Slashdot Mirror
CNET Buys Ziff-Davis
Pointwood writes "CNET buys rival Ziff-Davis for $1.6 billion. The story is here." Will the day come when there are just three major online news sources -- AOL.com, News.com, and MSN.com -- and all the rest (including Slashdot) are just barking dogs chasing their wheels? Or will enough new, independent sources spring up and gain enough readers (and credibility) to keep the biggies from getting too much power?
A few years ago, I heard about the slaughter of nearly a million people in Rwanda over a few week period. I walked into a room where people were talking about the OJ Simpson trial, and brought it up. After a quick explaination of the details, and a few reactions of shock and disbelief, the people in the room slowly drifted back to discussing the OJ trial.
It is highly insightful to state that Slashdot continues to post information about a selective subset of information, and that a small group of themes appear repeatedly in its headlines. Unfortunately, pointing this out isn't going to change what people enjoy chattering about.
Mythological Beast
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
Seriously now, at least one good thing comes out of this if ZD adopts c|Net's attitude, the freak'n article titles aren't so "sensational". I am personally sick of seeing an article's title only to read it and come away feeling the exact opposite.
From articles on Windows 2000 to Linux, it seems that the titles are for CIOs who don't bother to read the article. As such, they continue to use Microsoft and Microsoft partners' products.
Sm@rtReseller used to be a tolerable ZD publication, but ever since they switched their name to Sm@rtPartner, they might as well have switched their name to MicrosoftPartner!
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
Independent Author, Consultant and Trainer
If you remember, for a short while Masayoshi Son, president of Softbank, was ranked as the second richest man in the world. But then the bottom dropped, and he lost over two thirds of his fortune. (http://www.forbes.com/forbes/00/0703/6515164a.ht
John
The drops of water don't know themselves to be a river; and yet the river flows.
Slashdot isn't a news site and it's not independant. At best it's a weblog/BBS, but I personally wouldn't consider that memepool, for example, is doing the same thing as the BBC.
CNet is far from a "2 year old startup.."
CNet is at least 5 years old (they recently had an anniversary, but I can't find their link to the story), and they are one of, if not the, the largest online tech sources around. They als have significant resources and revenue streams. Don't believe me? They own news.com, computers.com, shareware.com, downloads.com, and builder.com. You don't just happen on these domain names. And you know what? Each of those domains is among the largest in its respective field.
CNet used to run these ads. the left hand side had a huge bodybuilder and it said "ZDNet in print." The right side had a skinny weakling and said "ZDNet online." They were right. The CNet site is larger, ahs more original content, and I believe has an order of magnitude greater page hits/day (I'm not so sure about that one, but I heard it somewhere). They just do it better online than ZDNet.
Their TV shows are better than ZDNet's too. I've actually talked to people who have seen CNet's, but I have yet to meet one who has seen ZDTV. This is far from scientific, but it has been my experience.
Anyway, I've been reading CNet for major tech news and to keep in touch with the "newbie"-er side of computers since it all started, about 4-5 years ago. They've come a long way, and have grown a tremendous amount.
Haven't you ever noticed that half the stories end with "[some major company such as intel] is an investor in CNet"? Seems lots of large companies have poured some cash into this "startup." Well, this startup has been doing it well since about '95 and has lots and lots of revenue and resources.
Until relatively recently, a buyout would be the other way around. Ziff-Davis was a large-scale cash machine, with print, web, and TV media, an educational presence, a successful trade show division (they put on N+I, Comdex, and Seybold among others). Not all the ventures were profitable, but they were an old-fashioned media conglomerate, with IDG their only serious competitor.
.com manages to buy up what's left of a formerly significant brand name for relatively short money. I assume it's mainly a stock deal, of course. It's remarkable (and not necessarily in a good way) how things have been distorted.
Then Z-D started spinning out businesses and taking on outside dollars as the Ziff family all cashed out. Today, most of the above-mentioned businesses are separate, and a money-losing
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
--
Just as there are three main TV networks, and three main print news sources (AP/UPI, Reuters, New York Times), there will probably be only the three main news sources on-line, because of economics. It takes a lot of money to keep reporters who actually go out and find a story, or follow up a tip and flesh it out into a story. If there end up being less than three sources, someone with other media experience will be able to buy their way in, but more than 4 or 5 will end up with such cutthroat competition that some will die or be absorbed.
