media - Online papers still miss the point

Simon World comes with solid arguments to illustrate that sites of most traditional papers, especially the South China Morning Post, are still missing the point of what is happening on the internet. I agree with Simon World that the SCMP is of course the worst example among them all:

The articles on the website are only accessible to subscribers, despite a proliferation of annoying flash advertisements all over the screen. But print subscribers cannot access the site - you have to pay an extra fee for the access. In other words you pay twice for access to the same content. The articles are unlinkable, meaning the SCMP misses out on potential traffic driven to their site by bloggers and others. There are few updates each day - today I can count exactly two new articles on the main page. Worse the page is not updated at all on sunday and only infrequently on Saturday. Even if you subscribe to the site, not all of the newspaper articles are put online..

But also Simon World gets only halfway in his analysis of the media revolution that is taking place. A media revolution that is greatly ignored, as sources at the SCMP quote their chief editor, "we are to busy to give it too much attention". In the US media gurus have figured out that newspapers will lose their last reader around 2040, when the current decline goes on, and they might be gone already a decade of so earlier, since one reader might not be enough. The SCMP is ready to be horse meat long before that.