Blog #9 - Diffusion Theory in Newspaper

    Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations Theory is one of my favorite topics we have covered in this class so far. I find it incredibly interesting to be able to quantify the change of an innovation's popularity using a simple graph. However, I was unsure of what I wanted to put into the graph until I remembered my EOTO of the newspaper. The newspaper has gone through a long life of changes and adaptations in order to meet the needs of the people using it. Nevertheless, it is easy to see the curve of influence that the newspaper has had.

    The early adopters of the newspaper utilized it for its ability to give them up-to-date news on events happening both locally and remotely. Before the newspaper, people were using newsbooks, which were not timely or easily accessible to the normal person. While early on there were many people using the newspaper, it wasn't until the first amendment was created that it brought in the early majority of newspaper users. The fact that the news was both unbiased and entertaining made many people want to buy the paper each day. 

    As popular as the newspaper was for many years, it has started to move into the laggards faze due to the fact that news is consumable in many other ways. People no longer need or even want physical newspapers in order to get their daily updates about the world. I don't believe physical newspapers ever had a major downside to them from the beginning, but rather, they just got lost among the new innovations of today's online-dependent world. 

    When you look at how long the newspaper dominated the media world, the positives of the technology overwhelm the negatives. Not only that, but the business of journalism will continue without the physical paper. Online newspapers are the newest adaptation of this technology and I believe this is only the beginning of a range of new ways to consume the same things you would find in a newspaper. Not every technology is infallible, but the newspaper shows that even as it gets less use, it can adapt and grow again.

I encourage you to check out this site, as it shows some of the evolution that I referenced.