However, there will always be a place for specialists, whether under the control of the big 3 or not. Most "General Interest" magazines are owned by one of a few big publishers, but there are thousands of specialist magazines, both technical and non-technical. Many of them are owned by smaller publishers, because there is enough interest to support the expense of publishing a magazine, but not enough profit to interest the big guys.
The web will see something similar. Specialist sites, including computer-geek sites, will survive, though some will be acquired by the big guys. Sites like Slashdot will survive, but not because they're good news sources. Slashdot (and technocrat and their imitators) will survive because they give people a place to intelligently discuss the news with people of similar interests. This is a different need than plain old news, and one which attracts different advertisers. It is possible to make money doing what Slashdot does, and the biggies are adding slashdot-like features to their news sites, but those won't work as well; the S-N ratio gets too low.
I thought ZDNet was a 10+ year old large media company putting out a dozen print magazines with significant online resources and ad revenue. And that CNET is a 2 year old startup trying to make money off web banners.
How did this happen?
Anyone can start their own web site at anytime and make it look as professional as any of the big news outlets.
The big boys are going to buy out all the little ones and find out that there is a new crop of little ones to buy out again.
And the funny thing is that NPR is the only unbiased news outlet in America today. It only looks liberal because the rest of the media today is owned by rich ultraconservatives who bias all their news reports to the right.
An example of this is when the regular new media covers a story where drugs were involved they might paint the person arrested as a "Alleged Major Drug Lord Arrested Today!" and go on and on how drug use is a major scourge of todays society, where NPR will report that Fred Rubble was arrested today and charged with drug possession.
Then NPR might actually question whether or not the drug laws in the United States make sense.
NPR might actually question that locking someone up for thirty years for doing what the Tobacco companies have been doing for the past 70 might be a little insane.
But I guess looking at both sides of an issue is something that only liberals do... I mean, after all, us conservatives _already_ _know_ what is right, we don't need unbiased coverage, it'll only confuse us with the issues.
-- Never make a general statement.
But I imagine that even if we had twelve papers, the front pages would be identical.
It's true. While not "identical" they're very similar. Here, in NB, Canada, we have four newspapers for the province. Three are english, and one en francais. They're all owned by the same people.
I don't even find it odd that there's rarely any negative publicity for JD Irving (the owner) in the paper(s).
AOL, CNET & MSN? Nope AOL will eat CNET and MSN buys everyone else. Until both megamedias don't enter a 60-30% market relationship Justice Department will not bother them. Until then, we will read Bill's Quickies, Ask Microsoft, Redmond in OuterSpace, Voices from WindowsWorld at "IconClick" in Microsoft.net (Linux??? What Linux????? Sorry but could you spell it? Quite a strange word)
I would have really thought it'd been the other way around, though. ZD always seemed to be the bigger property (they own nearly every print magazine involving computers on the planet). But then again, CNET always seemed to be rather silent, growing quietly with each passing year and seemingly saving it's money.
This is big.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Slashdot has no field reporters to gather (or fabricate) the news: it just relies on its immense pool of submitting contributors, who generally do no journalistic effort of their own, they just stumble upon interesting news from other sources.
Now that is precisely what makes Slashdot interesting (despite what a vocal minority may think): the contributors filter the news that they think are worthy when submitting them, and since they're also part of Slashdot's audience, the chances of those news actually being of interest to the audience at large are much higher than with traditional media. That (together with the ensuing mass of comments) is the reason Slashdot remains popular and just keeps bulking up.
--
Information wants to be beer, or something like that.
Will the day come when Linux news is domainated by just a few companies like VAndover and that crappy internet.com place? Oh wait. It is.
Not at all. Sm@rt Partner is essentially the same magazine as it was under Sm@rt Reseller. Same mission, same staff, same everything.
Why the name change then? Because people who didn't read us, saw the title and thought, wow, a magazine just for people who build computers in the back half of a strip mall. That was never our mission. Instead, we were, and are, the magazine for people who take technology and turn it into something other people find useful in their businesses. And, we discovered along the way, that people in this business need to partner with each other to deliver the stuff that people really need to make a business go--thus Partner.
Actually, the idea that we were thinking of a Microsoft partnering is worth a chuckle.
