The Rocky Mountain News closed in February, the first large daily to do so in the Internet age. In a lengthy but candid postmortem, John Temple, editor and publisher in the paper’s last eleven years, wields the scalpel. Quite fairly, for one who shares the blame:
"We didn’t understand the Web…Our online objectives kept changing…The Web was an afterthought all along….There’s still too much of a sense of entitlement in the industry." Audio and transcript here. Temple also has a blog.
Neither television or radio killed newspapers, though both give the news away free. So that bugaboo should be put to rest. But the Web is primarily text, which competes directly, and also can be accessed at any hour, as well as old or new teevee and radio newsclips. Thus. Still, it’s management’s appalling lack of imagination to find ways to compete with Craigslist, et al, that has hurt the most.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 