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Cory Doctorow Calls Death To Music, Movies, Print

Posted by timothy on from the low-hanging-fruit dept.

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."

9 of 336 comments (clear)

  1. That's just a bit premature... by OneSmartFellow · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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 !

    1. Re:That's just a bit premature... by koyote-eliot · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Minimal Logistics - Television is dissimilar to Newspaper in many respects, whereas the Web can perform the functions of both, FOR FREE. No publication money, broadcast license, nor big ad revenue needed, and minimal startup costs. It's just a better wheelbarrow. So why cry because the old rusted out expensive wheelbarrow is going away?

      the problem with this argument is that the Internet is not "free". There are real costs involved, and a major but hidden cost is the development of content, especially news journalism.

      Sending someone to report on conditions in some remote area of the world doesn't happen for free. That person has to be transported, fed, clothed. Also needs some training in writing skills, probably photography. Maybe videography as well. All of that costs money. So does the cell phone, land line, or whatever means used to connect that person to online resources that are used to file the story, whether it goes into a print or online newspaper.

      That old rusted wheelbarrow still provides the majority of reporting that allows the chatterati to expound on subjects that they have no means to access otherwise. In the meantime, we pay every time our eyeballs are assaulted by the growing screen real estate taken by advertisers, in exchange for our "free" web.

      --
      A point in every direction is the same as no point at all. -- Harry Nilsson
    2. Re:That's just a bit premature... by Goldberg's+Pants · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's utter nonsense. Doctrow is a self important blowhard who, for reasons unknown, people think is actually relevant.

      I watched a lecture from David Simon (creator of "The Wire", former journalist etc...) on this very subject, and his was the exact opposite opinion. That the Internet can't ever replace newspapers and proper reporting. Smaller newspapers will fold (no pun intended) but larger ones will always exist. I remember one comment was "How many bloggers are embedded in Falujah?"

      It's a very good lecture, but I'd recommend avoiding it if you've not seen at least the first four seasons of "The Wire" due to potential spoilers, but really "The Wire" is the jumping off point for the lecture, not the subject.

      I believe this is it. USC Lecture

    3. Re:That's just a bit premature... by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Sending someone to report on conditions in some remote area of the world doesn't happen for free.

      And why exactly do we need to send someone to a "remote area" to report on conditions when there are already people in those remote locations who are quite capable of telling the story?

      What's really dying here is the colonial idea that only a white man who speaks English with a US accent can tell the truth. We used to only believe a story when we heard it come from Walter Cronkite. You want to hear about the Middle East? You think you're going to get a truer story from CNN or Al Jazeera? Or even better, from Mahmoud who lives in Basra.

      No, there's no need to send Wolf Blitzer, no matter how dashing he may look in his clever little vest with all the pockets.

      Plus, considering the fat lot of truth we got out of the big news organizations during the run up to the Iraq War or the election of 2004, I'm not sure I'm prepared to believe a single fucking thing that comes out some high-toned foreign news bureau.

      If newspapers die it will not be because of the internet, but rather because they long ago stopped serving their main function and became outlets for national pundits who have all the veracity of a west-side pimp.

      Great example just last week: George Will wrote some hack piece for the Washington Post on global warming that had exactly four data points in it, and each one of those facts was wrong. Do you think the "ombudsman" of the Washington Post is going to print a correction? No, because it's supposed to be an "opinion piece". Well, as the man said, you have the right to your own opinion, but not your own facts.

      Here's a safe rule of thumb: If a news agency is owned by a large corporation, it's not worth a good god damn and cannot be trusted, even for the weather report. It's a shame, but they're the ones that broke faith, not us readers.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    4. Re:That's just a bit premature... by rho · · Score: 5, Interesting

      How many bloggers are embedded in Falujah

      Dunno if he was in Falujah or not.

      The disruption that the Internet lowers the cost of having your voice heard to near zero. The newspaper's advantage isn't that they have reporters. The newspaper's advantage is that they have editors.

      --
      Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
    5. Re:That's just a bit premature... by ShieldW0lf · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Trouble is, the internet doesn't have to be a good replacement in order to end up replacing newspapers. If the Times could only afford to embed reporters in dusty warzones because of classified ad revenue, and their classifieds department has been gutted, well, I guess there won't be any more reporters out there, will there?

      That is my concern. I hope that the virtues of newspapers will carry through; but it is far from assured. Things like foreign and political reporting, and stuff that pisses off possible advertisers, are socially vital; but they are cost centers in the strictly financial sense. They could, fairly easily, end up just being eliminated, without replacement.

      The time when privately run, for profit news actually served a socially noble purpose, if they ever did exist, are long gone.

      If you want such things to exist, they need to be socialized, and they need to be transparent, and accountable, and dedicated exclusively to a higher social purpose. Even then it's hard to prevent them being corrupted.

      Media companies are propaganda machines. They're staffed by the people who brought you the cold war. They're nothing but groups of evil manipulators, and it's good that they're going to die.

      --
      -1 Uncomfortable Truth
    6. Re:That's just a bit premature... by hairyfeet · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Actually I think it is pointing out a serious weakness that newspapers have had for a LONG time, and that is the lack of local journalism and the rehashing of old news. All the local papers that I have seen lately, both at the city and state level, have almost nothing to interest the local reader and instead just rehash the same old wire stories that everyone else does.

      Now this could work in the days before the Internet simply because most of us didn't have access to the wire services so it was that or the 30 second soundbites on the evening news. Now we can get the wire services just as fast as they can, so by the time they have rehased it(while adding little to no value to the story themselves) it is old news and nobody cares. So to me this period is just separating the wheat from the chaff. The smart ones will hire good local reporters and advertise stories that are of interest to local citizens and will probably flourish, albeit with a smaller readership than before, but even that can be supplemented with a good online presence, while the ones that simply regurgitate what they get from AP will die out, and rightly so. This is simply the bad ones that have been coasting for far too long getting what has been coming for a long time now.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
  2. Re:don't forget radio... by David+McBride · · Score: 5, Informative

    You can bash the man if you like, but you'd be more convincing if you laid off the ad hominem attacks and got your facts straight:

    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.

    On the contrary; his latest novel "Little Brother" made the New York Times Bestseller list (Childrens), reaching the #8 spot after 6 weeks. It's had multiple print runs, been published in both the US and the UK, where they've sold well, and has been nominated for and granted a range of literary awards.

    I'd say that qualifies as a commercially successful work by any reasonable definition!

  3. Re:he got there on the backs of boingboing retards by Draek · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.