Que deverao fazer os jornais para sobreviver? Esta é a pergunta a que procura responder Vin Crosbie na Online Journalism Review. O diagnóstico (norte-americano) é preocupante: "Most printed newspapers' circulations and readerships meanwhile continue their steady 40-year declines. More than 80 percent of American adults read a newspaper each weekday in 1964, but only 58 percent did in 1997, according to the Newspaper Association of America. In 2003, an estimated 54 percent read a newspaper each weekday. Most analysts predict that fewer than half of adults will read the paper every day by the end of this decade. Printed editions are becoming ever less relevant and less popular in most people's lives. Worse, the decline in newspaper readership is accelerating. Most surveys predict that young people won't read print editions when they grow older. At one time it was generally accepted in the newspaper business that people are more likely to read newspapers as they grow older. But research in 1985 by Philip Meyer, a journalism professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, discovered that the newspaper reading habits that people develop in their 20s stick with them as they age.(...)" O resumo das propostas do autor, feito por Steve Outing, no E-Media Tidbits: "Newspaper publishers need to move away from the model of selecting a couple hundred stories from among the thousands contained in their daily feeds (local reporting, wire services, syndicates, etc.) and presenting that one-size-fits-all product to readers and online users. Instead, they need to move toward total mass customization -- that is, select from among all the content sources at their disposal and give each individual reader and online user the content that they care most about. That means utilizing all those thousands of stories, not just the ones that now make it through the news filter. This isn't just "The Daily Me" (though it is, in part). It combines news that we all should know with what we want to know. Editors and readers share control of what the reader/user sees in print or online. This customization will be the model not just on the web, but everywhere the newspaper company publishes. That means digital presses will publish custom print editions for each subscriber; newspaper websites will be different for each registered (and/or paying) user; and digital-replica editions for PCs will be unique for each user, as will future e-paper editions read on portable digital-paper devices. As Crosbie writes: "This complete package of information is what distinguishes newspapers from other media. Magazines can't do it daily. Radio can't do it with texts and pictures. TV can't do it with texts. And no broadcast medium can deliver all that content all at once. ... This service saves readers from having to search hundreds or thousands or millions of the world's content sources for that information -- a vital service in an era of data smog. It's a service for which newspaper companies should be able to generate great revenues and secure larger readership in the 21st century."