Future Shock

Here’s a great post from mashable.com that looks into the future of the news media. I don’t know if it’s frightening or encouraging for the existing news industry, but it is fascinating. On the encouraging side I think are the developments in distribution of content via tablets (aka iPads) and the rise of interactive TV. On the negative side, I think, are the predictions for the rise of Wikileaks like services and the elimination of foreign correspondents. The increased presence of “leak” sites begs the question who will filter the information, and will valuable information get tangled up with noise. And the disappearance of foreign news bureaus, in favor of stringers using Twitter, raises similar concerns. The jury is still out on things like location based news consumption. The question there is whether traditional news organizations can capitalize. Interesting stuff. And given that half of it didn’t exist five years ago, it makes me wonder what this column will be talking about in 2015.