Market Center debut: What does it mean for print media?

Anybody out there who has read the Financial Times today may have seen the full spread advertisement of Market Center offering up-to-date global financial information. I immediately checked its website and was amazed at the amount of data available free of charge. Free worldwide quotes. Free charts with multiple studies. Market coverage on stocks, futures, and forex. S&P, Dow Jones, Nasdaq, Nikkei, Hang Seng, FTSE—they are all there. Yes, free of charge!

I don’t have money to invest in these markets. Neither am I into stock market analysis. But do you know the implication of this? This is just another manifestation of the power of the "new media." That print journalism is getting obsolete by the day. What I mean is that investors in the stock and futures markets no longer have to buy the tangible newspaper. All he needs to do is go online and bingo, he has all the information that he or she needs real time to guide his investment decisions.

How could the tangible paper survive this trend? I can think of a few. The newspaper should be able to provide analysis, trends, and forecasts so that readers would still find it relevant. (But of course, someone else online could also do the same.) It means newspapers will have to provide something more, something new and creative, something more profound than what the hypertext of online publications could provide. The tangible newspaper will really have to find a niche to survive. It will have to evolve and adapt. Into what? I don't know. But such a search for relevance will transform the way journalists cover and write stories. This is a very exciting world.

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