With Fairfax taking The Age to a smaller more compact size toady, they don’t like you calling it tabloid, it prompted Belinda King of Radio ABC Tasmania to ask the question What is the future of newspapers and the media?

We chatted about the notion that the core of what people want is information, knowledge and wisdom and that 100’s of years ago the rise in literacy moved us from receiving this orally from the church pulpit and travelers to reading about it in newspapers.

Today we still want to “know”, but our habits and technology are different.

We want to be a part of the news, we want to know immediately something has happened and see it first hand and even report and comment on ourselves.

The static one-way communication that newspapers of old delivered their insights doesn’t offer this, but digital can.

So really the question becomes how do we re-purpose our news gathering and disseminating infrastructure to better deliver on customer expectations – an innovation opportunity every industry is coming to terms with.

Have a listen now and then make the news yourself and share how you see the future of media.