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Cory Doctorow Calls Death To Music, Movies, Print
An anonymous reader writes "Boing Boing editor Cory Doctorow depicts an unfortunate near-future for a handful of media industries being transformed or killed by the Internet. Predicting a large-scale transformation of the music, movie, book, and newspaper industry, Doctorow says, 'The Internet chews up media and spits them out again. Sometimes they get more robust. Sometimes they get more profitable. Sometimes they die.' While the Internet has the potential to help the dying book industry, for example, Doctorow predicts the 'imminent collapse' of the American newspaper industry because advertisers are uninterested in spending money on the remaining offline readership, such as senior citizens, who prove less valuable."
There is a place for a whole multitude of media. Television news didn't eliminate the newspaper, and neither will the internet. Change it, of course, eliminate, no way !
Where did the eventual first link in the chain end up coming from? A newspaper.
No, it came from a newspaper company's website. Newspapers _are_ dying, and the companies that own them are currently shifting to other media for their reporters to publish news.
That's the thing. For example, it's easy to suggest that they find a new business model, it's harder to suggest a viable business model that works, I'm skeptical that there is one.
This is especially true in an age where people don't want to pay for media, and don't want to see ads that would pay for that media. So where does that leave the media that costs money to produce?
http://www.groklaw.net/ or perhaps http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/ and for that matter, I know it's from the original sources, but how about: http://trial.thepiratebay.org/ . These are all investigative bloggers! zing!
Time magazine recently had a very good article about this. It's spread across 4 pages, so here's the important part:
"The key to attracting online revenue, I think, is to come up with an iTunes-easy method of micropayment. We need something like digital coins or an E-ZPass digital wallet -- a one-click system with a really simple interface that will permit impulse purchases of a newspaper, magazine, article, blog or video for a penny, nickel, dime or whatever the creator chooses to charge..."
"...Admittedly, the Internet is littered with failed micropayment companies. If you remember Flooz, Beenz, CyberCash, Bitpass, Peppercoin and DigiCash, it's probably because you lost money investing in them..."
"...Under a micropayment system, a newspaper might decide to charge a nickel for an article or a dime for that day's full edition or $2 for a month's worth of Web access. Some surfers would balk, but I suspect most would merrily click through if it were cheap and easy enough..."
"...I say this not because I am "evil," which is the description my daughter slings at those who want to charge for their Web content, music or apps. Instead, I say this because my daughter is very creative, and when she gets older, I want her to get paid for producing really neat stuff rather than come to me for money or decide that it makes more sense to be an investment banker."
Once the media is done being created, it becomes essentially free to distribute and reproduce. Drop the price by 75%, leave out DRM, and new markets open up for it. There's 6.5 billion people on this planet. Only about half of them have internet so far, but we're quickly zoning in on a world where if you have electricity, you have internet. So make something good enough and cheap enough, and you'll make a tidy profit off the masses.
What pisses me off about these blogs (techdirt is another), is how doggone smug they seem about the whole thing, with the implication that they (the bloggers) have found a business model that works for writers and creative artists; everyone else needs to get with it and adopt a similar approach.
But the bloggers' business model depends on linking to other people's content, which is usually produced by non-blogging professionals. Almost anyone with a college degree and a few years' background in an industry can spend 15 minutes writing a provocative summary about some story in the news, or someone else's work. Nobody is going to pay to read these blogs, since similar quality posts on the same subjects can be easily found by googling. Frankly, what these industry bloggers do has little to do with either creativity or journalism (or economics, in the case of techdirt).
Who is going to pay for the original piece of investigative journalism, specialized analysis, or original creative work? Should everyone under 35 in one of these businesses start applying to law school?
That's because ads in television are directed to the mass market, while newspapers carry classified ads. With the internet full of advertisements which are easier to search and read than newspaper classified ads, there's that much less motivation to buy printed papers.
And, uh, where exactly is the profit for that? Because if you think modern media has a 75% markup over costs, you have no idea what the costs of modern media (books, television, music, movies, any of it) actually are.
Yes, you must factor in profit, because as much as the "free everything" crowd wants you to believe it, most high-quality media is still put out by profit-making people who spend money to make money.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
Obviously, certain aspects of the internet threaten newspapers(Hi Craigslist!) chiefly through hitting their ad and classifieds revenue, and in siphoning off some readers.
