At 180 years old, the Jamaica Gleaner is one of the oldest newspaper companies in the western hemisphere and the world. Today I help them to celebrate with a guest column. Read, enjoy and share. Happy 180th Birthday to the ‘Old lady of North Street’.
The company is celebrating its 180th birthday today, and that’s not by chance. It’s still alive and thriving because it has adapted with time to appeal to a different generation of readers. But this time is different – different because of the Internet.
Now more than ever, the modern press has to deal with increased competition. Who is this competition? I am. You are, too, if you’re armed with a cell phone and an Internet connection. In fact, everybody who has a cell phone and access to the Internet is competition to the modern press. What’s even more interesting, we are all ‘journalists’ that aren’t in it to make money. With the rise of social networks, we have been conditioned to share a lot of our lives, from the very mundane to the very important
Originally published on gordonswaby.com on 2014-09-13 (recovered from the Internet Archive).