The Evolving Newsroom

I enjoyed this post from New York venture capitalist Fred Wilson. He looks at his three kids for clues to digital market trends. I read Fred quite a bit, and follow him on Twitter - because I can and because I get a vicarious kick out of how much electronic kit he seems to have.

A key observation is that his kids spend a lot of time online - on social networks, games, listening and buying music, reading. As his daughter said: 'Dad, the internet is my primary entertainment.'

Sure, his kids have electronic gadgets and connectivity far beyond what most households have. But the point is, as ever, that once people get online, and get broadband, and get a PC with a reasonable bit of memory and a zippy processor, and get familiar with a few of the tricks of social networks and games and shopping and blog-hopping, they get hooked. Then they start expecting the analog world to start behaving more like the digital world, and if it doesn't, they lose interest.

And that's why media companies need to adapt, and quickly, or else they'll get left behind.