Beyond that, though, I fear that the papers' response to this will, in many cases, be what ends up killing(or at least mutilating beyond recognition) them. Essentially, the problem is this: High quality news reporting is more expensive than printed trash reporting, vapid gossip, and opinion. On the internet, vapid gossip and opinion are free. So, the newspapers' costs are always going to be higher than the internet's costs. However, if the newspapers move to cut costs by cutting back on good reporting, the quality of their product will go down, and the value proposition of paper will become even weaker in comparison to web.
I hope that at least some paper news sources will be able to swim upstream, instead of trying to out-cut the internet(which they'll never be able to do) and differentiate themselves by providing high quality reporting that classic internet sources don't. If, though, the papers just keep cutting quality in order to attempt to match price with the web, they will deserve their own inevitable deaths.
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Internet is not only source of news not from far left. Liberal paper editors & owners refuse to consider lack of readers may be same as lack of watchers for Liberal TV news. My small town paper loses 8% of subscribers each year and responds with more articles from NY Times. Most remaining readers read only obituaries, grocery ads & county news.
He saves that for DRM proponents.
Virginia is for lovers. EVE is for griefers.
FTA:
for many kinds of books -- long-form narratives, for instance -- reading off a screen is a poor substitute for a cheap and easy-to-buy codex...
Me thinks the author is being a bit biased since this is what he writes. I hate to break it to you Cory but long-form narratives are EXACTLY what an e-book reader is good for. They are not good for reference material because random access is too slow. (at this stage, they just can't compete with thumbing through a printed text-book, programming manual or travel guide) They might be ok for newspapers & magazines if anyone ever decides to format them properly. BUT, they are absolutely perfect for novels and anything else that you'd care to read from cover to cover.
I don't know that e-book readers are for everyone but if you love to read and you travel a lot, it's great to be able to lug an entire library of books with you in one very small package. On any given trip, I can bring, on my reader, more than enough reading material for myself, a bunch of children's books to read to my daughter, and maybe an audio-book and some music for good measure.
After a year with it, I can't say that I miss the printed page at all... and don't get me started on what I can find to read on the internet for free....
Finally, they cost about $270 now and dropping. Be afraid.
Yeah I mean look at what 'talkies' did to movies! Now we have to sit and LISTEN to these so called "actors." It damn near put the piano player out of existence. Thank goodness someone made a piano bar.
Television news didn't eliminate the newspaper, and neither will the internet. Change it, of course, eliminate, no way !
Don't forget radio, the second-oldest medium. Still alive, kicking, and well. Why, we even have a huge radio system supported in large part by private donations...gasp! Shows like Lake Woebegone and Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me live and indeed embrace new media; I listen to WWDTM all the time via my my iPod, downloaded via podcasts.
This latest is just the gasp of a flunkie, uneducated has-been science fiction author whose work is so spectacularly bad that he had never had a commercially successful work.
Cory Doctorow learned that people didn't like having to pay to watch movies, TV, and movies. A simpleton pundit who appeals to naivete; at the end of the day, nobody's forcing you to pay to listen to music. While Doctorow has bitched and moaned about copyright, the rest of the world keeps right on truckin', same as always, writing and performing in all media without much care towards copyright. I can go right now to three local bars and listen to bands perform songs, and a fair number of 'em will probably be covers, copyrighted work by someone else.
Please help metamoderate.
I hate to be blunt but this is the real reason modern media will have problems. Basically to start with there's an uneducated public when it comes to the process of content creation and profit. Throw in unrealistic expectations. Add in a public armed with the technological tools to bypass any means to recuperate costs. Shake well and you have no one really getting what they want.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Yes, they have to adapt. They need an online presence. They need a different approach, to marketing and advertising.
But there are a few things that people seem to forget when making the argument that the internet will kill media as we know it.
1. Local news. Sorry, but unless a plane drops out of the sky, CNN isn't remotely interested in in Ballarat, Australia - nor do most CNN readers care about the local government elections, or which local VIP has just been arrested for DUI, or who won the district football on the weekend - but I do, and so does our local newspaper.
While they don't have the circulations of the major world newspapers...the bulk of print news is still regionally based.
