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Paying for News: Let's Get On with It

I'll go you one better. Not only has it been proven time and again that people do not want to pay for news (and most other internet content)...they don't even want to REGISTER for free on news sites. The essence of the web will simply never let this change.

Paying for News: Let's Get On with It

Biggest problem the newspaper business has is not the Internet. Their biggest problem is that the amount of news published has expanded hugely over the past 50 years. The problem is this expansion was fueled by both the franchise exclusivity of newspapers and by the growth of ad dollars in all media.

We are going to find out that, um actually, we don't need all that news. Most of it is useless and does not change our lives. Much of it is now, we can see via the web, duplicated in hundreds of places.

Take both of those factors away and what do you have. A lot less news. And we won't be missing most of it.

Ad Industry's Decline Forecasts Publishing's Fall

I've lived it. It's all true. Pretty straightforward. Soon the question will be how deep the failure will reach into the publishing business. What is the minimum circ you need to survive.

What is the point of a news weekly or news monthy magazine in an electronic world?

Many smaller market newspapers are so thin and full of ads and so little news, where is the value for either the reader or the advertiser?

The End of News Media or Just an Accidental Business Model?

You guys all still need to think bigger.

Two issues: 1-What is Journalism? 2- How much news do we (or the average citizen) need.

These questions have been previously answered in a way that fit the old model, but did not necessarily serve the marketplace or citizens. They were contorted into a service that fit the economics of the industry at the time. This was true in all traditional media forms.

If Journalism is about accurately conveying the news of the day, there are thousands of bloggers and other young publishers anxious and qualified to do this. The ones who aren't will be sorted out by the marketplace and I would argue, dispatched by the readers faster than Jason Blair from the NY Times with less damage.

If Journalism is about deciding what is the news of the day and inserting subtle opinion or managing the dialog, then yes, those days are over. Like 16th century calligraphers, the vast new flow of information, collaborative filtering, personalization, RSS, and reduction of capital necessary to disperse that information has made many of you redundant and that toothpaste cannot be put back in the tube.

That said, the needs of people to rely on a brand, any brand, for quality assurance, will never go away. There is a fundamental economy of convenience in brand buying (or reading) that will always be with us, so some journalists will always have a home, just far far less. BTW, advertisers love those publishing brands as well.

That leaves only one other kind of Journalism to survive in the marketplace. Exceptional perception, insights, analysis. If this is the last remaining winner or differentiator for the news business why is there so little of it. Rhetorical question. Because it is hard and in very short supply. But isn’t that true of all great products and services and the most profitable businesses. See: The Economist. Why newspapers have continued to report on the news of the day, usually 10 hours too late and surpassed by the electronic media, for 40 years is beyond me.

How much news do we need? Certainly not as much business news as FOX seems to think. Not as much as the old radio networks used to think. Vast amounts of general news and information have been generated everyday for 50-100 years to generate pages to support the media spending and grow the business. Did we ever really need that much?

Never the less, it’s all still there and more, live every second on the web, but now we get to discard it without killing a tree if it does not suit our needs. The market too will sort this out, and because of the Internet, it will sort it out faster than ever before into a stasis that keeps the government honest and the people informed, and some people employed in journalism and media…just as much as they need to be, and not what a publisher used to think he or she or we needed.

What Is Wrong With Tribune's Math?

All you have to do is follow what has already happened to TV and Radio. More clutter, more ads. Less content (strip series are now common again, remember the days when a different show was on every hour, 7 days a week). Thinner cheaper content (i.e reality programming, ) Higher value content shifts to higher return mediums (movies and several larger production value series now appear on cable and pay cable) Centralized back office/production across newspaper clusters. And less output. Remember that network prime time used to start at 7PM?

Print Is Toast - Ballmer

bigger concern is who is going to pay to gather all that news? The AP? It's paid for by the newspapers!