The answer is, it's only a problem if somebody figures you have some money and it's worth going after you. That's why media companies have to be so very careful about everything they do that they stifle themselves and pay huge sums for insurance, while bloggers can copy and paste with abandon, and nobody cares. Look poor, and you're safe.
Unless you're the one person in a million selected by the RIAA, of course.
How would citizen journalism operate on a local level? Is the citizen journalist really going to cover the long-and-boring city council meeting faithfully every week... even though he's not getting paid? Not a sexy beat, but we need to keep an eye on the local clowns, too.
People are remarkable in that they sign up for email, then forget, then don't look at the bottom link to unsubscribe, then complain to AOL. This causes a lot of work for ISPs to get reinstated. It usually takes several hours, once more than a day! AOl simply does not care.
What these lazy users don't realize is, that they've just inconvenienced everyone else using that same ISP, because now they can't send mail to their friends at AOL and don't know why. It creates a big mess, all over a legit email in the first place.
And yes, we have our name, the mailing name in the subject line AND in the body of the amail AND in the unsubscribe line.
The problem is that whether you're publishing online or on paper, you still have to pay a staff of reporters, editors and photographers. That cost doesn't go away no matter how much newsprint you don't use.
At a small daily, the online ad revenue, while steadily increasing, would pay precious few reporters all by itself. National news sites do better because they're getting national ad dollars, but smaller news sites have trouble getting that business. And local advertisers are just starting to "get it" as far as online readership.
Note: It wasn't a newspaper editor who talked about the "loss" of revenue. It was a consultant who makes his living from newspapers who was being dramatic.
If we can drop the emotional side of the whole side of the issue (newspapers BAD, Craig GOOD), it seems obvious that people choose various means to dispose of unwanted goods, find a job, or whatever.
First off, they are likely to use whatever medium to which they are accustomed. Ergo, newspaper readers buy newspaper ads, Internet folks like using the Web, TV-oriented people buy "classifieds" on cable TV, etc. In my experience, it's hard to convince people to use a medium they don't see day-to-day, or aren't familiar with.
Secondly, people weigh the cost of the advertisement in terms of time and money. What's more convenient and costs less? And results count, too. Sometimes we're actually trying to make a profit (oh my god) on our own stuff, and so want to maximize the return on our advertising investment. If we were all just trying to sell our stuff online for free, eBay would be dead.
True, the trend is for more online advertising and less print. What would you do if you owned a newspaper? Not a big-city rag, but a small-town daily with real employees and the need to pay them...
Iowa taxpayers were really had on this one, since we paid and paid and now the thing is being broken up anyway. It was never the slightest benefit to the public in general; just another expense.
Iowans also paid by having ICN discourage the private ISP sector -- no ISP could sell anything to a school or library or any government entity. More than once we were told by a school district IT director that he'd love to switch to us because the ICN service was poor, but that it wouldn't be permitted.
Kids do read. Just ask JK Rowling. But the children who are good readers of books probably don't read online in the same way. Neither do adults.
Is it because so much bad content has "trained" us to avoid reading online, or is it the physical discomfort of reading for long on a screen? Or something else?
Slashdot Mirror
Unless you're the one person in a million selected by the RIAA, of course.
How would citizen journalism operate on a local level? Is the citizen journalist really going to cover the long-and-boring city council meeting faithfully every week... even though he's not getting paid? Not a sexy beat, but we need to keep an eye on the local clowns, too.
People are remarkable in that they sign up for email, then forget, then don't look at the bottom link to unsubscribe, then complain to AOL. This causes a lot of work for ISPs to get reinstated. It usually takes several hours, once more than a day! AOl simply does not care.
What these lazy users don't realize is, that they've just inconvenienced everyone else using that same ISP, because now they can't send mail to their friends at AOL and don't know why. It creates a big mess, all over a legit email in the first place.
And yes, we have our name, the mailing name in the subject line AND in the body of the amail AND in the unsubscribe line.
You work at a newspaper and can't spell "seperate"?
The problem is that whether you're publishing online or on paper, you still have to pay a staff of reporters, editors and photographers. That cost doesn't go away no matter how much newsprint you don't use.
At a small daily, the online ad revenue, while steadily increasing, would pay precious few reporters all by itself. National news sites do better because they're getting national ad dollars, but smaller news sites have trouble getting that business. And local advertisers are just starting to "get it" as far as online readership.
Note: It wasn't a newspaper editor who talked about the "loss" of revenue. It was a consultant who makes his living from newspapers who was being dramatic.
If we can drop the emotional side of the whole side of the issue (newspapers BAD, Craig GOOD), it seems obvious that people choose various means to dispose of unwanted goods, find a job, or whatever.
First off, they are likely to use whatever medium to which they are accustomed. Ergo, newspaper readers buy newspaper ads, Internet folks like using the Web, TV-oriented people buy "classifieds" on cable TV, etc. In my experience, it's hard to convince people to use a medium they don't see day-to-day, or aren't familiar with.
Secondly, people weigh the cost of the advertisement in terms of time and money. What's more convenient and costs less? And results count, too. Sometimes we're actually trying to make a profit (oh my god) on our own stuff, and so want to maximize the return on our advertising investment. If we were all just trying to sell our stuff online for free, eBay would be dead.
True, the trend is for more online advertising and less print. What would you do if you owned a newspaper? Not a big-city rag, but a small-town daily with real employees and the need to pay them...
Iowa taxpayers were really had on this one, since we paid and paid and now the thing is being broken up anyway. It was never the slightest benefit to the public in general; just another expense.
Iowans also paid by having ICN discourage the private ISP sector -- no ISP could sell anything to a school or library or any government entity. More than once we were told by a school district IT director that he'd love to switch to us because the ICN service was poor, but that it wouldn't be permitted.
Kids do read. Just ask JK Rowling. But the children who are good readers of books probably don't read online in the same way. Neither do adults.
Is it because so much bad content has "trained" us to avoid reading online, or is it the physical discomfort of reading for long on a screen? Or something else?