iPodaphobia

There's a new article in the Baltimore Sun that reports campus newspapers are doing so well that advertisers are sitting up and taking notice. This fascinates me. We've seen the decline of general print newspapers for decades especially among younger readers and here we are in the age of the Internet, mobile phones and iPods and are we to believe that old fashioned printed newspapers are a hit with this same generation? You bet we are. I believe it. While general newspapers have been imitating themselves for decades, they've grown out of touch with the younger reader. Want proof? They say if they make their newspapers 1 and a half inches narrower more young readers will read them. So the New York Times and Wall Street Journal are getting the scissors out (never mind that they save millions on newsprint -- their real reason for going smaller). Does anyone believe that a narrower paper will gain young readers? The campus papers, as you would expect, also exploit their young editors' knowledge of the Internet so the online versions are attractive as well. Maybe this seems too obvious, but would you humor me here? Could it be that college students want news about their world and they are more than willing to read it in print or view it online? Could it be that the hidden lesson here (take note music media industry) is that when you build content they will come. Too much is made of the interactive Internet-mobile revolution. Perhaps traditional media is suffering from what I will term -- iPodaphobia -- an irrational fear of the iPod generation. Maybe Gen Y is less afraid of reading a printed newspaper that caters to their world than the publishers are of technology.