Instead of leafing through fifteen pages of national and international news before coming to showbusiness and then sport, your average urban reader now wants a quick dose of main headlines, business news, and sports results, laced with a tonic of gossip, even pure rumour, to tide him over until the next news-fix. The same blend goes for short films, where art and gimmickry are blending more and more. The most-downloaded short films on the internet are cartoons of mice exploding and so on. Because they are faster to download and easier to send than real movies, and this is the kind of quick, obvious kick people want during their lunchbreak. The two media will peacefully coexist.
Newspapers are habit-forming, portable.
They are accessories. That's a different story, a story that's only now beginning to unfold. There is in fact a thriving community of screenwriters based on the web, with many scripts being submitted and read that way - before being bought for real money. And for the publishing house, too, it means more available material - not that there was ever a shortage. But the value-adding effects of interactivity as detailed above may come true for book publishers, who can now gauge interest in a book or a topic with great precision.