It all began when I entered a Prototype Newspaper of the Future contest, sponsored by the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association. (Grand prize: $2,000!) Okay, I haven’t exactly won it yet, but my ideas are so cool and innovative that I am sure to win. I doubt that other entries will combine sex, computer-controlled newspaper delivery robots, drugs, and rock and roll. Why, I have so much confidence in my entry, fellow OJR readers, that I am daring you — even double-daring you — to come up with something better.
Idea #1: Sex! Also, cover the future, not just the past and present
Any idiot can write stories about events that have already happened, and even the dumbest, most makeup-wearing TV reporter can bring you “live, on the scene” coverage of events that are happening right now, but only visionaries and psychics can bring you news of events that haven’t happened yet and that, indeed, may never happen at all.
(The contest ad said, “Think big. Think radical.” So I am!)
We all know that the average age of Americans is going up. And recent studies have shown that Americans no longer give up sex once they turn 30. So we already know that one of the hottest job fields in coming years is going to be Geriatric Sex Counseling.
Armed with this knowledge, a smart newspaper will want to have at least two or three certified gerontological orgasmentarianists on staff by the end of this year, in anticipation of this employment trend, instead of waiting for it to happen. Some of the more forward-looking newspapers will probably have entire sections devoted to orgasmentarianism before long, complete with online video instructions in full color made both by staff professionals and volunteer readers with their webcams and camcorders.
A few sticks-in-the mud will no doubt say this is nothing but a way to sell sex. What’s the matter with these people? Haven’t they been watching TV lately? Especially cable? I swear, the tube is full of sex, sex, sex, all the time. Newspapers have fallen behind and need to catch up. Pitching their prurience toward older folks, and cloaking it (and uncloaking it once you click the “I am over 18” box on the Web site) in educational robes, will allow newspaper publishers to claim they are taking the high road instead of catering to the Lower Classes like that boorish Murdoch person and his soon-to-be-launched weekly “Bare Banking Babes” feature in his latest acquisition, the Wall Street Journal.
Note that what I have done here, in this very article, is write about events that have not yet happened. This is proof that it can be done. And if I — a former cab driver, soldier, electronics technican, and limousine owner — can do it, people with enough degrees to work for modern newspaper chains ought to be able to do it even better.
So go forth, newspaper futurists, and tell us tales not only of what is, but of what will (or at least might) be. We will be waiting to read your words of wisdom with bated breath (or possibly baited breath, if we rely on spellcheckers more than we really should).
Idea #2: Decentralized, customized newspaper printing
This one is simple, and really should be happening already. Imagine small printing units near subscribers homes or even mounted in trucks instead of huge, centralized printing plants. Also imagine newspaper vending boxes that carry paper stock and a two-sided printing head instead of pre-printed newspapers.
Voila! Print-on-demand newspapers. No returns. No waste.
Even better, any reader who thinks Mallard Fillmore is the only funny comic, and complains that all MSM writers and editors (except maybe the ones at Faux News) are libral soshulists, can now have a newspaper exactly to his taste.
I’m presenting this idea in a light-hearted way, but it is not a laughing matter. A truck-mounted, GPS-equipped, computer-controlled newspaper delivery “robot” that printed each subscriber’s newspaper as an individual piece would not be hard to build. It will still need a human driver until motor vehicle laws are changed to allow fully-automated vehicles, and it might be more practical to have small, fixed-base printing units spread throughout a newspaper’s circulation area than to make mobile ones, but the result would still be huge savings in transportation, paper stock and printing waste — and the ability to produce an individually-customized print product would be… dare we say it?… priceless.
Idea #3: Drugs + Rock ‘n Roll = Profit
I have a total of seven prescriptions, five of which are for drugs I take daily to control my Type 2 Diabetes and high blood pressure. The other two are semi-optional pain relief and mood alteration meds that help me cope with neuropathy and the stress of nicotine withdrawal I am currently enduring due to my recent decision to stop smoking after nearly 40 years of cigarette use.
I can get all kinds of dry, physician-type information about these drugs with a few search engine clicks. But if I want to know how they’ll make me feel…. nada.
