Arizona Republic – AzCentral.com is Going into Video in a Big Way

I recently was walking down Squaw Peak when I ran into an Arizona Republic photographer. He was there with the same Sony HD camera that I have so I struck up a conversation.  Here are the salient points:

-They don’t know exactly what they are going to do but they are going into video in a big way on AzCentral.com. This I think may be destined for meager results due to it being very hard for a small crew/full time to compete with millions of part time amateur videographers.   I say this because I’ve seen CommunityChannel on YouTube.com and I have to tell you I am extremely impressed by the quality of her commentaries and comedies.  I’m surprised she has not be snapped up by some TV network already.   The math for this process is as follows

  ( Qty Az Republic Staff )  *  avg. hours worked per professional  <<< Millions of users * avg hours worked by amateur  <<< is read as much much less than The future of video, commentary and news is going to be web based.   Its not going to be dominated by the likes or relics like the Arizona Republic.  Print media is dying quickly and the Arizona Republic is furiously trying to reinvent itself thru the AzCentral.com venue. 

As you can see from the AzCentral.com Alexa reach graph it appears that they have seen their best days on the web unless they can reinvent themselves in a sufficient manner.  The video approach is not going to do it.  It will have some marginal positive effect but as stated above can not possibly hope to make a dent against the likes of YouTube.  I think this politburo centralized news making model whether it be on the web or in print is not long for this world.  The reason for this ?  The facts and truth are not centralized…..its distributed in a relatively even fashion throughout the world.