2010 Predictions

These are my predictions for 2010.  Feel free to make your own predictions in the comments

• Toy Story 3 will be the top movie of the year, Iron Man 2, the A-Team, and Harry Potter will also be in the top 15
• The Dow will be higher at the end of 2010 than at the beginning
• There will be 15 e-book readers on the market by the end of 2010 but still no major publisher will release DRM-free books.  So I will not buy one
• The health care bill will not become final before May and by the time I write this post next year there will still be millions of uninsured Americans.
• The Twitter stream will have ads in it (not just spam)
• USA will be no better than 3^rd in the medal count at the winter Olympics
• Kentucky will be in the Final 4
• The finale of Lost will be mostly satisfying
• I will not live in Kentucky at the end of 2010
• I will weigh less at the end of 2010 than I do at the beginning

The Death of Local News?

Yesterday’s post was about the future.  Specifically about the media formats that are dying because of technological advancement.  My argument was that there will always be quality material out there and there will be money for those people who are skilled to earn a living at their craft.  But there is one area that I am afraid will be lost to technology and, at least at this time, I do not see a replacement for it.

So what is this one thing that I worry will be truly destroyed by technology?  Local news by actual journalists.  As I see it, there will always be outlets of national and world news that are profitable enough to continue on with real journalists.  Those things will have a bias, but that is okay.  Newspapers and magazines today are biased as are all people.  At least when you read Huffington Post or the Drudge Report you know what you are getting when you read.  As I see it, this as a push.

However for local news I envision a very

hard road.  It is no secret that newspapers are struggling now and many of them are shutting down.  Soon we will be hearing the same stories about network affiliates. When this happens, there will really be no source for local news.

I happen to believe that local news is more significant to my life than national news, and I know that whoever is my mayor will have a greater effect on my life than the president.  So I believe that local news is quite important.  I care what goes on at my city council and I want to know how high school football turns out.

I live in a mid-sized city.  It’s huge compared to my home town but tiny compared to New York or Houston.  In greater Fayetteville NC there are about 300,000 people.  Unless things change seriously, even a city this size will have a difficult time employing reporters with only ad revenues from a website.

As things stand currently, the Fayetteville Observer is a respectable paper and I get headlines via RSS.  I click on ads occasionally because I want them to get the revenues.  But I simply have no interest in having the paper delivered.

Imagine that I was back in my hometown, roughly one tenth the size of Fayetteville.  I would still care about the city council and the mayor, there would be only a few less stories for them to cover.  There would be fewer local schools to follow and fewer crimes to report, but still a similar low-end cost.  (And I don't think the local paper even offers headlines by RSS now.  )

What are the options I see?

First, an [online] subscription model.  I know this is what the papers plan to do.  It makes sense right?  People paid for the delivered version, they will pay for the online version.  The only problem is that it’s nearly to make people see something that was free as having value.  And as far as I know, except for the Wall-Street Journal, this model seems to have failed for every newspaper that has tried it.

Another option is user contributed local news.  The problem with that is reliability.  My concern is with good local news  I guess there could be a digg-like system for rating stories or authors by veracity, but that seems like a bit of a stretch.

There is my irrational fear of technology.  Feel free to call me stupid in the comments and tell me how you get your local news.

The Future - All the Way to the Year 2000

I listen to a podcast called Fourcast. It is all about the future that always makes me think.  In the most recent episode they predicted the death of network TV and alluded to the impending death of record companies.  Just a few days before listening to that, I read an article by Stephen King in Entertainment Weekly.  In this article he bemoans the death of [music] radio, physical books, good movies, and network TV.  At the end of the article he says that his fear is that the replacements for these things is low-quality and that quality versions of all these things are going to disappear. I have hard similar arguments over the years, and the purpose of this post is to offer my disagreement.  Last week I asked you to help me make a list of important things you believe are going to die because of technology.  Our list included office equipment which is not really a surprise because tech has always moved office equipment pretty quickly.  Video stores and banks were on the list.  They are also not surprising because the services offered by those buildings can be done cheaper over the internet. (Ultimately, the disks through the mail business is doomed as well.  It will be replaced by streaming movies over the web.)  The list also included  old-style phones and wrist watches.  I doubt if anyone is overly concerned about those things, because we have the technology in place to replace them.

Then there's this item; last week I read this article about the death of cursive writing.  I personally haven’t written anything other than my signature in cursive since the 9^th grade.  And this is another thing that technology has made needless.  Penmanship doesn’t matter when we type everything.

These things are not that frightening by themselves, but for many people, the cumulative effect of so many changes seems both scary and wrong.  I think this is what scares Stephen King, though he expresses his fear a bit differently.  In his words "right now there are no adequate replacements for the quality that looks to be on the way out." So let's consider his fear. Do we need to worry that the quality of the media is going to degrade because there’s no money in the new media options and all the skilled people will do something else?

My answer is a strong NO.

Books aren’t going anywhere.  Quality authors will always be widely read and they will make good money for their craft.  Books made of paper will fade, and the digital copies we all buy will cost less.  Publishing companies may even disappear.  (I believe their death is certain unless they change their archaic and draconian DRM concepts.) If publishing companies disappear what will replace them?  One possibility is that there will be freelance editors to edit for the freelance authors.  The good ones will be in demand and will earn a good living.  The bad ones will find a new job.  The same will be true for authors.  A second possibility is some sort of collective or trade group that carries out these duties but has the authors in mind rather than the bottom line of the publishing companies.  I’m not trying to predict the future, but I will say with certainty that the way things are is not the way things will be. (Do you think Plato would have written the Trial of Socrates if he had to negotiate his advance.)

The same can be said for each of these media formats.  Quality will rise and people who are talented will earn a good living.  In fact, I think I can make the argument that whenever network television dies, the overall quality of that media will rise.  I am completely certain that music isn’t going to disappear, but I’m also certain that musicians will not earn their income in the same way that they do now.

An inability to imagine the future becomes fear of the future.  So much of the hand wringing and fear bears this out.  I do not pretend to know how all these things will be replaced in the future.  But I am certain that my great grandparents couldn’t have imagined what movies or television would become.  (And that they would be appalled at how much we spend each month on entertainment) I am also certain that media isn’t going anywhere.  In fact, as technology makes our work easier we will probably spend even more time consuming media.

One last thought that I didn’t know how to connect.  I believe that the media we consume will be high-quality.  Ask a Ninja, Homestar Runner, and Chad Vader are well-known, funny, widely watched and higher quality than Accidentally on Purpose.

Tomorrow…the one impending change that I cannot envision a replacement for.