Newspapers: Putting the “Dead” into Dead Tree
The MSM has bumped up against the internet – and lost.
Clay Shirky called it a while ago in Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations
but big media, if they wish to make the leap to to Web 2.0 life, have to leverage the one thing they do better than everyone else, original investigative reporting, that’s where they create value. Instead they are looking for government protection, subsidies or both.
Rupert Murdoch envisions a walled garden strategy but news has a brief shelf life. A high price on all content is a barrier to entry for older news items that just interest a few people. A flat rate drives down their market share for attention, their traffic and in turn, the market value of all the content they own. A sliding scale would be needed that rapidly discounts toward free as public attention on a news item waned.
Right now the media are like a brontosaurus that has just realized it waded into a tar pit.
Anthony:
May 7th, 2009 at 10:16 am
"Newspapers: Putting the “Dead” into Dead Tree"
Sounds harsh but it’s true.
Lexington Green:
May 7th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
I had this back in ’04.
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http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/2390.html
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I think it still on the money. I always like the chance to use the adjective "Schumpeterian".
zen:
May 7th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
"All the MSM really needs to do is be the professionals they have falsely claimed to be all these years. A real news organization which was devoted body and soul to getting the truth out, chips fall where they may, would embrace the new world that is growing up around it."
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That’s the problem, you hit it squarely on the head. The MSM became so focused on pushing their elite political views against the GOP/conservatives and trying to shape debate within the Democratic/liberal sphere to their own benefit, at any cost, that their collectively credibility crashed and now their bottom line is going with it.
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Letting "the chips fall where they may" was the last thing they were willing to do. Have to wonder how many scandals in the Democratic Party were buried during the 60’s and 70’s by NYT editors who believed that they would have had a "negative" political effect if they had become known.
Lexington Green:
May 7th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
"Have to wonder how many scandals in the Democratic Party were buried during the 60’s and 70’s … ."
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You also have to wonder how many "black ops" occurred, with collusion between the media and the Dems.
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The Dan Rather Memo was one part of a multipronged attack, using TV advertisements timed to coincide with the disclosure. That was not a matter of "news" it was a coordinated disinformation campaign lauched by the D leadership and its media allies. There is a whole unwritten chapter of 20th century American political history that has not yet been disclosed.
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I discussed that here:
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http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/2331.html
NYkrinDC:
May 7th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
I don’t disagree completely, but in all this talk of collusion aren’t you leaving the manner in which the media overhyped what they suspected to be false information and alternatively buried information that disproved the Bush administration’s argument for war with Iraq? I mean, if you read articles from that time, McClatchy was among the few that actually brought opposing views out and pointed to falsehoods of various administration assertions.
My point in saying that, is not to pick a side politically, but rather to illustrate what I think is the true failure of newspapers, and journalism as a whole in recent history. They have essentially become slaves to the establishment, be it democrat or republican and have colluded w/ both alike, to the point where trust in them as an institution has been lost. Of interest, is how some journalists now try to stand out by asking tough questions of President Obama. They stand out for two reasons, 1) not many are asking tough questions, 2) during the Bush years these same journalists never bothered to ask but the most softball of questions. ABC comes to mind here.
I think the larger problem w/ news organizations is that they depend on access, and any white house, senator, congressman can give or deny that access at their will and choose whom to give their time to. In short, it’s a personality market, where to get the news, you have to play ball w/ the personality you want to interview or have access to.
Additionally, another larger problem is how to monetize news on the web. NY Times tried to do this by creating TimesSelect and failed miserably. Others are trying to keep everything behind a firewall, and allow access only to specific articles found through Google, or other search engines (Washington Post). At the same time, they have sought to rely on wed ads for revenue, but w/ so many programs to block pop ups, ad blockers, and no script extensions in the wild, revenue is getting harder to squeeze from these ads.
Add to that the simple way in which one never has to visit newspaper websites by using RSS feed readers like Googlereader and you see even more ad sales lost. All this combines to make it very difficult for newspapers to make any money, even as we all rely on their coverage for either information, opinion or debate on a daily basis.
Openworld:
May 8th, 2009 at 7:36 pm
>>[NYKrinDC] another larger problem is how to monetize news on the web
Perhaps there is a way – linked to online prediction markets – for the web sites owned by financially-threatened newspapers and magazines to become more sustainable. Beyond offering a comments section, the sites could include a “related predictions” space by each article or column for readers to make specific forecasts of events related to the article that they see unfolding in a three or six month period. Readers would pay a one-time fee or subscription fee to enter the prediction pool, generating revenues for the MSM site owners. The best predictors would build reputation and visibility. Rewards for the most prescient participants could include contributing a guest column, after the precedent set by Nicholas Kristof and others at the New York Times. Another reward for the best predictors could be participation in a periodic “open forum” on trends in given fields, where they would be invited as a group to comment on trends and make further predictions. Financial rewards could be a further reason for readers to join a fee-based prediction market systems, with prizes going to the most successful predictors and/or good causes of their choosing. Does anyone know whether such an approach has been tried? A pilot project might be a good way to test reader interest and revenue-generating potentials. Mark Frazier
Openworld.com
@openworld (Twitter)