the consumer to watch an animated version of the comic on their iPhone.

If that is something that becomes more common in newspaper and magazine articles (and I believe it will), it opens up all sorts of new opportunities for delivering the news. Instead of just referencing a web page, or instructing the consumer to ‘check out our website for more video and audio on the story’, the tag could link directly to a video that could better flesh out the story, and lead to a richer news experience. And it would take less effort than even browsing the web, because after scanning, you would be taken directly to the content, right on your phone.

Obviously, I am a little biased. I still prefer reading the newspaper as I eat breakfast in the morning (reading my laptop that close to a bowl of milk just seems awkward). If I read the paper online, I click directly to the stories I am interested in, and then move on. When I am flipping through the paper, I may stop because of a fantastic photo, or an interesting headline, and read an article I would not have thought to read. So I hope that newspapers can find new ways to enrich their content, and stunt their declining readership, so a cup of coffee and the morning paper don’t become a thing of the past.

Tags: 2D barcode, Microsoft Tag, newspaper, online newspaper, tag reader