The future of news in an online world

Are newspapers dead? I think that the delivery of news has changed and that newspapers are no longer the preferred medium for most people.

The final FutureM Conference session that I attended was on “The Future of News: Payments, Platforms and Places.” Here are the thoughts of these news experts.

The panelists:

Bianca Bosker – Technology Editor, Huffington Post
Carly Carioli – Editor in Chief, Boston Phoenix
Jeff Cutler – Content Specialist, Novel Ideas and JeffCutler.com
David Evans – Founder, Market Platform Dynamics.
Austin Gardner-Smith – Product Design Lead, Pinyadda and BostInnovation.com (moderator).

1. What is the one thing that has turned the news world upside down?

Bianca (Huffington Post) – There is a lot more communication and a lot more interaction with readers.
Jeff (Novel Ideas) – People expect content for free. Journalists need to be on multiple platforms and not just write for newspapers or magazines.
David (Market Platform) – The shift in revenue models. The advertising industry used to make money by selling ads. But now companies and people can post for free or minimal cost on places like Craigslist, jobboards and Groupon.

2. What about the trend of news aggregation?

Bianca (Huffington) – People do want to look at all of their news in one place. However they do want some analysis of the news too. There is lots of competition amongst aggregators.

3. What about news distribution?

All panelists agreed that news distribution is now very decentralized. It’s much more of a peer to peer model than having newspapers control what gets disseminated.

I get most of my news online, but I still love sitting down with the Sunday New York Times.