Steven, Editor at Large, Sm@rt Partner
The only difference between the BBC and CNN is that BBC is British-biased wheras CNN is American-biased. In fact, in the UK, the BBC is notorious for its rabidly pro-English bias; just ask anyone in Scotland or Wales.
Now, I know this isn't going to win me any friends on Slashdot, which draws many of its stories from the BBC, but the BBC also has a real problem with publishing sensational stories. It's far worse than CNN.
Take the NASA cyber attack story. The BBC publishes a story claiming that hackers/crackers endangered the lives of astronauts during a shuttle mission but it never properly bothered to interview any NASA officials until after the initial story hit the airwaves. Of course, Slashdot lapped the story right up and nary a soul was around when CNN published an article that set things straight.
Frankly, I think there are a lot of people on /. who confuse their own anti-American and anti-Microsoft biases with objectivity.
Good-bye karma...
sig semper tyrannis!
Where have you been? Jon Katz, interviews and numerous editorial pieces have appeared here over the years. That may not be the bulk of the stories, but still...
the contributors filter the news that they think are worthy
Uhm, no - that would be kuro5hin. With 200,000+ user accounts and hundreds of submissions in the bin at a time, I would hardly say that Joe reader has much influence. The editors filter the new items they think are worthy.
I don't agree with the original poster that /. will become a Microsoft lap-dog, but you can't discount the possibility of them being bought out by a bigger news source. It has already happened - twice - and the /. editors have no say on whom they get sold to any more.
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
Arguably, Slashdot is not the useful news source it once was. It is no longer News for Nerds, but a Weblog with a Repetitive Agenda. Every time Microsoft does *anything* it gets a Slashdot headline. I'm not sure what the intention is. To show how big and dumb Microsoft is? To make Linux zealots even more full infuriated? Maybe it's true after all that the best thing about Linux is that it's not from Microsoft...
The other Slashdot favorite is "Misinterpreted Licenses and Other Knee-Jerk Responses to Corporate Moves." Lets see, we've had a mininterpretation of the Borland C++ license. Then there was the recent report of Corel selling off it's graphics assets, which turned out to be clip art libraries. Must I continue?
Then there are the attempts to rile the masses by telling them their freedom of speech has been taken away, though we're almost always talking about dumb trivia: "Hustler will be placed on a rack behind the counter instead on the bottom shelf between Pokemon World and Ranger Rick.
All in all, it's kind of silly.
I've only read two articles since SmartReseller became SmartPartner and by the simpliest laws of statistics that's not being fair. My appologies as I do not read much ZD anymore.
But when I did, SmartReseller (now SmartPartner) was the only ZD publication I could stand. Unlike other ZD publications who seemingly play politics, SmartReseller catered to the OEM, integrator or solution provider who needed the job done while keeping his margins in the profitable range.
In such cases, SR did an excellent job (in most cases at least) of giving Linux a fair review.
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
Independent Author, Consultant and Trainer
Hi. Read this: http://www.kuro5h in.org/?op=displaystory&sid=2000/7/18/122257/231. Please don't b-slap me; this is important!
--
--
He lives in a world where those who do not run the client software of the omnipresent meme are unacceptable.
No, I'm surfing from my dorm room for a whoppin' USD 3 per month.
Nothing new, really. There is a tremenodous amount of information and news available on the Net, in libraries, in newspapers, everywhere. Yet there is a large amount of people who depend on TV for their "information" and in some cases (even sadder) for their "eduction".
The real question we should ask ourselves isn't whether independant sources of information will dissapear but whether the gap between well-informed human beings and brain-dead popcorn morons will grow big enough to create (even more) social (economical, environmental, political) problems.
To anyone who _isn't_ in the US that might be a benefit: so long as non-US markets prefer non-US news, your big three news providers will hopefully maintain their virtual monopoly only in the US. As soon as they begin to target their international reporting properly to international people, they are likely to end up being a global monopoly, which sounds much worse!
