Iria

Sometimes what appears to be a threat is actually a life preserver.

The poor defenseless music industry cowered--then prosecuted--when the monster of digital downloads came lurching over the horizon. Then the iPod came along and music looks like a business again--a smaller business, eked out in 99-cent units--but still a business.

Cable channels were supposed to gut network television, but instead have become a place where shows like "Seinfeld" and "Law and Order" are resold and rewatched. The movie industry reacted to DVDs as though they were a sign of the imminent apocalypse, and now studios are using their libraries to churn profits.

Which brings us to the last of the great analog technologies, the one many of you are using right now.

The newspaper business is in a horrible state. It's not that papers don't make money. They make plenty. But not many people, or at least not many on Wall Street, see a future in them. In an attempt to leave the forest of dead trees and reach the high plains of digital media, every paper in the country is struggling mightily to digitize its content with Web sites, blogs, video and podcasts.

And they are half right. Putting print on the grid is a necessity, because the grid is where America lives. But what the newspaper industry really needs is an iPod moment.
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Read More / Source: News.com