Comments on: Journalism Is Not Like Craigslist

By: Daniel Tunkelang

Daniel Tunkelang — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 18:49:30 +0000

I think that’s what the NAA may be pushing for, but doing so may run afoul of anti-trust law. That’s what some of their members are lobbying for anti-trust exemption.

By: dinesh vadhia

dinesh vadhia — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 08:26:45 +0000

The mainstream publishing industry needs something similar to the cable industry model for TV. A monthly subscription would give the subscriber access to a plethora of online properties from different publishers. The publishers can then cease giving access to the search engine crawlers and create a walled garden which they as an industry can control. In essence, take back control of the distribution of their publications. Advertisers would be happy too. Would it work? Yes, if all the key publishers set aside their egos and worked together. Would consumers pay a subscription fee? Many would as mainstream publishers do provide a valuable service but they would also get access to publications from multiple publishers included in the subscription fee.

Dinesh

By: Eric Thayer

Eric Thayer — Fri, 29 May 2009 18:12:25 +0000

I’m curious how good bloggers can fill the good investigative journalist’s ability to ferret out information that is concealed because the entities under investigation do not want the information publicly known. What would be the “new media” venue for investigative journalists should newspapers die off? Could they support themselves between stories? Could a Woodward and Bernstein exist in the new media environment?

By: Daniel Tunkelang

Daniel Tunkelang — Fri, 29 May 2009 18:00:53 +0000

I’ll concede the monopoly profits point–at least there’s no longer a meaningful concept of regional monopoly. Though I wonder how much of the abundance of content on the web is based on a few funded sources. For example, what would happen if you knocked out the major wire services and leading newspapers? How much of the rest is derivative?

In any case, I’m less persuaded that the relationship between citizen journalists and readers (which is what I understand as peer-to-peer journalism) is like that between sellers and buyers. For example, my blogging is an example of someone participating in this peer-to-peer journalism ecosystem. But I’m more an advocate / activist than a reporter. I’m beholden to my own agenda, not to my readers (though my desire to have readers may temper my excesses). Nonetheless, if I were primarily accountable to my readers, I’d expect them to pay me. As it is, I “work” for free, but on my own terms. That’s fun, but not really what I think of as journalism.

By: Scott Rosenberg

Scott Rosenberg — Fri, 29 May 2009 17:48:44 +0000

Web ad money doesn’t support the current infrastructure because that infrastructure was built on monopoly profits. The monopoly’s gone. The newspapers just haven’t accepted that fact.

Yes, classifieds are a peer-to-peer business. Journalism on the web, too, incorporates more of the nature of peer-to-peer behavior than it could possibly have offline.

A decade-and-a-half of Web history demonstrates the folly of charging for all but the most specialized content in an environment where content is so abundant. I think it’s tiresome to rehash that argument. Good luck to the publications who haven’t learned the lesson.

My point was rather to express some sadness that, if newspapers turn en masse to a gated model, they will be opting out of having much influence on the forms that news will take on the Web in future. And that would be a shame, because the experiences of people who labored in newspaper newsrooms (as I did for a decade) is valuable and can help speed up the improvement of news online.

By: Daniel Tunkelang

Daniel Tunkelang — Fri, 29 May 2009 17:26:39 +0000

So that’s the interesting question: is the trickle that bloggers could recycle through fair use a sufficient substitute for the publications themselves? If so, then I’d say that most newspapers should just kill themselves now, at least until their diminished numbers raise the scarcity of their information, thus allowing them to charge more.

And are bloggers ready to start paying for information, incurring costs they need to recoup through advertising? If so, then newspapers should probably be able to cut out the middleman and support a healthy ad-supported model themselves. The problem, as I understand it now, is that the ad money simply isn’t enough to support the current infrastructure. Something has to give.

By: Jason Adams

Jason Adams — Fri, 29 May 2009 17:13:52 +0000

Let’s say for a moment that newspapers are somehow able to return to a subscription or pay-per-view type service. I suspect that bloggers will become the carriers of this information. Bloggers who can make some small amount of money through ads will disseminate news information they subscribe to (while sticking to fair use, presumably) to people who don’t want to pay for something they previously got for free. Is that possibility preposterous or won’t we just be back at square one? It seems to me this ship has sailed one way or another and there’s no going back..