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Your Media Business Will Not Be Saved (medium.com)
Joshua Topolsky, co-founder of The Verge and Vox Media, and formerly Editor-in-chief of Engadget, has published an article on Medium wherein he analyzes the ongoing and long-term issues with digital media businesses and their increasingly growing thirst for more and more clicks. Topolsky says that the rate at which media outlets are adopting the new technologies and platforms (such as video, "bots, newsletters, a morning briefing app, a lean back iPad experience, Slack integration, a Snapchat channel, or a great partnership with Twitter") in an attempt to capture more audience -- and save its receding loyal reader base -- isn't going to fix the problem. Topolsky, who left Bloomberg news outlet last year amid his disagreement with Michael Bloomberg himself, writes: The Problem is that we used to have a really neat and tidy version of a media business where very large interests controlled vast swaths of the things we read, watched, and listened to. Because that system was built on the concept of scarcity and locality -- the limits of what was physically possible -- it was very easy to keep the gates and fill the coffers. Put simply, there were far fewer players in the game with far fewer outlets for their content, so audiences were easy to sell to and easy to come by. [...] The media industry now largely thinks its only working business model is to reach as many people as possible, and sell -- usually programmatically, but sometimes not -- as many advertisements against that audience as it can. If they tell you otherwise, they are lying. [...] The truth is that the best and most important things the media (let's say specifically the news media) has ever made were not made to reach the most people -- they were made to reach the right people. Because human beings exist, and we are not content consumption machines. What will save the media industry -- or at least the part worth saving -- is when we start making Real Things for people again, instead of programming for algorithms or New Things.
I'd say, as far as network TV and the music industry goes, the golden age was between the 1950s and the 1990s, when, by and large, the business model remained static. By the first few years of the 2000s, broadband was becoming common enough that P2P began to impact those industries. Of course they completely misunderstood what was happening, as they continue to, and did not view piracy as an expression of consumer desire, giving new players like Netflix and Apple the opportunity to build new business models.
I simply don't think the traditional entertainment units know what to do. They see their profits in jeopardy, but I doubt piracy is their chief fear. Their chief fear is that their "new media" competitors are simply going to abandon them completely and produce their own content. Amazon and Netflix are doing this, and some musical artists are already beginning to think beyond the old paradigm of the record label.
Frankly, I think traditional media is screwed; whether that's network entertainment, network news, newspapers, radio; you name it. Maybe they can twist governments' arms for a decade or two, but in the end, if they don't abandon the old models, they're dead, and seeing as they still spend an astonishing amount of time trying to defend their turf through the courts, lawmakers and international treaties, I don't think they'll ever be in a position to adapt. They don't get the customer base, and cannot accept that the captive audience of yesteryear is rapidly becoming a distant memory.
When newspapers think using scam advertisers like Outbrain is an innovative way of creating revenue, you know that media group is fucked beyond all repair.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I tried both with and without an ad blocker and I see zero ads. Any wonder that I prefer reading articles there? Compare to Forbes, who won't even let me view an article without disabling my ad blocker or whitelisting it, which means I usually just skip the article or load it in something I don't bother installing an ad blocker on, IE/Edge. Which leads me to wonder, how is Medium doing it the "right way" for my preferences? Any money changing hands? Build now monetize later?
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So what will matter in the next age of media?
Compelling voices and stories, real and raw talent, new ideas that actually serve or delight an audience, brands that have meaning and ballast; these are things that matter in the next age of media.
No, that's a pipe dream. Talent doesn't matter. Compelling stories don't matter. New ideas don't matter, and brands don't matter.Click here to find out the seven things that a mom discovered that matter!
"Quality news" has a real but small audience. Most people are looking for the next thing to click on to feed their buzzing squirrel brain.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Part of the problem is the bulk of that audience doesn't want real news, they want entertainment. When there was scarcity of outlets, they were mostly controlled by players who did both news and entertainment.
Today, much of what passes for "news" is really entertainment. Looking at what people I know pass around as news articles are really some blog repost, of a blog repost, of a (maybe) news article. The blog reposts contain opinionated rants, adding no inherent value other than confirming the already biased opinions of the readers. Frequently the original news article isn't actual "news", but a press release or FUD article that simply quotes a government statistic or celebrity/politician soundbite.
I'd appreciate it if the Slashdot overlords could contribute to the fight by editing submissions so they go to actual original articles and not click-bait blogs. (The ghost of Roland Piquepaille is watching you!)
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
The traditional news business somewhat became a rentier business. One of the biggest revenue sources for newspapers was classified advertising. They would charge 20-30 dollars for something that cost them pennies. They also became the de-facto source of news. If they liked a politician or a party then they would not cover it negatively. If a friend of the owners got in trouble there would be no reporting. If one of their major advertisers got in trouble then little or nothing with lots of room for the companies to spin the negative news.
