Tecnologia e seu impacto na Imprensa - um caso

Os jornais debatem-se hoje com uma crise quase de dimensões existenciais, perante o impacto do digital e das redes de comunicação planetárias, acentuada pela crise económica. Mas não é a primeira vez que tal acontece. Quando surgiram a rádio, primeiro e, sobretudo, a televisão, algo de análogo (embora não equivalente) se passou e está para se descobrir o modelo que permitirá à imprensa ree-contrar o seu lugar e o seu nicho.

Um trabalho recente publicado pela revista The Economist recorda, por seu teu turno, um outro momento (nos anos 40 do séc. XIX) em que uma tecnologia, neste caso, o telégrafo, obrigou a imprensa a uma ruptura com métodos e conteúdos, para enfrentar a nova situação.
Eis alguns excertos desse texto intitulado "Network effects - How a new communications technology disrupted America’s newspaper industry—in 1845":

"(...) James Gordon Bennett, the editor of the New York Herald and author of the gloomy prediction of May 1845, concluded that the telegraph would put many newspapers out of business. “In regard to the newspaper press, it will experience to a degree, that must in a vast number of cases be fatal, the effects of the new mode of circulating intelligence,” he wrote. He returned to his theme in another editorial in July. “All those papers which serve merely as vehicles of intelligence will be destroyed,” he declared. “The scissors-and-paste journalism of the country will be annihilated.”
(...)
The telegraph did indeed reshape the newspaper industry, but not in the way that Bennett and others had predicted. For although telegraph wires could deliver news more rapidly than ever, they had a “last mile” problem: they could not disseminate news quickly to thousands of people. Only printed newspapers could do that. Far from putting papers out of business, the telegraph actually made them more attractive and increased their sales. For the first time it became possible to read up-to-date business and political news within hours of its occurrence.
(...)
What lessons does the telegraph hold for newspapers now grappling with the internet? The telegraph was first seen as a threat to papers, but was then co-opted and turned to their advantage."

Texto integral AQUI.

ACT. (24.01.2010): Entretanto, o brasileiro Observatório da Imprensa fez a tradução do texto de The Economist, o qual pode ser lido AQUI.