Calculations, not slide rules

A great quote from a 2006 article in the American Journalism Review:

Ken Marlin is managing partner of Marlin & Associates, a New York investment banking firm that specializes in media and technology deals. He compares newspapers' predicament to the demise of the slide rule: "[O]ne of the fundamental mistakes that a lot of slide rule manufacturers made was in thinking that people wanted slide rules instead of calculations. The slide rule world got wiped out virtually overnight by electronic calculators." Marlin says his analogy is imperfect, because newspapers are not in imminent danger of getting wiped out; he expects them to be around 10 years from now. But the "newspaper companies, like the slide rule manufacturers, have to either adapt to the new economics or die."

Related posts:

1. Calculations, not slide rules
2. Journalism can’t be a one-way street anymore