141–150 of 193 posts
This was predicted in the EPIC 2014 video in 02004. If you haven't seen it, it's a very thought-provoking look at the future of news. The original requires Flash, of course. It got a few things wrong. It doesn't mention filter bubbles and algorithmic radicalization, for instance.
Ohhhh was that the one with “Googlezon”? I remember that video doing the rounds
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How is it a bait and switch? If the content is relevant, it's relevant. If you clicked through to something that said it was about NBA basketball and it was instead about knitting, _that_ would be a bait and switch.
First, if i get paywall page instead of the article then it is not relevant, because it is about paying and not about the original query. Second, it does not make sense - if i use a public search engine, i expect publicly available information. If i have subscription to specific newspaper i would use search dialog in that newspaper. If a public search engine returns me paywall for a specific newspaper, it is minimal…
The article's content is distinct from the method by which the publication chooses to earn revenue. A paywall article is "about paying" as much as an ad-ridden article is "about belly-fat ads." They're both designed to make money, only one shifts the cost to the end user. I'm all for putting a lock icon next to it in Google searches, or doing whatever's necessary to signal that it's paywalled, I guess, but don't blame the search engine for attempting to organize the world's information.
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> ...local news media lose their geographical monopoly I realize what you're saying, but really, local news will always have a geographical monopoly. Can the NYTimes or WSJ even think about covering local issues? How will investigative reporting function for say a local office holder or a local environmental problem? To my knowledge the real problem is that the traditional business model supporting reporting has drie…
My interpretation is people just care about local news far less than they used to? I’m in a semi-major city and the local news is only a small part of my news consumption.
1) Google found a way to get ads to consumers that is more attractive to advertisers. Whether or not they have a monopoly, advertisers won't suddenly go back to ineffective news media ads if Google is broken up and makes room for other competitors that also get ads to consumers better than legacy media does the job
2) Their ad revenue is much more limited by lack of readership than anything else.
#2 is why I said it's not just the wrong fight, but too late: online news sold out their future to Google years ago in a race to the bottom with each other. No one wanted to stop Google scraping their content because, once a few outlets allowed it, none were willing to cede readership to others that might get more attention from Google. So pretty much everyone allowed Google to scrape news content and present chunks of it in search results, and over time is means fewer people have any reason to click through. At the same time the outlets ramped up syndication and cut budgets on original work so readers had even less reason to click through to any particular site.
That's where they lost the fight.
If Google has an ad monopoly, the news outlets have no special status as victims of it and there every reason to believe their decades-long foot shooting would have placed them exactly where they are anyway.
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> I am personally anti-populism, and think that civil cases with large financial stakes should be decided by an (appointed not elected) judge- not a random group of folks who can afford to skip work for two to four weeks. US Federal judges are all appointed, not elected, so not much to worry about there. The judge and jury serve different purposes in the US system. The judge's job is to decide questions of law, the j…
A bunch of randoms might not be good at deciding the facts. You'd think someone experienced would be better at this than a load of people who won't be held to account.
1 the average citizen is not the philosopher king that the Founding Fathers envisioned
2 people can't even be arsed to vote how much do they really care about their civic duty
But what do they want? I mean aside from "make laws to force google to license our stuff, they must be forced to publish our stuff, and forced to pay for it", which is totally insane. Personally just fucking let me pay $1 per article for me to read. I will NEVER subscribe to a recurring thing, but i bet you I'll start paying a lot, as I want to read many articles per month. Paywall sure, but get the fucking subscript…
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If their content is so interchangeable, why should they all stay in business?
Someone has to actually write the content before everyone else copies it.
That kid will be killed a few weeks later and replaced by a new one. The new journalists.
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> removed local news from existence Removing local news has created a hyper focus on national news. People forget about their local communities where a ton is happening. This isn't good for local communities. We need more focus on the local. Not everything is national.
In the age of the internet local doesn't matter anymore. I'm now part of a community that spans the globe.
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USA Today is deliberately written at a 10th grade reading level, so it’s doubtful how relevant it is for university students. But if you found only one relevant article in the NY Times then either you were consuming radio/TV news, or just don’t care about current events. Which is fine, it just means you weren’t the target audience.
> USA Today is deliberately written at a 10th grade reading level, so it’s doubtful how relevant it is for university students. A 10th grade reading level doesn't mean they only cover stories of interest to 10th graders or younger. It just means they they use a 10th grade vocabulary and sentence structure. Most stories in the NYT could be covered at a 10th grade level and still convey most of the important informatio…
The most important factor is that on the internet local news media lose their geographical monopoly. So everyone can subscribe to NYT or WSJ no matter where they live. This effectively creates a winner takes all situation like in many other industries which get closer to a free market. Add to that the fact that classified ads have been taken over by likes of ebay, LinkedIn, craigslist, etc. Basically the business mod…
> ...local news media lose their geographical monopoly I realize what you're saying, but really, local news will always have a geographical monopoly. Can the NYTimes or WSJ even think about covering local issues? How will investigative reporting function for say a local office holder or a local environmental problem? To my knowledge the real problem is that the traditional business model supporting reporting has drie…
And I do like local news. In fact I care more about city level issues close to home rather than following the bad soap opera that is the national politics.