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Postmortem for a Dead Newspaper
Techdirt points out a great postmortem for the Rocky Mountain News, a newspaper that ended up shutting down because they couldn't adapt to a world beyond print. While long, the talk (in both video and print) is incredibly candid coming from someone who lived through it and shares at least some portion of the blame. "It seems like pretty much everything was based on looking backwards, not forward. There was little effort to figure out how to better enable a community, or any recognition that the community of people who read the paper were the organizations true main asset. ... The same game is playing out not just in newspapers, but in a number of other businesses as well. Like the Rocky Mountain News, those businesses are looking backwards and defining themselves on the wrong terms, while newer startups don't have such legacy issues to deal with."
MPAA/RIAA, to name a few (that we love to hate.)
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
3. Most print newspapers have journalist with a very liberal slant, and people don't want that anymore, witness the success of Fox News and online bloggers.
If that's true, why is it that the RMN went under rather than the Post, when the News was generally considered to be the politically more conservative paper?.
sb
We're in a unique part of history where there is a huge upheaval in technology - mostly centered around computing. Newspapers are biting the dust, film cameras are biting the dust - digital cameras are basically computers with lenses; new weapons are being developed and I'm sure in my lifetime, guns that use gun powder and bullets will not be used by modern militaries; music playing and purchases is changing dramatically; and there's more. Sure, many of those old technologies will probably stay around, but they won't be mainstream: they'll be something that hobbiests use. There will be a few folks who still use film cameras and there will be a few niche camera producers that will still make the camera, film and supplies. There will still be gun makers for those that still or have to keep using gun powder - or the government will outlaw the new weapons for civilian use. And there may be some traditional newspapers around here and there. But the thing is, things are changing at a fast pace now and eventually will slow down. If you look at progress throughout history there are times where their are huge leaps and changes and then things fo back to a baseline of progress. Some past examples: the Industrial Revolution and the Renaissance,
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
From a printing standpoint - they had a newspaper that was printed and folded in a book format - so you could grab a copy, open and read like a book without having to pull sections out etc. Something which I thought was unique at the time (compared to other newspapers in the area). Personally I had purchased more copies of the Rocky Mountain News due to this factor alone... which made reading the paper experience a little more convenient.
No it is true. But they are not Liberal because they are trying to push their views (much like how Fox news does) But they are Liberal as it is easier to report good news.
In very raw terms. Liberals want to change things. Conservatives dont.
So Liberals make news (As they feel this problem needs to be addressed) and conservatives are trying to stop such actions (As the solution of the problem will do more harm then good).
So the news ends up first by targeting the Liberal as they are doing something that is new and news worthy. Then they get the conservatives on the defensive. So in the process of making the news There is a lot of time and effort toward the new idea. And just a little bit explaining the old view.
What that does is creates news where the Liberal Slant always gets more attention then the conservative.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I prefer to get news from edited sources. There might be some fact checking then, less bias, and better writing in most cases. Blogging tends to be more like newspaper columns where assume a certain bias and literary style in whom you chode to read.
Marketing 101:
Define your company based on the needs of your customers that you are satisfying, not on what you do.
Sorry, this is the first day of first year marketing. If you don't know this, you deserve to go out of business.
Is this problem with traditional newspaper a US-only phenomenon? I heard yesterday of a recent study of newspapers in Canada which actually showed growth in their industry. What do others see in their country?
That is true for both the time your paying for and the money you are asked to pay.
A blog dashed off in a few minutes (or hours), will never compare to the in-depth reporting that most newspapers still actually deliver. For that I'm willing to pay (and do).
If newspapers ever died, they would drag all the other mediums that have news down with it... most tv/cable/radio/internet copy I've ever seen is lifted from an old dead tree newspaper.
Not to mention - some of us LIKE real news. You know, stuff that isn't about sports, or celebrities, or the horoscope, or the comics, or crap like that. The only hard news you get out of blog posts are just glorified wire reports - sure I can find out about big events like an earthquake, but where am I going to find out about corruption in China? Or inflation in Zimbabwe? Stuff that is ongoing, slow, and less sexy - that require coverage over years. Cable news gave up stories like that a long time ago - all that's left for that in the US is PBS, NPR, and the big print (NY Times, WSJ, etc).
Interestingly - I have noticed that some print media is doing well (at least round me), the hyper-local weeklies that cover individual towns and villages in my area (as opposed to the area at large). Another area completely un-served by the web.
People don't even have to talk to so diverse a range of people as live in their neighborhood because they can find an online forum that fits exactly with their beliefs and preconceived ideas and spend all their time talking to people without the discomfort of disagreement.
