This strikes me as about right in manty respects, but still missing the forest for the trees. Yes, the problem with the major media is content, but not in the way Dvorak posits. It's not the flashy bells and whistles of a really cool multimedia presentation that's losing the game for traditional media. It's the substance of the content. The Times, Newsweeks, or even the major metro dailies of the world simply have a problem with adding value with their content. This rests, in no small part, in their attempts to add value via news analysis. On a certain level, it makes sense. It is a hell of a lot cheaper than going out and collecting facts and data.
So if you drink the Kool-Aid, you'll be reading Newsweek and Time and all
the dying print magazines and newspapers on the iPad. No matter that you are
not reading these journals now. For some unexplained reason you'll want to read
them on the iPad. How does that make any sense?
The big publishing companies that think that their success or failure is totally dependent on the content delivery mechanism will be in for a surprise. The big winners on the iPad, if any, will be the feet-already-wet publications that have learned from long experience how to produce reader-friendly content for the screen.
The problem is that they are absolutely, utterly, and completely terrible at the analysis. This shouldn't come as a surprise. A journalism degree hardly gives you a whole lot of training and insight into economics, finance, geopolitics, or any other subject matter, for that matter. And, despite what many in the senior press corps seem to think, spending a whole lot of time around politicians doesn't make you much of an expert on much more than their individual personalities.
The advent of the online media and the new media, in general, has made the insufficiency of this analysis all too clear for any reasonably sophisticated consumer, although the plethora of disrespected specialty magazines made it noticeable for years. While you can certainly count on reporters to go out and get information, a subject matter expert, someone genuinely passionate and knowledgeable about the topic, can much more easily be counted on to give you a better analysis of those facts. And what the internet has made abundantly clear is that that there is no shortage of subject matter expertise that far surpasses what is available from the major media.
The future of media, then, belongs, not to the traditional major general interest magazines and papers, but to more specialized content providers. To his credit, Rupert Murdoch is one of the few traditional media guys who gets this (Disclaimer: I hold News Corp stock. So, in that respect, I do have an interest in the matter), at least somewhat. His recent defense of his holding of the New York Post was a defense of its sports section. The bottom line is that he views it as a sports paper with a little bit of general interest news added in. News Corp's acquisition of the Wall Street Journal says the same thing. Sure he might try to beat out the NY Times as the major metro for New York, but the bottom line of the business is and will be business news.
In short, if you're really interested in owning publishing as a sector, try to move away from the general interest media (WPC, NYT) and focus on specialty publishers.