The Nation Press Club Luncheon on Monday was with Harvey Levin. Don’t know who he is? Here’s his bona fides from the Press Clud website:
Harvey Levin , creator of celebrity news site TMZ.com, discussed the changing landscape in entertainment news coverage at the National Press Club. Levin worked as a legal and entertainment reporter for several years prior to founding TMZ.
TLTR:
- Print readers are getting older and younger “readers” aren’t interested in print. We need to attract younger readers? (Tell us something we don’t know).
- The delivery media stystem is stale (see snark above).
- “What is the magic of holding a piece of paper in the air when you read it”? (Try it sometime, Harv).
- “What is it that drives professors and others to sing the praises of newspapers still when it’s not the future? (Probably not, but give credit where it’s due).
- “Yet there is something about newspapers, this holy grail that people talk about that we just have to preserve this. Why? What is it about paper, it’s not even politically correct anymore. What is it about paper that makes us so rooted in the past? And what is it that forces people to shut down when we talk about how to evolve today?
He goes on to ask interesting questions and discusses TMZ’s policy of paying. You can watch the entire speech at this link.