Then explain slashdot -- MS vs Apple, the RIAA apologists you see here in any story about copyright, vi vs Emacs, US vs UK, people for the drug laws vs people with a clue, etc.
In this community, at least, you have VERY diverse opinions, arguments, areas of expertise, ages (hell, I'm 57 and there are older guys than me here as well as teenagers). There are even a few girls here, believe it or not!
Free Martian Whores!
Blogs are better for trust?
Please point me to your collection of honest, fact-based blogs without editorial bias and a full-time staff of fact checkers. I'd honestly love to see them.
I have no qualms with new media emerging. It is just that all my friends honestly seem to prefer blogs because of their obvious bias.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
the very concept of "the news" (as opposed to the olds?) is philosophically a liberal phenomenon
if liberalism is change and conservatism is stasis, you can make the easy deduction that a system in stasis generates no news: nothing changes, so there is nothing to communicate or talk about anything that is "new"
so indeed, the entirety of news generation is entirely the realm of liberalism. even fox news, through the simple act of giving voice to something changing out there in the world, is in the service of liberalism. no matter what the propagandistic slant, merely giving attention to some process of change makes people think about the subject matter, and therefore at least begin the cognitive process of acquiescence to and understanding of change that is necessary, even if they don't like the change
in fact, the most socially conservative groups in this world are distinguished by a conscious effort to protect themselves from "the news": the amish, hasidic groups, funamentalist religious cults in a compound out in the woods... they all wall themselves out from the world, the larger society that is undergoing the healthy, liberalizing processes of change
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
There aren't any city-specific news web sites out there that are making anything like the kind of money that newspapers made in their heyday.
The question is - why not? A newspaper's primary revenue stream comes from advertisers, so why aren't online editions making as much as paper editions?
Are there fewer "eyeballs" out there to read the advertising? No, actually, by going online you increase your readership.
So the only answer is that advertisers aren't willing to pay as much per reader for online editions as they are for dead-tree editions. But that just raises the question: why are online advertisements worth less than printed ones?
If we assume that the goal of advertisements is to raise awareness of products, then each pair of "eyeballs" should be worth the same, regardless of whether they're viewing the ad on a piece of paper, or on a computer screen. So the question then becomes
Are online editions charging too little for advertisements, or are dead-tree advertisers charging too much?
Either advertisers have realized they were being gouged by newspapers (which means that if the internet were to go away tomorrow, newspapers would still be in the same situation they are now), or newspapers need to charge more for advertising in online editions.
From what I understand the Seattle PI was *always* on shaky ground, even before the Internet came along and took their lunch money. Rumors of their demise have been floating for the last 15 years. I would be interested to know how we'll they're doing in online-only format. I still read their articles only because I know and like their main contributors. But how will new readers find them now? I'm glad I'm not in the news biz.
The demise of the print newspaper has a few causes.
1. We live in a 24/7 news cycle, with 24 hour news on tv
2. By the time a newspaper is printed & delivered, the "news" isn't new anymore.
Frankly, the day-to-day machinations of government, war, and business are largely irrelevant to most people. Do I really care what congress said about the President's health care proposal today? No, it's not as if I'm going to write a letter to my congressman or to the White House everyday to give them a piece of my mind.
What really matters is the trend -- what's going on with this story in general. Who is for it, who is against it, the arguments for, the arguments against, whether or not one side is full of BS over time is what really matters. I want to know what is happening with the story and TV news' focus on daily press conferences and across-the-aisle battles through press releases are just a distraction from the real story.
I sit through cable news loops whenever I'm at the airport and it's just little sound-bytes of this and that -- I have no idea what the story is by the time CNN moves on. Some guy comes on and says something. Another guy comes on and refutes. I have no idea of who is credible -- the written word has the luxury of time and long attention spans to pull the thread and illustrate whether this guy's point is at all reasonable. TV just doesn't.
TV news is just a distraction.
Newspapers died because they gave away their content online. You can read a reasonable-length, non-long-form online with as much ease as with the print edition. When you give it away for free, people don't renew their print subscriptions. It has nothing to do with bias or some 24-hour news cycle mumbo-jumbo.
It's true, but much like people who "love the feel of a good book in their hands" we are probably the last generation who will agree with that statement much like I'm sure you rather use a calculator than a slide rule despite that a slide rule "feels" a lot better and gives a better grasp of the math than a calculator.
So... is it snooty of me that I like my articles to be well researched and polished? Do they get stuff wrong - sure - but I'm not expecting the Truth with a capital T and without mistakes. I do expect them to catch the mistakes (eventually) and let me know when they do. But they don't tend to fuck up the in depth stuff, and thats what I like.
