The respected technology consultant Rob Durst is of the belief that mobile can save the newspaper industry from rampant decline.
Durst talks of the industry's "Tarzan" syndrome --- of swinging to the next branch without losing the grip on the first vine --- and believes it's possible to transform in time. But it requires a new thinking.
Mobile is the central concept. He thinks newspapers need to stop thinking of themselves as "broadcast" models and move to "interface" models.
"Magazines and newspapers should stop treating their publications as fixed products and start thinking about them as valuable, branded interfaces to online content and services," he tells the Columbia Journalism Review. "They can do this using mobile codes, which are essentially printed barcodes that readers “click on” using a camera phone—kind of like clicking on a Web link with a mouse."
Durst talks of the industry's "Tarzan" syndrome --- of swinging to the next branch without losing the grip on the first vine --- and believes it's possible to transform in time. But it requires a new thinking.
Mobile is the central concept. He thinks newspapers need to stop thinking of themselves as "broadcast" models and move to "interface" models.
"Magazines and newspapers should stop treating their publications as fixed products and start thinking about them as valuable, branded interfaces to online content and services," he tells the Columbia Journalism Review. "They can do this using mobile codes, which are essentially printed barcodes that readers “click on” using a camera phone—kind of like clicking on a Web link with a mouse."
