Clay Shirky: Traditional Media is Going Down

NYU professor and author Clay Shirky weighs in at the Guardian with a no holds barred media forecast for the new year. “2009 is going to be a bloodbath” he says. Shirky envisions that traditional media (newspapers, magazines, TV) will have to radically shift the way they deliver content in order to survive – mainly by migrating to web-based platforms. He believes the recession will have a long-term positive effect on these media industries, leading to clarity of purpose for those that move away from traditional physical formats and diversify into multiple distribution channels. And, on a positive note, he believes the book industry will continue to thrive, based on a future of print on demand:

The book world is more secure. I think the big revolution is going to be print on demand. Imagine only having one browsing copy of every book in a bookstore. You could say “Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers looks good”, and out pops a brand new copy. Why does a bookstore or a publisher have to be in the shipping and warehousing business?

The Guardian: “The shape of things to come”