Newspapers should stop thinking as fixed products and start acting valuable, branded interfaces to on

CJR carries an interesting interview with Rob Durst, a Boston-based business and technology consultant who believes that newspapers can remain viable.

How? Well according to Durst,if they move quickly and use innovations such as “mobile codes.then have a cahnce of surviving.

Magazines and newspapers should stop treating their publications as fixed products and start thinking about them as valuable, branded interfaces to online content and services. They can do this using mobile codes, which are essentially printed barcodes that readers “click on” using a camera phone—kind of like clicking on a Web link with a mouse. QR (quick response) codes are a good example. They are in widespread use throughout Asia. QR codes contain a Web address, and your phone’s browser automatically connects to that Web site when you take a picture of the code with your camera phone.