2. Local Advertising. The local plumber doesn't need to or want to advertise to the entire state, country or to the world writ large. He wants to target the people in his immediate area, and the larger newspapers, and TV, are cost prohibitive, and online sites (mostly) don't meet that need. Local businesses and small businesses need a
centralised local vehicle to push their message.
2. Content. Someone, somewhere has to generate it. Someone has to follow up on leads and stories, and get the word out. Sure, once the word IS OUT, there is no limit to the number of places online where you can find out about it, but someone had to go out and get the story in the first place, check the facts, and filter it down to a piece that most people can digest. THIS is where newspapers must head if they want to survive.
They need to be going out and getting the in-depth investigations and stories that their competitors don't have, and stop relying on regurgitating the same stories that everyone else has.
If a plane drops into the Hudson, or a bushfire kills hundreds in Australia, its covered.. by everyone.. and I can find information on it everywhere. Its the local impact or other local events IN ADDITION TO the major news items, that push me to select one news organisation over another, and one medium over another, for day to day consumption.
As long as people still want to sit down with a coffee to read through the week's news, local, national, international, and do the crosswords, read the comics etc., newspapers will be around. People enjoy sitting down and flicking through a paper at their leisure, and you can't do that online. Having said that, one does not preclude the other - they're different beasts.
You say that like the loss of the world's most powerful propaganda machine would be a bad thing. Public opinion controls government; media currently controls public opinion, mostly by deciding which issues are important and which viewpoints on those issues will be widely heard. Ever notice the absence of a minimal-government libertarian perspective (not at all the same thing as what is now called "conservative") from virtually every major news outlet? That's not an accident or a coincidence; it is built into the design.
The conservative vs. liberal perspective, which is also known as left-wing vs. right-wing, is the product of the media's "gatekeeper" function. On the one side you have those who prefer economic freedoms over personal freedoms, while on the other side you have those who prefer personal freedoms over economic freedoms. This forms a continuum with degrees in the middle that are compromises between the two extremes. This continuum is represented by two points that make a line because it is literally one-dimensional thinking. What does not occur at any point along that continuum is the preference of both economic freedom AND personal freedom; that is, freedom for its own sake. That is why the pro-freedom or minimal-government perspective is marginalized and so rarely heard from any mainstream source. We are paying a price for our commitment to this one-dimensional thinking. It is just one approach among many possible approaches and no one with any sort of media presence seems willing to discuss what the current model is costing us. I submit that the old question "Qui bono?" ("Who benefits [from this arrangement]?") applies here if it applies anywhere.
That can change. If it should ever become necessary, I'm confident that it can also change quickly.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
If you're going to charge micropayments, you're better off doing advertising anyway. We all tend to tolerate that in small amounts, I got a google text ad on this very page I'm writing this comment and it doesn't bother me. I don't want to constantly look and see if it's 10 cents or 25 cents for this and that and suddenly there's some link scam to rack me up some dollars. With ads I'm paying in the watching and it's incredibly much simpler for me. Micropayments got such a negative value in itself that it negates any cents that I might have been willing to pay. If you really want people to pay in cash you have to go the premium route, offer content at a real premium worth the premium. Not the 10 cents "slightly better than free" service because it's going to be damn similar to the other kind, only more annoying.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
While the Internet has the potential to help the dying book industry,
What dying book industry? Sure, quality books might be dying and in the economy not many people want to pay ~$16 for something they can get at a library for free, but in the last 10 years, literature, especially children to teen books have been exploding with growth, you only need to look at the Harry Potter craze and now the Twilight craze to understand that.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
It depends on how you define "newspaper". Yes, the physical news sheet with printed text that arrives every morning may die. However, in fifty years, the "New York Times" will still exist as a news organization.
The cake is a pie
applause, clap, clap, clap hoot hoot and etc. You got it exactly. The *main* job of the big names in broadcast journalism is to push the party line indoctrination propaganda of the so called "elite" folks at the top of the economic globalist heap, they take orders from the bailed out billionaires once you get down to it. What is it, something like half a dozen or so owners cover the bulk of the alleged news out there now? Times change! The world is awash in decent cellphones with camera and video capabilities, man on the street, on the spot blogging is taking over.
