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What If the Newspaper Industry Made a Colossal Mistake?

politico.com

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Re: What If the Newspaper Industry Made a Colossal Mistake?

#61

Post by programminggeek »

I think the problem is a simple assumption - people will leave the print version of My Local Journal and go to mylocaljournal.com when in fact they go from My Local Journal to Buzzfeed or the Yahoo! homepage or Google News or Twitter or Facebook or RSS of their 10 favorite blogs etc...

For example, I don't have a newspaper. I also don't check the local newspaper website. My wife, friends, relatives don't seem to either. The entirety of local news is mostly ignored.

And yet, we are fine. So, is all of that news necessary or important to our lives? As it turns out, no.

Re: What If the Newspaper Industry Made a Colossal Mistake?

#62

Post by microtonal »

brazzledazzle wrote: post #38

I'm starting to think distraction is the root of many problems. There's little hope for most people trying to read an in-depth article on their mobile devices. The article about deep work on the front page has made me realize just how long it takes me to take care of the stuff that is severely hampered by distraction. I think a big hurdle will be removing distractions like chat or noise/interruptions from coworkers w…

I'm starting to think distraction is the root of many problems.

This is one of the two reasons that I subscribed to a dead-trees paper again. It is much easier to read in-depth articles in a newspaper in a format where there are no other distractions.

The other reason is that blue light is bad for sleep patterns and reading the newspaper at night has the opposite effect of reading from a smartphone or tablet: it makes me tired (in a good way). Of course, it helps that I am reading a newspaper which is not in my native or second language :).

Re: What If the Newspaper Industry Made a Colossal Mistake?

#63

Post by jhayward »

njharman wrote: post #52

The crisis is not one of content. But one of distribution. The internet has destroyed the lock on distribution relied on by; Publishers, MPAA, RIAA, newspapers, governments and even people who expect hard to access (look up in county courts files) means effectively "private". There is vastly more supply of "attention" than there is demand for "attention". Combined with the ease of distribution/search and picking and…

> The crisis is not one of content. But one of distribution.

This is undoubtedly the key aspect of the networked world. Papers have, in the past, tried to do various forms of syndication and distribution bundling deals to establish a viable business model but to my knowledge these have all been abject failures. Compound this with the loss of monopoly income from local classified ads and we have implosion.

My suggestion to the industry is to not syndicate content, rather syndicate subscription. I only want to have a single "news" subscription - and it's not going to be on "your" site. So the industry should find a way for me to pay for content wherever I may find it with a single subscription, and without anyone "owning" my account. There may be a business model that works there.

Re: What If the Newspaper Industry Made a Colossal Mistake?

#64

Post by angry-hacker »

chc wrote: post #48
angry-hacker wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what is bad about it? It sounds strange thing to say htnl5 has anything to do with it...

If your website is bad, and you create a new one that keeps the same core ideas but has new, fancy features from HTML5, you now most likely have a site that is both bad and baroque. Very few websites are bad because they were lacking the features HTML5 adds — they're bad because their creators want to do the wrong thing.

I think you don't understand what html5 is. I understand your frustration about changes the sites do, but it has nothing to do with html5 per se.

Re: What If the Newspaper Industry Made a Colossal Mistake?

#65

Post by orbitingpluto »

EGreg wrote: post #35
goatlover wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sacrificing the ideals of journalism sounds like a bad deal for democracy. But then again, if people would rather be entertained by whatever is in their filter bubble for five minutes, than be challenged, I guess that's the kind of news world we get.

This may not be the news world we need But this is the news world we deserve :)

I think your comment is very apt. If you don't pay for the news, you being manipulated is the product. You have to support people who inform for our actual benefit.

I subscribe to a couple digital periodicals. My last paper subscription lapsed about four months ago.

Re: What If the Newspaper Industry Made a Colossal Mistake?

#66

Post by mark-r »

orbitingpluto wrote: post #65
EGreg wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may not be the news world we need But this is the news world we deserve :)

I think your comment is very apt. If you don't pay for the news, you being manipulated is the product. You have to support people who inform for our actual benefit. I subscribe to a couple digital periodicals. My last paper subscription lapsed about four months ago.

Paying doesn't help. It always galled me that I was paying for the privilege of getting ads.

My paper subscription lapsed years ago. The local paper is actually pretty good, but I find I don't miss it much anymore.

Re: What If the Newspaper Industry Made a Colossal Mistake?

#68

Post by chc »

angry-hacker wrote: post #64
chc wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your website is bad, and you create a new one that keeps the same core ideas but has new, fancy features from HTML5, you now most likely have a site that is both bad and baroque. Very few websites are bad because they were lacking the features HTML5 adds — they're bad because their creators want to do the wrong thing.

I think you don't understand what html5 is. I understand your frustration about changes the sites do, but it has nothing to do with html5 per se.

I think you're either being needlessly pedantic or seeing more blame directed toward HTML5 than there actually is.

Re: What If the Newspaper Industry Made a Colossal Mistake?

#69

Post by _rpd »

njharman wrote: post #52

The crisis is not one of content. But one of distribution. The internet has destroyed the lock on distribution relied on by; Publishers, MPAA, RIAA, newspapers, governments and even people who expect hard to access (look up in county courts files) means effectively "private". There is vastly more supply of "attention" than there is demand for "attention". Combined with the ease of distribution/search and picking and…

Yes, this is just another example of the classic and ongoing disintermediation enabled by internet technologies.

Once I had access to the raw news feeds available to journalists (Reuters, AP, AFP, etc), it became clear that the novel content of local newspapers was vanishingly small. With the rise of special interest blogs of every sort, there was simply no reason to endure the mangled versions of the news feeds offered by local newspapers.

Re: What If the Newspaper Industry Made a Colossal Mistake?

#70

Post by lowken10 »

EGreg wrote: post #34

Basically, just like booksellers and other vendors, the move to online caused Newspapers to compete in a global marketplace, where the unit is the story. And the more outlets, the bigger the competition. This is the result of all that. They are now all chasing a fixed advertising pie, but the barrier to publishing has been greatly lowered I suppose the same could be said of the printing press getting more available w…

I agree... Who really cares. If something important happens locally someone will tell you about it.
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