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Newspapers and the Internet: THEY KNEW!

    by Will Bunch | Columnist
    Published 

Jack Shafer has an excellent piece in Slate (h/t Romenesko) that tears down another myth: That newspapers never saw the Internet coming. To the contrary, his article notes that newspaper owners reacted aggressively to radio, TV, the possibility of an electronic newspaper and even the actual Internet when it came of age in the 1990s. The problem wasn't that they didn't react, but how they chose to do so.

His devastating conclusion:

From the beginning, newspapers sought to invent the Web in their own image by repurposing the copy, values, and temperament found in their ink-and-paper editions. Despite being early arrivals, despite having spent millions on manpower and hardware, despite all the animations, links, videos, databases, and other software tricks found on their sites, every newspaper Web site is instantly identifiable as a newspaper Web site. By succeeding, they failed to invent the Web.
    WB
    Will Bunch