DDJ is one of the magazines I still subscribe to - quite a lot of Linux focus these days, and still some good technical information! While they seem to be trying to attract attention from the non-specalist (like their X-Box article), the article itself (by X-Box guru Micael Abrash) was quite filled with technical details (like the juicy tidbit that it will be a 733 mHz PIII, not a 600 as previously indicated!) (I gotta get my hands on one of those programmible SIMD controllers... mmm... 9 instructions per pixel)
I think many independant news sites will continue to thrive as long as they continue to focus on thier core and don't go too mainstream (where huge rules). For example, there is a few sites that cater primarily to overclockers, they will continue to thrive as long as they continue to keep up on overclocking news. I
If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
Amen to that my brother. Back in the day (okay.. a few years ago) I thought slashdot was cool because they seemed to be aimed towards the hard core techy crowd. But now it seems just the opposite, you see a lot of stories linked to that vast wasteland know as ZDnet. Crap... pure crap. I'm not saying that everything on ZDnet is crap.... but they have no credibility as far as I'm concerned because of the almighty Jesse Burst moron. How can you classify them as a "news site" anyways... mostly dribble and hype which will be contradicted next week by the same moronic "writers"... crap .. pure crap....
...so what the hell
So yeah.. (slashdot != independent) && (slashdot == entertaining)
Journalism to me indicates doing some actual reporting, not just linking to other people's stories and saying "So, uh, what do youa ll think about this?"
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Remember when the auto industry began in the US there was over 300 different manufactors and now only a handful. So yes this is going to happen where there are just a few big dogs around and everyone else nipping at their ankles.
What if there are five-six big news sites. It doesn't have to mean bad service. As long as /. stays the way it is I'm satisfied.
With the number of Slashdot stories that link to cnet and ZD, and I find it hard to think of this site as an independent news source.
Consolidation in the media sector has been churning like a freight train for quite some time now. Seriously, most mainstream media is owned by one of like three companies. Time-Warner, Sony, and whatever French company bought up Seagrams.
Think of them as dinosaurs, slow, lumbering, inefficient, and easy to dodge.
-carl
. We've got computers, we're tapping phone lines, you know that ain't allowed - Talking Heads, "Life During Wartime"
Neither Ziff-Davis or C-Net has any credibility to speak of if you really look at what they say and there motives behind it. Either company will jump on whatever bandwagon is most convenient so the result of this merger really won't be a dilution of credible news on the internet.
I can't think of a mainstream computer rag that really has any credibility, online or in dead tree format. There are some decent specialist publications such as Dr. Jobb's Journal (or it was decent last time I checked, maybe its pulled a Byte and catered to the lowest common denominator).
Sites like slashdot are not in the same league as even Ziff-Davis or C-net however. Slashdot compiles stories from other companies, such as C-net or Ziff-Davis, and provides a forum for people to respond to.
If slashdot really wants to compete in that arena they would have to do a lot more mainstream journalism: more interviews, write-ups on new technology, product reviews etc. User comments would have to be secondary to the news.
There are some sites that do this fairly well within the narrow scope that they're interested in. It doesn't mean that slashdot needs to do this however, it really would no longer be slashdot. I've always viewed slashdot as a BBS more than a news source. There is occasionaly something to be learned but usually its from the commentary and not the 'news'.
Last I heard, they were trying to figure out how to get ads to display on the site - but only for people accessing the site from outside of the UK (and, therefore, not license fee payers).
Ofcourse, that's kinda tricky to do, and, as yet, they haven't found a solution (or have given up).
The BBC is getting in a lot of heat over here about them supplying news feeds for free to external sites (Yahoo, etc). ITN has taken them to the Office of Fair Trading. We'll see what happens...
FWIW, news.bbc.co.uk is the most popular non-banner ad supported site in the world, or so I read.
...j
I only need to avoid one!!!! Woooohooo, productivity here I come!!!!!!!!
matt
Exactly my sentiments. It seems that the most important news (ie companies routing others into /dev/null) is spread around in the comments in articles. Those comments are, of course, moderated immediately to -1 by the moderation militia. A while ago when the tech stocks started dying off, it was only mentioned after weeks of complaining by the readers. Rob said it as off topic and uninteresting. Techs losing their jobs and half of their personal wealth is off topic and uninteresting?
Jon Katz. Why? He's proven himself to be completely disconnected from what he writes about, his articles are mindless drivel, and he annoys half the crowd. Isn't this a place for nerds, not for men around 30 trying to look hip?
Why isn't slashdot more responsive to the readership? How long have people been asking to be able to moderate the submission queue or even simply view the rejects? Does Andover want to keep some things out of the public spotlight?
