Back in May, ’05 I wrote a rather long post about my belief that local news outlets or broadcasters had as much to worry about as newspapers, if not more.  My main reason for believing that they may have more to worry about than newspapers is that if newspapers catch a clue about providing video via their online operations then they would be able to beat the broadcasters at their own game.

My belief is that our media consumption is quickly moving toward pure digital distribution.  Pretty soon the average consumer will be getting all their media via a provider (cable, satellite) who will give them the capability to do everything from watching TV to surfing the web via the same hardware.  Think of a glorified TV with a computer network feeding it so that it essentially is your TV, TIVO, PC and phone combined.  IF newspaper companies have figured out how to do video for their current web operations by that time then they will have an advantage over traditional broadcasters because they already have more reporters, editors and other infrastructure in place to cover the local market. 

I was reminded of this piece when I saw the Online Journalism Review’s interview with washingtonpost.com’s first video journalist.  I really think the Washington Post company is way ahead of the other newspaper organizations in adopting multi-media practices and they’re carving out a great early competitive advantage.  Part of me is tempted to say that since so many newspapers are owned by large media companies that also have broadcast operations they could simply merge the operations, but having witnessed how silo’d many of these media operations are I’m thinking that the different operations (newspaper, broadcast) are going to have to ensure their own independent survival.  That’s another reason I think newspaper’s have the advantage; as they move away from newsprint and towards digital media they can actually reduce their overhead by replacing presses and paper with cheap digital cameras.

Realistically I think what’s going to happen is that all the traditional media silos will disappear and we’ll just have some meld of media providers, and while I think most will be housed in the corporate halls of traditional media companies like Gannett I think you’ll also see some new players that have yet to be born.  It ought to be fun.