"Quiet" Trends, Big Impact

While the recession continues to hold our attention, two important trends continue to evolve and intersect rather quietly. Yet they will change our lives profoundly.

This is what the newspaper of tomorrow looks like. This is the new website of the Ann Arbor News in Michigan. Starting in July, the paper will cease to exist as a newspaper and will publish via this community-oriented website. The Ann Arbor News, owned by Advance Publications, Inc., will become a Web company called AnnArbor.com LLC. However, a print edition of the .com will be printed twice weekly.

The pace of change in the newspaper industry, the subject of prior World Vue Letter posts, is quickening. To wit:

• The Detroit Free Press (Gannett Co.) and the Detroit News (MediaNewsGroup) will soon cease print editions most days of the week.
• The Seattle Post-Intelligencer recently went to a web site only format.
• Last month, Denver's Rocky Mountain News (E.E. Scripps) closed down.
• The Flint Journal, Saginaw News and Bay City Times, all in Michigan, will print only three days a week and provide other coverage online.
• Papers in other parts of the country are cutting pay, reducing staff, freezing pensions, and adopting other cost cutting measures. The Charlotte Observer, for example, will terminate 60 full-time and 22 part-time workers, 15% of its work force.

Meanwhile, sales of smart phones like the iPhone and the Blackberry may have reached the tipping point. Consumers are beginning to lose interest in having multiple hand help electronic devices. They are opting instead for the convenience of a single device that enables them to search the web, handle emails, download music, get navigation help, take pictures, text, and speak by telephone. Smart phone shipments are expected to grow 30% this year while sales of single purpose units are starting to slow.

These two trends, taking place rather quietly behind the headlines, will transform our society in many ways. With newspapers in decline what will happen to the free press function so important to our nation's governance? Will the public become a better informed electorate by using smart phones to tap infinite sources of information at any time including blogs? Or will we become an electorate awash in data but lacking in perspective and analyses?

No one can say right now. But one thing is certain. We can expect to see many more changes in how information gets distributed and how political candidates make their case to the public.

Quick Vue: Here's a rapid look at how the Apple iPhone compares with the Blackberry Storm.

Sources of this post included The Plain Dealer and The Wall Street Journal.