The Rocky Mountain News and the Newsroom of the Future

This video is illuminating. If you want to know – to really know – why the newspaper is a failing medium then just watch this report from the Rocky Mountain News. If you can see through the haze of nostalgia and self pity the answer is right there – it’s there in the swank office space, the big iron presses, the multitude of plasma displays, the headcount, the ingrained reactions that harken back to a previous technological era – this is a video of an organization that simply could not or would not accept the idea that the operational nature of what they do has changed.

Simply put – the market for news cannot support newsrooms that look like that anymore – at least not in any significant number. Going forward – as news gathering organizations come to terms with the fact that putting ink on paper everyday is killing them – that having hundreds of full time staff reporters is killing them – that the modern news gathering does not need to run on fat expense accounts and comfortable chairs – we will start to see these newsrooms shrink. The newsroom of the future will be a much more spartan affair – a smaller room, with fewer people – fewer televisions – less stuff. The newsroom – hell the entire news organization of the future – will be 25 smart people in a studio.