Resources / Ripples & Wipeouts

Mobile devices such as smart phones will be the primary access point to the internet by 2020.  This is according to a study done at the end of last year by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Other than reinforcing what activists and marketers already know—that the online environment is fast becoming the main way to reach donors, members, client and prospects—why should we care?

For starters, the study flags a troubling trend seen by some experts.  As the internet rises in popularity and becomes easier to access, the capacity for hate speech and terrorism increases.  Although a majority of respondents agreed with the assertion that the internet promotes tolerance because it exposes users to a wider range of people and views, few believed that there would be “net gains” in tolerance when tolerance gains were stacked up against the internet’s potential to encourage bigotry. 

Another troubling finding also grows out of something we already know—old models of copyright protection and licensing are no longer effective in the digital world.  If you think that doesn’t matter, that corporate interests are stifling creativity so screw them, think again.  If the generators of quality content can’t find a way to be rewarded for their efforts, then why will they bother to publish on the internet?  We’ll be left only with those commentators, performers and others who seek non-monetary rewards, which could include some unpalatable political and social activities.  In other words, you get what you pay for.

This is the plight of America’s newspapers, including the great ones like the New York Times and the Washington Post.  Newspaper reporting holds the government accountable and is truly indispensable to a free society.  Yet as more and more people get their news digitally over an ever increasing array of smaller, more mobile devices, fewer printed papers are sold.  And to date news corporations haven’t figured out how to monetize their internet business models.  Newspapers are losing money by the buckets-full.  It takes a lot of cash to support a news gathering operation, especially one with global reach.  The Times and papers like it, including quality regional papers like the Miami Herald or the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, offer consumers objective reporting and intelligent analysis.  They are not just publishing the thoughts, informed or not, of random bloggers (like me) and activist groups with specific agendas.  We should be very afraid of losing them.

Read more about the study and related, thought-provoking predictions at Imagining the Internet, a project of Pew and Elon University.  This is great stuff.

-- Bonnie McEwan