Fons van Westerloo, general director of broadcasting company RTL Nederland, does not believe that free tabloid-format newspapers are the way of the future:
He made these comments during the very week that saw the launch of the Netherlands’ third free newspaper.
Commuters can now pick up De Pers alongside Metro and Sp!ts.
Van Westerloo said that the mobile telephone would instead become the main vehicle for news.
He referred to the current situation in Asia as a sign of what is to come.
“Reading on the train has already been replaced in countries like South Korea with watching and listening to news on the mobile.”
He also said that media companies that failed to anticipate these developments would be doomed.
Well, I disagree.
Nobody said that free papers are THE future.
They are here to stay, but the future is for multi-media and multi-platform “information engines.”
Newspapers, I’m sorry Mr. Van Westerloo, know very well what mobile phones can do: send news alerts.
But I don’t see why the future of new media is the “McDonaldization of news.”
In a multimedia landscape, nobody will have a monopoly on everything.
As Ithiel de Sola Pool (1917-1984) said, something I’ll never forget, these are “technologies of freedom.”
And, by the way, “Technologies of Freedom” is still the most important book that you can read to understand the new media revolution.
And it was published in 1983!