Yes, you have to separate the wheat from the chaff looking at blogs and smaller independent news sites, etc, but it gets easier once a blog has been established and builds some netcred, and at least you *can*, the opportunity is there. Whereas if you restrict yourself to reading much of the big talking heads or even worse listening to them spew their tired 20th century propaganda they developed when talking to their "subjects", it gives you *no choice at all*, zero. Big name news is the equivalent of clear channel top 40 in music. Here's another one, a bakery analogy. Listening to those alleged journalists is like walking into a bakery and all they have for sale is 20 different types of cheap sliced white bread, all the same, just in different bags with different names.
I have to agree. The only thing that's keeping ebook readers from taking the world is their closed nature.
Now an open device with an e-ink display that can run for a couple of days on a charge (99.9% on standby of course) and can read the usual formats... that would be something I'd buy in a heartbeat. Right now I still read e-books on my laptop (tried the phone but it doesn't have enough resolution for comfortable reading.)
thegodmovie.com - watch it
... with custom papers. I go to my news stand and order up a paper, AP, NYT, Nature, NBA, Premiership, brassiere ads, lots of cartoons and comic strips (that's what I want). The size allows for bigger pretty pictures than my laptop. It's paper so I don't worry about spilling coffee on it or reading it in a crowd or leaving it in a restaurant. I do the puzzles and drop the paper off at a news stand where a magic process strips the ink with a minimum of energy and water foot print. The paper is recycled.
Sci Fi I know, so flame away.
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
HEY!
Lameness filter override: Mairzy dotes and dozy dotes and little lamsy divey,
A kiddly divey, too -- wouldn't you?
What?
It's hard to see how your criticism is correct. Doctorow hedges a lot in this essay (one's "favorite medium" will be "devoured, transformed, or destroyed". That covers a lot of possibilities). But even if he's wrong in this essay, your criticism is unjustified and overly harsh: Doctorow is a writer making his money from selling books one can download free, something long thought impossible in the 'why pay for what you can get for free' philosophy. He is walking the talk showing us through his example how one can license liberally, make a living with a huge online component to one's work, and sustain this for years on end. Perhaps there's a message in there for the proprietors of movies, newspapers, TV, and music.
One hopes the lecturer didn't conflate such different things as you just did. There's nothing categorically improper about the reporting going on online, and there's nothing categorically proper about reporting in print. Newspapers can switch to online publication and offer the same caliber of reporting they offer now. It's not the quality of reporting that prevents newspaper publishers from losing their print publications. The New York Times, for instance, can continue to lie about the most important issue of the day while punishing authors of far less important articles in ridiculous public displays (Judith Miller versus Jayson Blair) whether they do it in print or online. The medium can change and the reportage can remain the same.
That doesn't strike me as nearly important as asking: How many reporters are independent? How many are not embedded with the military? How many are failing to present a "difficult public face for [their media organization] in a time of war" or judging their effectiveness by comparing to competitors who are "waving the flag at every opportunity"? Phil Donahue's CNBC show was cancelled for the reasons quoted in these last two quotes, according to a leaked internal memo. I don't recall most of the major news outlets telling us much about the millions on the streets of the world protesting the US invasion of Iraq before it began. I recall them getting head counts wrong and ignoring well-spoken war critics lest their contrary views gain mainstream exposure and thus legitimizing them in the views of those who consume nothing but corporate news. I don't recall good corporate news analysis of the run-up to the war before or after Col. Powell's lies to the UN. Instead, I recall seeing a strong imbalance of views on-air favoring pro-war voices. Some of the most valuable journalism about this war has come from unembedded independent journalists on far less-widely seen shows like "Democracy Now!". It seems to me that the medium isn't the critical factor here, what the news organization says is.
Digital Citizen
...People still care what Doctorow has to say? He's still around?
For real?
The death of the newspaper is getting close. As the article says, is that "newspapers are fundamentally an advertising-supported medium", and they're not a very good advertising-delivery medium. They're not targeted, and they're not searchable. Classified advertising is dying.
But nobody is taking over general news reporting. Blogs don't have real reporters, just pundits. TV covers the big stories, but there's no depth.
Only a few services aimed at the investment community do real reporting and make money by selling their content. The Wall Street Journal makes most of its money from subscriptions, not ads. Dow Jones (the WSJ's parent) makes more revenue on line than from the print edition. The future of news reporting is Bloomberg. Bloomberg is entirely on line, has more reporters than any newspaper in the US, and to get the good stuff in real time, hundreds of thousands of traders pay serious money. After some delay, Bloomberg puts out summaries for free.
