I posted my latest blog entry titled “Reading or Ripping Print” and, only a few days after, I attended an event called “The Next Journalism – What Comes after Newspapers” with Tom Foremski of SiliconValleyWatcher and Carolyn Pritchard of Gigaom. The discussion made me think even more about what the future holds and if my very young kids will ever be interested in reading my precious books.

The topic was the coexistence of traditional and social media, which is the situation we are confronting with right now, with two very different tools trying to achieve the same goal: getting information to the readers in the fastest and most accurate way possible. Most journalists have adapted and are now blogging, tweeting, and getting in touch with their online audience in different ways, but offering similar stories they used to have in print. So, in the end, the quality of their work and their efforts to keep journalism alive are what we should all appreciate, because some are still doing great investigative reporting, which includes in-depth interviews with company executives, their customers,  partners, and industry analysts while looking closely at competitors and other events happening in the same market. That takes a lot of work and knowledge of the subject they are covering.

Going back to the topic ,”What comes after newspapers,” we don’t have to work in PR or media to know that newspapers and magazines are barely keeping their print editions alive, and we have digital books now. Also, we are all trying to save trees and fight for a green world. At the same time, we don’t have money for print advertising, so, even if we didn’t care about the environment, we would not be able to help print publications survive. On the other hand, print publications are finding ways to consolidate the digital and print worlds. Entertainment Weekly magazine will include a video-chip ad embedded in its September issue. As hip as it can get… today.

But what if at some point in the future, print will come back, somehow like radio did in various forms throughout the years: AM, FM, satellite, or Internet?

Tom Foremski made a comment that “we still have the old (media) world influencing the new world and that is going to be true for a while.” I think that is a good thing and if we could bring the magic, accuracy, and elegance of some of those print pieces to the online world, we should welcome the coexistence of the two or even the transition.