Mario: ‘One medium can’t replace another’
Mario Garcia has designed a new free tab that will begin distribution in Bangkok next March.
Tuesday’s story in The Nation contains a couple of interesting quotes from the man. Please take note:
Veena Thoopkrajae and Lisnaree Vichitsorasatra report:
XPRESS is the 21st brand-new paper he’s birthed, and he’s definitely going for the younger groove. “Young people hardly ever buy a newspaper, but they’ll grab it if it’s free and if the design appeals to them,” [Garcia] says.
Garcia is often asked if, in refashioning newspapers, he’s not just nailing new shoes onto a dying horse, but he’s too much of an optimist to believe claims that the Internet has killed off the print media.
“One medium can’t replace another, as we’ve witnessed with radio, TV and now the Internet. On average a person spends 35 minutes reading six to seven websites, selecting the stories that interest him, and in this way we all become editors on our own. Yet online readers don’t remember what websites they’ve just scanned - but they remember which newspaper.”
Read the entire story Tuesday in The Nation.
December 18th, 2007 at 12:39 am
“Yet online readers don’t remember what websites they’ve just scanned - but they remember which newspaper.”
That may be true, but does it matter to readers what web site or paper they just read? I’m not sure I buy his view that one medium can’t replace another. Sure, there likely will be a print medium for a long time, but whether that medium will continue to be used to deliver news is more questionable. Also consider that Mario IS a newspaper design consultant, so he’s not going to make any doom-and-gloom predictions if he wants to keep getting business.
December 18th, 2007 at 10:05 am
- Kevin Roberts in the Financial Post in August 2006
The “Not Replacing One Another” mantra is used frequently these days. Steve Yelvington has a slide in one of his presentations that shows that media consumption habits are set for life before people set out in their careers.
True, the telgraph has not been entirely replaced but it’s adoption is a sliver of where it was one hundred years ago when it was the king of communications. (Funny, I think Twitter has brought back the marvel of telegraph style communique.)
In Bangkok the mobile is ubiquitous - I am curious about the digital strategy of the launch as much as the print side.
December 18th, 2007 at 11:33 am
Well, it’s refreshing to read this….
Newspapers won’t die, unless the people who run them drag their feet in making newspapers relevant and meaningful to a new generation of readers. They also won’t die if they innovate, breaking from the pack to better reflect their own market. (They’re not all the same, but they never were.)
Guess what I’m saying is that to survive and thrive, each newspaper needs its very own “model.” The bar has raised, to be sure, but it’s raised in different ways in different places — if that makes sense.