There's still noise about "micropayments", but having watched everybody from Digicash to Cybercoin to Beenz go down, I doubt micropayments on the Internet will ever catch on. Phone-based systems, though...
Also, "crowdsourcing" a movie is a fantasy. Every once in a great while, somebody produces a good movie on a low budget, but that's rare. Roger Corman could do it, but nobody else seems to be able to bring it off.
maybe ... just maybe he knows ssomething we dont know:
* 2012 (do i have to elaborate?)
* all ice melts, everything is under water and we need to think of new ways anyway
* To the melody of Peter Garrett's "beds are burning" we will sing now "... how do we read while our books are burning"
* Gutenberg came back to this world as annother person and invented something completely new
to code or not to code, that is the question.
There's a rash of hyperbolic commentary lately about the "death of newspapers" from people who have no idea what they're talking about. Doctorow's post is just one more float in the parade.
In the United States, the typical newspaper is fundamentally a local-regional advertising business. Local and regional advertising is changing, but it's not going away.
The typical American newspaper produces a portfolio of print (daily, weekly, monthly) and online products. These include both mass and targeted media. It turns an annual profit (not a loss) ranging from 10 to 20 percent. The ad revenues alone -- not counting print circulation --roll up to a $45 billion annual total nationwide.
Some newspapers are losing money and will close this year. But the more common situation is a publisher cutting staff, pagecount and sometimes even frequency in order to maintain profit margins so that corporate finance requirements can be maintained.
Corporate finance is the real problem. Over the last 20 years, newspaper owners borrowed heavily to buy more newspapers (and take over other chains), assuming that historically aberrant profit margins -- sometimes in the 35 to 45 percent range or even higher -- would continue forever.
The current business recession has suddenly placed those debt-laden companies in peril. Lee Enterprises, which recently narrowly avoided bankruptcy by renegotiating some loans, actually turned an operating profit of over 20 percent last year.
I'm not in denial about the effects of the Internet. They are real and serious, but they are longterm, and they are not the cause of the crisis currently facing newspapers, regardless of the self-serving BS being spread by various media pundits.
The irony is that the financial crisis has awakened slumbering newsrooms and sales forces, while robbing them of the resources they need to respond to those longterm challenges.
Ever since I left print and moved to the online side of journalism in 1994, I've been battling people who had their head in the sand about the importance of the changes in media caused by the Internet.
No more. Confusion and bewilderment, yes. Denial, no.
I fully expect to see some big bankruptcies in the next several months. Journal Register Co. declared bankruptcy Saturday, following the overleveraged (Chicago) Tribune Co. and the Minneapolis Star Tribune in seeking protection from creditors. Some big dailies, such as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Rocky Mountain News, will close, along with a lot of weeklies.
But hundreds of other papers will continue to operate profitably.
Among them, some will be smart enough to invest in creating new products that are more aligned with our net-connected and increasingly mobile lives.
[Note: Worrying about this stuff is my day job. You can follow me on twitter or at my blog.]
Cory Doctorow has a Crystal Ball into the present - big woop. He's 'predicting' what is happening now. This looks like someone just trying to get clicks to that site which I ignore. Nothing cool or interesting there and there's nothing like some pronouncements into the future that are just rehashing the headlines of today.
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
Isn't Cory's brilliant insight coming about 10 years late?
This from someone who works for a website that believes they can actually "unpublish" something. Can I "unpublish" this comment after submitting it? No.
Yes, it's their website. Yes, they can do what they want with it. That's not the point. Anyone who believes they can just "unpublish" something after they've already put it out on the Internet for all to see isn't someone I would listen to about things like this.
It's a very dark ride.
The media businesses will stay in business as long as they learn to adapt to new trends like the Internet.
Hulu was developed when too many TV shows got captured and posted on Youtube for free and hosted via file sharing networks. The videos got pulled from Youtube and Hulu.com hosts the old TV shows and some movies for free, with limited interruption advertising.
Hulu.com makes money off of advertising added to the videos, plus advertising on the web site to view the videos, all while providing free videos to its users. There is no need to pirate those TV Shows or host them on Youtube and violate copyrights.
The same with music, one can create a music station like last.fm or Yahoo Launchcast Music that plays free Internet music via a radio-like broadcast system catered to the listener's likes and dislikes. Inbetween songs can be put in commercials.
