Death of the Post

"The Washington Post, as it is now, will be dead in three years," exclaimed Mike Potts to Steve Klein's Online Journalism class on Tuesday, March 16th 2009.

Potts, a 'futurist' in the journalism world is credited with being part of the team that started Washingtonpost.com.

"News has become a plentiful commodity: we are bathing in a river of news," instructed Potts on why the news business is suffering. Why?
-Newspapers are no longer to sole source of news.
-Lack of circulation of the newspapers.
-Websites such as Craigslist had decreased the sales of classifieds.
-Advertisers are using the internet to specifically target demographics.

Potts believes that the existing news business model is broken and encouraged the students to ponder, "What happens next?"

His answer: The newspapers must morph.
-Take advantage of News aggregators such as Google News.
-Take advantage of new sources of information, such as local blogs.
-Find a niche of information people are willing to pay for, such as the Wall Street Journal

Finally, Potts told the class that the future of journalism lies in the mobile phone. Information right at your fingertips. Information that is immediate to where and when each individual person is.