By Matt Braddick
Investigative journalist Adam Penenberg presented his lecture “The Death of Print” to a small audience at Ivy Hall last week as part of the Ivy Hall Sunday lecture series. The lecture focused on the future of journalism and print media in a new digital age and how the industry will change in the coming years.
Penenberg addressed the industry from a variety of angles, making the comparison that just as the music industry has been transformed by the advent of new technology, books and print journalism will have to make a decision about change soon. Penenberg mentioned the recent financial problems major metropolitan newspapers have seen, mentioning the New York Times’s selling of part of their office building and the outside investment in their company made by Mexican billionaire Carlos Helú.
Penenberg said the public’s tendency to get their news has grown to such heights that some city newspapers have tried to give free subscriptions out, but people have declined them in favor of Internet news sources.
“Metropolitan areas have the hardest problem because they have to deal with greater broadband access,” he said, speaking about the recent decline in newspaper readership.
Penenberg went on to suggest that the future of reading materials will be completely driven by digital technology.
“Consumers will think in terms of bits and bytes and will embrace the e-book,” he said, discussing the potential of digital book reading devices similar in style and substance to growingly popular iPhone.
Graduate professional writing student Ashley Easton attended the lecture and said the lecture was insightful, but she wasn’t fully ready to accept the idea of completely electronic books and magazines.
“I’m not so convinced though that we’ll ever give up the heft of a real book in our hands, the dog-eared pages of oft-revisited favorites, or that wonderful dusty smell of old books,” Easton said.
Ivy Hall Director Georgia Lee was especially enthusiastic about the lecture and said his lecture “reflected the constantly changing landscape of all forms of written communication as technology, driven by market forces, evolves.”
“His lecture helped all of us think of the future, without fear, but with excitement of the possibilities,” she added.
After the lecture, Penenberg took questions from the audience regarding related topics such as how to make money blogging, the role of economic barriers to Internet access, and the state of news coverage in America.
Penenberg appeared to be impressed with the quality of discussion and engagement about his lecture. “He commented on the intelligence of the audience,” Lee said the day after the event.
Currently a professor of journalism at New York University, Penenberg has written for publications such as Forbes, Wired, the New York Times, The Economist and Playboy. According to his official Web site, he is currently working on a book “on the current shifting media landscape.”
To find out more about Adam Penenberg and his work, visit his Web site www.penenberg.com