The same with books, after so many pages of reading, there are a few advertising spots before the next few pages are displayed, the same with newspapers. Along with advertising on those web sites that have the electronic version of books and newspapers and magazines.
Plus it allows people to get into the media business by themselves by starting up their own web site or use free resources to start their own media site for free. Then pay for putting in Google AdSense or some other advertising system on their paid or free web site to bring in the revenue.
Of course there will always be free and open source web sites for free and open source media. Be it Wikis, or CMS forums like Slashdot or CNet, blogs, other forums, or just web site with content on it.
Print is dead, but ePrint replaced it.
Newspapers are dead, but eNewspapers, Blogs, Forums, Wiki sites, etc replaced them.
The Music industry is dead, but the eMusic industry that sells songs via files or pays for them via advertising have replaced them.
The movie industry is dead, but Hulu.com, Netflicks, Blockbuster, etc replaced them.
Learn to adapt to changes in technology or die like the dinosaurs did. Grow, evolve, change, whatever it takes to modify your business model and technology to take advantage of new trends and new technology and new media containers.
I don't really see it as all that different from when we went from Color TV, to VHS video tapes, to DVD video, to Blu-Ray and HD-DVD Video, to Video files over the Internet. It is the same product, just different technology. In the case of the media file it is a pattern of bits which can be easily duplicated for pennies on the dollar instead of being a physical media container which costs more. So in theory, a media company putting their content on files, instead of a physical container, would save a lot of money by just selling files instead of audio CDs, Video DVDs, Paper Books, Paper Newspapers, etc.
The only issue is how to combat piracy when the media is in a format that is easier to copy than the physical matter format. One way to do that is keep prices low, another way is to offer it for free with advertsing ala Hulu.com and other web sites.
This is not brain surgery, this is really really simple. Ask any of us Computer Geeks how to create a file of information and host it on a web site with advertising, etc. Most of us are out of work and need jobs creating the new web sites for the media companies anyway, it is a win-win situation.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
It doesn't really sound like any thing really unfortunate was predicted.Some Darwinian natural selection applied to industry. News both printed and broadcast has more dis-information which is more to be feared than mis-information from bloggers.
The music industry? Good riddance to an unnecessary parasite.
Hollywood? Aside from modern special effects to detract attention from endlessly recycled storylines I don't see any contributions made by Gomorrah since the 60's. Any interesting filmmakers lurking there are capable of independent filmmaking with crap they have laying around the house and still make excellent movies.
As for all the jobs lost if Hollywood folds, I quote a movie" The world needs ditchdiggers too Danny" I figure someone can fill Californias need to repopulate jobs vacated by ejected aliens.
Hopefully Hollywood will fold before the music industry so they can get the jobs and we can watch music industry swine cannibalize their own before perishing a slow starving death.
Books don't really seem to take a hit here.
The cream will rise and the vanity books will stay small printings.Theres no replacing the experience of reading a good pulp book.(unless of course you find an actual paper edition)
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Erm -- not to be a smartass, but isn't that how everybody defines a newspaper?
I don't think anybody is trying to claim that news or reporting is ever going to die out, and as such there will always be organizations that pool those resources. Of course people are talking about the print aspect of it.
For chrissakes, sales volume is not about quality;
If you wanted to talk about quality, you shouldn't have used the phrase "comercially successful".
Of course, if you had you would've been inmediately told that quality in these kind of things is completely subjective. I, personally, didn't like "Little Brother" but loved "Down and out on the Magic Kingdom" and I like most of his short stories, so I'd qualify him as a good writer overall but again, that's just me.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
Did you think boing-boing appeared from nowhere? Or slashdot? The reasons why either site can be used as a commercial promotion tool is because handfuls of people built each site, and people came. In boing-boing's case, Cory was one of the handful.
You think slashdot useless? Why are you here?
Perhaps if you had anything worthwhile to say, you might be able to build a site around your own content with enough traffic to build a marketable community around. I expect hell to freeze over first.
The only real fail in that article is that Doctorow didn't project the impact of low-cost high-quality e-book readers on what he personally does for a living. I expect to see print books as a mass medium a decade from now just as much as I expect the horse and buggy to replace the auto for long-distance commuting.
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