Not to mention that half the news that gets posted (between the release announcements of Jayueiima Queeheez Gold Edition Volume 3 and such) is so late these days? Before, slashdot would be on the scene before most of the big organizations.
Yes, I could stop reading slashdot and go elsewhere, but I'd rather see slashdot go back more how it was in the old days. I've been reading slashdot for 2 years now and I don't want to see it go down like this.
I respect CNet just slightly more than ZDNet. I'm glad ZDNet, at least under that name, is disappearing. It makes sense after all. Their publications are virtually identical. GameSpot/GameCenter, etc.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I'd very much like to subscribe to it, but instead of USD 25 per year (as in the US) it would cost me USD 70! Sorry folks, can't afford that. Isn't there a way to find a publisher in Europe / wherever else people want to read that magazine, send the digital version of the issue to them and have the thing printed here without huge airmail costs?
And so on...
The big three you mentioned up there are also incredibly american-biased news sources; something else that is of concern to those interested in independent news reporting.
Rock on the BBC Website and the BBC World Service!
Not perfect, but imho a slightly less skewed view of the world than most other reports.
In television, there are only a handful of news sources, and if you take the time to watch the evening broadcasts from the Big 3, they are spooky similar.
Here in Atlanta, we only have one newspaper. We've tried to get rid of it, but without success. I'll keep trying.
But I imagine that even if we had twelve papers, the front pages would be identical.
Digression: did anyone else notice that with OJ, JonBenet, and Monica Lewinski network news and Weekly World News were finally reporting the same story.
I don't think this is anything to worry about. Those who want to be fed approved information will stick with the major sites. Those who want more will go to specialty sites. The internet excels in this area, because it allows a website to operate at low or no cost. You couldn't put out a well-circulated newspaper or magazine as a hobby, but it's been proved repeatedly that any numb-nut can make a website.
As for me, I'm part of the herd, so I'll stick with /. for all of my news needs.
Even ZD and CNET together don't have as much raw clout as Slashdot. I wouldn't worry.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
Well, as long as you take the bother to read stuff in any language other than English, of course, there is quite a good selection of active independent online news sources besides the ones you Americans tend to stick to; for instance, the Heise newsletter, the Spiegel or TAZ online magazines or the web.de service in German or, for example, iltalehti in Finnish, even though that one's fairly yellow press.
Even though some of us don't like it, this is an increasingly globalizing world where being able to understand others is a bit of an advantage.
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
/. will get sucked in when MS buys Andover.net. I could see it happening.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
and all the rest (including Slashdot) are just barking dogs chasing their wheels? /. as the dog that stops, smells the fire hydrant, and then tries to port Linux to it.
I've always viewed
--
then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is just a freight train coming your way
then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is just a freight train coming your way
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
The comment in the article about the only real players being AOL, MSN and News.com managed to ignore the gool 'ol BBC, which is always my first choice for news.
Okay, I know that sounds like flame bait, but hear me out:
Of the above three names, the only one I visit ever, except when referred to an article by someone else, is News.com. The others are simply too tacky to be taken seriously (IMHO, of course!). (I would have mentioned CNN, but they fall into the same trap too)
The point is that if I'm looking for news, I'll go to a news site, not a portal, and if I go to a news site, I'll chose one that looks professional, has good quality writing, and which I trust. The BBC is the only source which really fulfills those criteria for me.
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
As graphic as it may sound, it seems like the online scene is basically one big orgy. The big strong companies are in bed with each other, and then they team up to brutually rape the little guy. No doubt Slashdot has its own little role in bed with all the big online news sites, seeing as how much of the news articles are sucked up out of Zdnet/Cnet and then spit back out at all the site's readers.
I know this is only the news industry, but judging by the current way the big press companies twist the news, I hate to see when these huge media corporations force the smaller, growing news sources to pull out of the scene. It's not too unlikely that this will happen at some point. I'm just afraid that all our news will be deflowered of its meaning and skewed to hell without any alternate perspectives presented. Paranoia perhaps, but not impossible.
At least I take some level of self pleasure in the fact that both Zdnet and Cnet, at least for now, consistently spurt out news that I am actually willing to swallow. I just pray the day doesn't come when every news story I read is so unpleasant that I have to gag and spit it out.
"The most fortunate of persons is he who has the most means to satisfy his vagaries."
"The most fortunate of persons is he who has the most means to satisfy his vagaries."
- Marquis De Sade