Steve Jobs: I Can Help Save the Media Business

Ever since I knew the iPad was going to be a reality, I’ve dreamed of what it could do for print journalism.

Via the D8 Conference and AllThingsD:

Speaking at the D8 conference, the Apple CEO says that he wants to help save journalism because “I don’t want to see us descend into a nation of bloggers myself. I think we need editorial more than ever.” Ahem. Regardless, “What we have to do is figure out a way  to get people to start paying for this hard-earned content.”

OK. So how to do that? “Price it aggressively, and go for volume”, he says onstage at the D8 conference. When Apple hasn’t done that, he says “we get attenuated success”.

And if media companies follow his lead, he says, he can help them sell newspapers, magazines,  TV shows, etc.. But they’ll need to “take a more aggressive stance”  to pricing than they have to date.

The music industry is a prime example. They have belly-ached over the profit margins, but it is undeniable that Apple, iTunes and the iPod have revolutionized an industry that was starting to show signs of sagging.

Journalism is not dead, and I believe it is a cornerstone of a free society. What the iPad presents is the future of consuming media content. Here’s hoping that the print medium, of which I once belonged, takes better advantage of this platform than they did the Internet.