The Information Game
Rupert Murdoch may not be the man you think of when the subject of reforming racing comes up, but his speech last Wednesday to the American Society of Newspaper Editors is spot on in describing the technological-cultural shifts of the past decade, and what he has to say about the need to reach young people on their terms if a tradition-bound industry is to survive is as relevant to racing as it is to journalism:
We need to realize that the next generation of people accessing news and information, whether from newspapers or any other source, have a different set of expectations about the kind of news they will get, including when and how they will get it, where they will get it from, and who they will get it from….
What is happening is, in short, a revolution in the way young people are accessing news. They don’t want to rely on the morning paper for their up-to-date information. They don’t want to rely on a god-like figure from above to tell them what’s important. And to carry the religion analogy a bit further, they certainly don’t want news presented as gospel….
In the face of this revolution, however, we’ve been slow to react. We’ve sat by and watched while our newspapers have gradually lost circulation….
Where four out of every five americans in 1964 read a paper every day, today, only half do. Among just younger readers, the numbers are even worse….
The trends are against us…. Unless we awaken to these changes, which are quite different to those of 5 or 6 years ago, we will, as an industry, be relegated to the status of also-rans.