The business model was abusive and ripe for someone to do an end run.
The first sign I saw of this would be a local newspaper that carried just classifieds that were free for most purposes. They combined the online submission with print for the masses. I suspect that the news papers weren't happy with this.
The internet started to pick away at this. I would say the gut shot was craigslist and similar sites. Quite simply that was an instant lights out for an entire revenue stream.
The other was google adsense. Not that it is a great way to fund a site these days, but in the early days it was so damn easy to get started and your tiny site could instantly produce revenue. This allowed for some of the earliest web publications to make money and grow.
Google adsense wasn't just a slight revolution but it was a revolution in thinking. It had been proceeded by doubleclick. They were a huge pain in the ass if you were a nobody. They wanted to screen their prospective publishers to make sure they had the volumes and respectability. This translated to their preferring to land old media companies who were doing an online presence.
But what shocks me is that the old media companies have largely doubled down on what made them suck. They are still wildly biased. They don't seem to care about actual journalism such as taking down bad politicians or exposing evil companies. Then to add insult to all this they have adopted some of the worst practices of the internet such as clickbaiting or the various dark practises.
For instance, in my city there have been a spate of murders. Serious ones such as shootings on the core downtown streets. Reading the local newspapers they are talking about it in the general sense of a spate of murders. But no stories that paint a picture of who did what and why they might have had it coming, or not. Then I go on reddit and find eye-witness accounts, pictures, and stories about long running feuds between families. How is it that reddit has become the paper of record in a city of 1 million?
Then there are the autoplay videos. Wow what asshole came up with that gem. Not only do they autoplay, but they will follow you down the page, and even when paused will just start playing after a while. Then there are the videos that just keep streaming one video after another. These companies are wondering why we are all getting adblockers? Do they not understand that their cunning ways are effectively creating the drive and desire to dump them? That once dumped that we won't be coming back?
They understood, but they were not interested in creating this business model. Because it meant losing control. They view it as their job to tell you what you can see and when you can see it. That you would prefer to watch your favorite show at another time than 10pm on a Thursday means nothing, because that's when they know you'll tune in for your favorite show, so at the 8pm timeslot on Friday, when you would understandably prefer to watch it, you will get something inferior because that's when you will watch anyway, no matter what you get offered.
That way they get your eyes twice instead of just once.
A business model that allowed you to decide what to view and when meant a net loss to them and was certainly not something they would offer. And in their hubris, used to eliminating competition and ensuring a monopoly position for too long, they didn't even think that someone might come and simply offer to you what YOU want.
And lo and behold, they're trying to fight it now. Yet another dinosaur that just refuses to die. Too bad we can't simply drop an asteroid on them to get rid of them.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Have you READ the comments at the threat you're linking? Aside of a handful of relevant ones discussing the quality of the hashes that were hacked, I read little but belittling and ridicule of those that got hacked. Relevant? Insightful? Informative? What mod did you expect? Even funny would not cut it because it simply was rarely funny. Or maybe I just don't get the joke, I don't play Minecraft.
And I dare to disagree on the downmodding into the negative. There are comments that are simply idiotic. From Golden Girls to our friend with the black hole fetish. I for one certainly don't mind NOT seeing them. And if you really want to, there's always the choice to step down into the cesspool. They're all there. Not a single Golden Cosmonaut will be lost to you.
Promote discussion, agreed. And as soon as you show me ONE comment at -1 or worse that is worthy of a discussion, we'll talk.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Your media business CAN be saved, if you revert to the previous business model: SELL YOUR OWN ADVERTISEMENTS. It's the (very wrong) idea that media companies can replace their entire sales staff with some drop in from an ad network that are causing these companies so many problems.
I don't respond to AC's.
Look, the dirty secret of both TV and newspaper media is that they exist only to sell words wrapped around the comics pages (newspaper) or the cartoons (TV).
Whenever they go away from that model, they die.
Was true when I worked as a teen in advertising at newspapers in the 70s.
Still is true.
People rarely read editorial pages - when I read the WSJ print edition, I skip past those two pages, suitable only for fishwrap.
Every step away from that model results in fewer readers or viewers.
Adapt.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
>> manufactured outrage, and race/gender baiting doesn't sell as well as it used to guys
Have you missed this year's (US) presidential campaign then?
Candidate - Manufactured Outrage - Race/Gender Baiting
Clinton - Women's Rights - White Men!
Trump - Immigrants - Muslims! Mexicans!
Sanders - Capitalism - White Male Bankers!
