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Google's Plan To Save the News Through Reinvention
eldavojohn writes "It's no secret that Google doesn't create content, but rather helps people find it. And Google News is no different. So what does the company plan to do about complaints from the news industry that profits are dropping drastically? In a lengthy and comprehensive article, The Atlantic diagnoses the problem and looks at Google's plan to 'save' the symbiotic organism it is attached to, which older generations have traditionally branded 'the news.' The answer, of course, hinges on moving news from dead tree print to the information age via Google's many projects: Living Stories, Fast Flip, and YouTube Direct. But Google is also exploring the more traditional options of displaying ads and designing a paywall so users can easily migrate back to subscriptions like the newspapers of yore. You may also recall that last week the Internet was abuzz with the idiocy of suggestions the FTC had aggregated from inside the industry. Ars brings mention of other proposed plans, both good and bad, from the FTC's report on ideas that newspaper companies are kicking around."
That will piss off these fuckers.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Every article gets an Adword block, Google takes a smaller cut than usual, and the newspaper gets paid.
Shortly after that, the better independent writers will probably start publishing to Google directly.
Turn college students into journalists. "If the nation’s 200,000 journalism and mass communications students spent 10 percent of their time doing actual journalism," said one participant, "that would more than make up for all the traditional media jobs that have been lost in the past 10 years."
You unintentionally stumbled upon a nice parallel there. Like the communications major looking for a nice engineer to marry, print media is out trolling for a sugar daddy.
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
The problem is that the people that created the problem are trying to solve it. This rarely works. The system is in flux and will remain so until a clear path is recognized by the consumer. ie I'll pay for NYTIMEs $14/yr but not $14/month. Cable TV is having a similar problem. The consumer wants ale carte but the providers want to maintain the status quo and keep your eyeballs 24/7. Unfortunately it is out of their hands. The market is fragmenting their structure is not sustainable with todays infrastructure providing more choices. Eventually some model will dominate and that will become the new status quo.
"So far I am completely unimpressed with Google's attempts at engaging the modern user. I use a lot of Google's products but..."
That's all 'Engaging' the user is about though. If you're using their products instead of their competitors, then they've done enough. I don't think Google is naive enough to think they can impress every single person with every single service they offer - with us 'old hands' especially, we've probably seen features elsewhere they haven't considered yet. That said, with the range they've got now they can easily get a lot of people roped into using two or three of their services - they're pretty consistent, and often better than anything 'Joe Bloggs' has seen.
We're not really their core market, but the fringe. "The whole getting money out of the user thing is all" any business cares about, so it's natural that Google will go for the easy money before working on attracting the fringe users. Seems to work for them. :)
Then let me tell you why the news industry lost me. It wasn't paywalls. It wasn't paper or plastic or bits.
It was:
I would honestly rather read some resourceful person's blog where they have gone to the trouble to find interesting, reasonable resolution images; linked to supporting information for their factual claims; and don't try to put in crazy "alternative" ideas like the idiocy of creationism, scientifically unsubstantiated claims of vaccine/autism, cellphone/cancer, angels, auras, and so on down the line of malarkey, and where I may comment upon the subject matter, provoking others to respond, which in turn often digs up more information, etc.
To watch Fox News is to watch the poster child for the failure of an entire industry. To watch CNN is to listen to Kindergarten level expositions on celebrity hi-jinks when wars are raging. The web sites these companies have created are true lowest-common-denominator designs that are painful to anyone who can think their way out of a paper bag. If you're going to aim your content at only half the country, maybe you should be aiming at the half that can think. Or is that too frightening?
And the news industry wonders why its income has dropped. Sheesh.
PS: Spell check and grammar check too... maybe an intern could do that while you FACT CHECK and EDIT OUT YOUR OPINION!
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.