As for comments... are we talking about the DailyKos site where I have to wade through so much ignorance, posturing, pomposity, and outright shit, that I feel like I have to shower after I read through the comments section (and thats just on the stories where I agree with with their slanted view)? That's the future?
The internet is fine for opinion - even expert opinion - if you know where to go. Or for hyper-detailed analysis of crap only a few care about, but passionately (the ongoing hour-by-hour progress of the new World Trade Center construction in NY for example).
But where can I find a single place, where someone will inform me of interesting things, without me having to wade through the crap and "edit" it myself? Not to mention the in depth coverage of things that are important, but not sexy, and slow moving to boot?
Where is the internet equivalent of NPR? Or PBS/Frontline? Or the NY Times international section. Or the Wall Street Journal business section? So far - its the websites of those respective organizations...
The self righteous sanctimony and distain you have of what is CLEARLY more people than ABC/NBC/CBS and probably CNN combined is interesting.
This is called "argumentum ad populum" and has been recognized as a logically fallacious argument for thousands of years.
I'd love to compare the literacy of say those that watch what is on those channels to that of what is on Fox News.
You want to compare the literacy rate of "those who watch what is on those channels" with "what is on Fox News". Maybe you should work on your own literacy a bit, because that doesn't even make sense. Assuming you meant that you want to compare the literacy rates of viewers of Fox New with the literacy rate of viewers of other news programs, I don't think you'll find the results flattering to Fox. I assume you can agree there is probably a strong positive correlation between those that vote republican and those that watch Fox? Because there is a moderately significant correlation between people who no not pass high school and who vote Republican. That is not conclusive of course, but it does suggest just the opposite correlation you seem to imply.
The problem with people such as yourself, you can't imagine anyone having an opinion that is different than you...
Gee what a compelling argument... that is compellingly pointless and from someone who doesn't know me. I don't have any problem with people who have other opinions, I just also recognize not all other opinions are logical or even reasonable. This isn't grade school and everyone isn't equally right. You have to form opinions rationally and defend them logically and show your work, or you are simply wrong.
...you end up saying that they are ignorant(and racist, and sexist ....)
And this is the ever popular strawman argument. You'll note that you say that I will say people are sexist and racist, when I said no such thing.
I'm not going to read through all of your long and rambling nonsense. Given your writing so far, I don't think you have much of a grasp on the concepts or logic or reason or rhetoric or at least no formal education since you seem to be ignoring all the rules needed for a rational and civil discussion. If you have a problem with what I have written or want to discuss, then by all means, reply to my previous post again. But this time, actually address the specific points I made with specific and reasoned rebuttal. I'll be happy to address a reply in that format. For now, however, I'm writing you off as a nutjob and not bothering to finish reading your nonsense.
I think a fair amount of the media bias is really an urban bias.
Most major news networks are based in and around large cities. Most major news stories reported on come from those cities, and most viewers and reporters are from those cities.
However, it's still largely a national media. The people in rural Ohio watch the same national news broadcast as do the people in Manhattan.
Some issues of right or left, this isn't a big deal. Others it is - just as an example, a reporter from New York City or DC (where guns are almost completely banned for personal, law-abiding use, and no one grows up hunting) is going to have a very different perspective, regardless of any intended bias, from someone who lives were hunting and target shooting are a large part of their life, and that's going to show up when they cover a gun control related issue or a shooting.
You can call it a left versus right bias, but I think that implies consistency on more issues than what you actually see. There are conservatives living in urban areas - but their conservatism is likely to be of a very different kind than those living in small towns. News programs are speaking to a national audience, but they still can only really know a local culture, no matter how many different polls they take. Even if someone is trying to be neutral, his viewpoint of what is "normal" is going to affect which viewpoints he feels he needs to be neutral toward.
And I disagree with both of you! And I also agree with both of you!
We're not only seeing the death of local news, but there is also as strong desire amongst our youth to kill off any other type of local community simultaneously.
They don't want to be just a part of their own local small town. The internet has shown them they can participate in the global community. Local things seem irrelevant to them, and that irrelevance boosts their ego.
All the news anyone could ever want is available for free on the internet...
...because I don't care about local events.
This isn't about crap and noise. It is about the change in scope of the community.
The market is ripe for a brand new solution.
It did open the world. It just didn't open up people.
Sometimes people just open up. Natural causes. Give it time. Yes, the internet has allowed people to self segregate, but that was already happening. What the internet has done is introduce the possibility that those who don't want to self segregate don't have to. You don't have to physically move out of your community to freely get exposed to new ideas. And when people open up and become educated that they can in turn educate those around them. (Though it's of course also possible that they'll become shunned by their ideologically insular community. It's a sloooooooow process.)