Newspapers run movie reviews, book reviews, concert reviews, and theater reviews. I often rely on The Washington Post’s Stephen Hunter for movie-watching decisions. I don’t always follow his recommendations. But after reading his reviews for many years, I know his tastes well enough to know which movies he likes that I will like, too, and — just as important — which ones he doesn’t like that I will.
Why don’t newspapers review drugs the same way they review books and movies? It might be a little hard to have one reviewer test everything from Xanax to chemotherapy treatments, so this is a perfect place for community interaction. My wife, a mild hypochondriac, is not much of a newspaper reader, but if our local paper started running pharmaceutical reviews I’ll bet she’d check that page religiously. She might even contribute to it. So would many of her friends. Wow! A whole new newspaper audience niche! And a whole new set of advertising sales opportunities, too, since the pharma companies would be all over this in a heartbeat.
Add reviews of local doctors, hospitals, clinics, chiropractors, faith healers, and other health care providers, and you’ll have a whole daily section so full of high-value ads that newspaper company shareholders will weep with joy.
Then add free music downloads from local rock bands — and hip hop and grunt rock and reggae and classical and jazz and other kinds of groups and performers — and there would be yet another new audience segment a forward-looking newspaper could glom on to. The Washington Post has an online area where local musicians can upload their work and readers can download it for free, but it doesn’t seem to have been updated since September, 2006. It was a very cool thing that was way ahead of its time when I first saw it in 2002.
Now, of course, local radio has been all but merged out of existence, leaving only Murky Channel-type junk in most media markets, which means newspapers have a golden opportunity to become the primary source of new local music for the local masses. Many papers already sponsor local musical events. This is just a more sophsticated way to do it. In fact, musc downloads could help publicize concerts, and concerts could tout the download service. Synergy to the max!
The 2017 Prototype Newspaper of the Future Contest
In the year 2017, if newspapers are still alive, they’ll be robot-delivered, custom-printed, and Web based. And they will face competition and challenges we can’t even imagine today.
Well, maybe we can imagine some of those challenges…
- Implanted RFIDs with direct neural conductivity will be all the rage. Tomorrow’s digerati will sneer at old fogies (who are today’s young hotshots) and say, “You mean you still get your news from the Internet? On a computer? Eww!”
- With direct neural connections, Smell-O-Vision will finally become reality. So will Feel-O-Vision. Instead of just watching a football game, you’ll be hooked directly to the players’ own nervous systems. You’ll be right there in the huddle, smelling the Quarterback’s sweat. And when the player you’re hooked to gets tackled, “I feel your pain” will no longer be something funny the first President Clinton once said. Instead, you’ll feel pain so real that you’ll be curled up on the floor, sobbing, as you clutch your broken ankle.
- Porn is going to be amazing in the world of Feel-O-Vision. Teledildonics will be one of America’s hottest growth industries. Progressive newspapers will start hiring porn reviewers. But they will no longer have book reviewers because hardly anyone will still read anything except tech manuals — and by 2017 most tech manuals will be videos on disc, produced in Vietnam or Alabama (India will be way too expensive by then), not old-style paper books.
- It will be no problem outsourcing virtually all reporting to lower-cost countries because we’ll have security cameras everywhere so remote reporters can see everything. (They’ll use remote-controlled reporter robots to cover places where there are no permanently-mounted cameras).
- At some point, there will be a scandal over “altered” feelings in a Feel-O-Vision newscast. The Online News Association will hold many roundtable discussions about the ethics of modifying FeelFeeds (which is what I think we’ll call direct neurological hookups) and whether audiences should be linked to soldiers as they die in the Endless War that will still be going on in Iraq.
The one bright spot in all this is that beginning journalists will no longer need to send resumes to thousands of newspapers, TV stations, and FeelFeed outlets in order to break into the field. There will only be one news company, and an artificial intelligence based on the (by then) late Rupert Murdoch’s brain will control it. Journalists will either work for this company or will be forced to find another line of work, which will make life simpler and easier for almost everyone.
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Copyright 2017 by the Online Journalism and FeelFeed Review, published by the USC Murdoch School of Journalism. All rights are held by the Murdoch School of Journalism. No one — not even the author — may reprint, retransmit, FeelFeed, quote or even discuss this article without express permission from the copyright holder.
About Robin Miller
