The Publishing Question We Need to Stop Repeating

On my way home from the gym today I listened to a BBC World segment on NPR about e-book publishing and how it needs to work itself out: readers need more books, writers need their fair share of royalties and publishing companies need to catch up after all the time spent in denial that e-books would become competition.

Of course I'm always interested in these reports, but inevitably the reporter questions, "Is this the end of publishing as we know it?"

Really? We're still asking that question?

"The end of publishing as we know it," if you're the type to go with such doomsday scenarios, occurred when Joe America gained access to the Internet.

And we're not going to come up with a one-size-fits-all answer to media. Just like magazines filled gaps that newspaper left, technology will continue to fill gaps print leaves behind. And just as I'm going to tap multiple  media  for information -- sometimes print magazines, sometimes the Internet, sometimes and e-book, sometimes a mobile app, to name a few -- one of those forms isn't going to completely disappear.