TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design and is an interdisciplenary conference started in 1984. You can go to TED's Web site, ted.com (click here) and watch tons of video lectures by a diverse cavalcade of smartypantses. Speakers include Jane Goodall, Richard Dawkins, John "and I'm a PC" Hodgman, Bono, Peter Gabriel, Bills Clinton, Gates and Graham, the guy from Mythbusters* and even a parrot. (Click on the links for those videos.)
The TED lecture above--reposted in accordance with Creative Commons guidelines (I think)--is a presentation by Polish graphic designer Jacek Utko, who essentially says the solution to reversing newspaper decline lies with, well, designing better newspapers. Give the art directors power, he says, and they'll boost your readership. My thoughts: he's right.
Actually, I think print will remain a desired medium for a lot longer than many think it will, because readers--even young readers--like the experience of reading on paper and use it to complement, rather than replace, information collected through television (which is headed for bigger problems than newspapers) and the Web.
There's still the problem of the economic model being broken. Design can only be a band-aid solution while we have larger failures of capitalism. But print itself is here for a while yet. Readers still want newspapers, magazines and even books.
Papers going down in the States like the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Rocky Mountain News had daily subscription numbers in the hundreds of thousands. There isn't a problem with the audience.
(TOTH to Paul Klassen)
*Adam Savage
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