Newspapermen still sexy — at least Hollywood thinks so!

via dailymail.co.uk

The Daily Mail’s synopsis of the upcoming movie, The Paperboy:

The Paperboy, being described as ‘an explosive sexual thriller’, tells the story of Jack James, played by Efron – the son of the Moat County Tribune’s editor and publisher.

Sibling rivalry: Zac and Matthew McConaughey star as brothers in the ‘explosive sexual thriller’, due out later this year

While Jack’s older brother, Ward, reports for the Miami Times, Jack has settled for a job delivering papers for the Tribune. [ Hit the link for a photo or Efron holding some bundled newspapers. Like I’m including that photo over Nicole Kidman! ]

But when Ward and his partner, evil dandy Yardley Acheman, come to Moat County to investigate the four-year-old murder of the local sheriff, Jack assists them in the inquiry.

Nicole, meanwhile, stars as Charlotte Bless in the movie – a woman who writes letters to death row inmates amd who is having a correspondence with the murder suspect, played by John Cuscack.

The movie is based on the novel by Peter Dexter, who wrote the screenplay for Mulholland Falls.

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100 years into the future, where will history be?

via apple.copydesk.org

Sunday, for those few who avoided all of the media bombardment, marked the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic.

Local papers, of course, dug through their morgues to find the actual front page reporting the disaster, or found local readers who had a frail copy and ran with that story.

I think holding a front page of a newspaper that’s 100 years old makes the history come alive. It puts me right back there when the event happened and I can imagine how a person of that era felt or reacted on reading the news the first time.

One hundred years from now, how will those citizens of 2112 react when the local (or national) media outlet plays up the 100-anniversary (of whatever earth-shattering importance is to come) story feel when the website (if they still call it that) offers up the page that reported the event.

It won’t be yellowed with time. There won’t be any creases where various owners had folder it into scrapbooks or family albums and Bibles. Assuming the electronic page has been preserved (most likely as a PDF), it will as fresh as the day it hit the Interwebs. There’s no hint of dust or must or being hidden away for the ages. No hint of age. No hint of the passing of generations.

Where’s the history in that? Where’s the mystery?

DATELINE 2015: The New York Times ceases to exist as we now know it!

via slideshare.net

Eric Johnson, Founder and Managing Member of Ironfire Capital throws down and prophesies the end of The Old Gray Lady.

Watch the slideshow. It’s only 10 slides and here are his conclusions:

Newspapers supported by classifieds and ads will likely cease to exist after 2015• The only viable news business models moving forward appear to be:

(1) Financial data subscription (e.g., Bloomberg/ThomsonReuters),

(2) Cable subscription (e.g., Comcast, Disney, CBS),

(3) Costs for digital news getting spread across page views of larger Internet company (e.g., Yahoo!) or

(4) Copycat blogging supported by banner ads (e.g., Huffington Post)

Only other possible model is support by a benefactor (e.g., Apple or the Steve Jobs Foundation)

If the New York Times can’t make it alone, why would any other smaller newspaper?

Investigative reporting will become even more invisible than it is today in the coming years.

I can’t argue with his points, but who knows what will happen in the next three years? I’m thinking that the printed version will still be here, more expensive, more thinner and less available on newsstands than it is now.