And those are just the leaders in the popular polls. Overall I'd say outrage, and race/gender baiting is selling just fine.
They are all competing for a (more or less) fixed amount of time from a (more or less) fixed number of audience members. More competition == less for each competitor.
Sorry, I meant to say THIS ONE AMAZING FACT WILL EXPLAIN WHY YOUR BUSINESS IS NOT SUSTAINABLE!
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Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
There is no reason newspapers (or anyone) should have so much influence over the political process.
Well actually there IS a reason, and it's pretty simple. People are lazy, and would rather have someone else tell them what to think.
In the end the studios and advertisers are going to walk. They already are in some cases. Newspapers are the canary in the coalmine. Mainstream advertisers are abandoning them to such an extent that the daily rag in many even medium sized towns is gone, and even the semi-weeklies are in serious trouble. Major newspapers are also suffering major revenue crunches, often with mountains of debt they have to service.
With the TV industry, sooner or later cord cutting and viewing alternatives (legal and illegal) are going to do the same thing to the broadcasters; their product will degrade to the point where advertisers just walk away.
Look at what one would consider the high point of traditional television; the MASH finale. Over 121 million people tuned in on February 28, 1983 to watch the show. For the traditional model it didn't get any better than that. By 1998, with so many more cable options, the Seinfeld finale mustered 76 million viewers. By 2004, a major network show like Friends could only muster 52.5 million, half of the Roots miniseries was able to get in front of a TV in 1977. In reality, the Internet is only finishing what the five hundred channel universe began two decades ago. How can the traditional networks survive with the steady erosion, and how long will the advertisers and the studios stick around to find out?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Way to conflate the sane ones with Trump - every aspect of whom is manufactured.
Clinton's focus on Women's rights isn't exactly outrage (manufactured or otherwise). It's a lifelong commitment to an issue - that occasionally gets used in opportunistic ways. But it's basically sincere. She doesn't race-bait white men - except in the sense, I suppose, that you may think women's advances have to come at their expense, which doesn't have to be true.
Likewise Sanders' problems with Capitalism go way back. He's a bit more outraged, but his critique is basically on target - hardly 'manufactured', beyond perhaps the tone of voice in a political speech. But c'mon - what's a political speech at all if not a drumbeat to action. He does blame bankers - and I guess maybe the majority of them are white males, but really. Can nobody criticize anybody without it being some form of race/gender baiting?
Of course, you're probably just angling for 'funny' mod points, but on the (not so) off chance that you really believe this "manufactured outrage / race-gender baiting" metric is even remotely informative...
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
if users could invest some money in a micropayment common service, and get debited for each article they read as a non-subscriber, a stable central "bank" would make these characters more money than they get from the malware-packing page-freezing Wild West of ad servers. just sayin'...
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Doesn't anyone watch Citizen Kane anymore?
No. It has a lousy name, it should have been called, "You'll Never Believe What Happens Next With to this Man and Sweet Rosebud (wait for it)"
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Yellow Journalism has always existed, granted.
However, the actual respectable papers, from the tiny one-horse-town paper with its sole proprietor, all the way up to the biggest papers in New York City, did have examples among them of integrity, responsibility, and a code of ethics that they strove to live by.
The reason why was simple - back then, the tabloid rags and propaganda-disguised-as-newspapers didn't last very long (W.R. Hearst was an anomaly, not the norm), mostly because getting the story too wrong too often came at a business-killing cost (in circulation, litigation, etc). People meanwhile figured out fairly quickly which papers could be trusted, and which ones were crap. The crap tended to fade away fairly quickly.
Was it perfect? Of course not. But at least they did manage to get it mostly right, and until recently, journalism courses did teach to a strict set of ethics and rules.
As far as story selection? Some of it is obviously due to bias, but mostly it is because the media craves one thing above all others - advertising dollars. In order to get that, they have to attract eyeballs and ears. In order to do that, they amp up the drama. After all, does the typical viewer (not you dammit, but Joe Sixpack) want to see...
* a long, complex, in-depth, non-partisan, and objective analysis of economic effects from some pending legislation in terms that require an IQ well north of room temperature, or...
* loud spasms of anger, fear, and mud-slinging between the President, protestors and Congress, all conveniently compressed into slogans and sound-bites that appeal to ideological bias, and oh yeah - conveniently fits neatly in-between commercials?
I mean c'mon - there's a reason CNN (for example) spews Nancy Grace and her ilk all over their primetime slots. People apparently don't want to be informed about events that may affect them long-term - they want the salacious and gore-filled howling, by vapid talking heads of course, over some little girl who got raped and dismembered just last week out in West Bumfuck, Nebraska!
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?