Sign of the Times

Early Sunday mornings I go for a 1 hour power walk/jog by myself. It's a physical workout as well as a mental one. As I walk/jog my mind races to catch up with pending thoughts and ideas I've been entertaining. This is a refreshing/rebooting time for me.

Last Sunday I made an observation that affects every business owner/entrepreneur. As I was jogging in my neighborhood, a newspaper delivery van approached and I observed the driver toss out the Sunday newspaper on one of my neighbor’s driveway; we both waved as we passed each other. As soon as I passed him, my mind wrapped itself around what I was observing. As I jogged passed the next 30 homes that had been visited by the newspaper delivery van, I observed that only 3 of the 30 homes had the newspaper sitting on their driveway. My mind immediately calculated that this represented the fact that only 10% of the 30 homes still felt the need to receive their news in print form. This small observation highlights the fact that digital media has eroded the lion’s share of the print media market.

Between my use of Twitter, Facebook, Google, Google+, Smartphone, email, bot-searches, etc., I get the news delivered to my various digital devices all day long in real time. A newspaper to me now only represents the news up to the time the newspaper was printed. In other words, OLD NEWS. Who has time to read old news unless it’s for entertainment value? This is the reason why so many newspaper companies have gone out of business and many others face the same fate. They face this fate because they have refused to embrace and adopt "model changing" technologically driven advancements. They feel that the internet is a fad and that it will eventually go away; I totally disagree with them. If you just look at Facebook, with over 750 million users, it justifies "new media" and serves up a death sentence to "old media." No matter what business you are in, you cannot ignore (without experiencing severe consequences) that the internet has destroyed the old model and you have to become versed in the new model if your business is to remain a "going concern."  It’s a very simple choice; adopt and survive & thrive, fail to adopt and die a slow death!  

Written by Terence H. Biggs, Jr.
Founder & President of Marketplace Dynamics, LLC (A new media firm)
Member: Internet Marketing Association (IMA), eMarketing Association (eMA).

Website: www.MarketplaceDynamics.com
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