Must-Read Of the Day: In the Digital Age, How Much Are Words Worth?

Must-Read Of the Day: In the Digital Age, How Much Are Words Worth?
Posted by Frank Ross May 18th 2010 at 6:11 am in Mainstream Media, New Media | Comments (17)
The New York Times Sunday magazine had a fascinating piece over the weekend by Andrew Rice about the new realities of publishing on the internet. It’s a long read, but worthwhile as a snapshot in time: the old media is dying and the new media is still struggling to be born:

For many years, newspapers and magazines operated in fairly uniform fashion, supported by two streams of revenue. The consumers purchased the product, and businesses paid to reach them with advertisements. Recessions came and went, ad pages expanded and contracted, publications started and went under — but nothing disturbed the basic model. Online economics have changed both sides of the profit equation. “It’s dawning on people that the marketplace will no longer pay the freight,” says Ken Doctor, a former newspaper executive and the author of “Newsonomics: Twelve New Trends That Will Shape the News You Get.”



Early on, almost all print publications decided to offer free access to their online content, which over time cut into their print circulation. In theory, the industry should have been able to absorb the gradual loss of paying readers. Advertising always accounted for the vast majority of the publishers’ revenues — with newspapers, 80 percent was the rule of thumb — and because publications could reach vastly larger audiences online, it seemed reasonable to expect that they’d be able to make more money from ads. But instead, online ads sell at rates that are a fraction of those for print, for simple reasons of competition. “In a print world you had pretty much a limited amount of inventory — pages in a magazine,” says Domenic Venuto, managing director of the online marketing firm Razorfish. “In the online world, inventory has become infinite.”


“Maybe this is what success looks like,” says Nick Denton, speaking of his own business, Gawker Media — a popular and profitable network of Web sites covering technology, sports and celebrity news — as well as of disruptive ventures like Craigslist, the free site that has decimated classified advertising, once a lucrative source of income for newspapers. “You can have destroyed hundreds of millions of dollars, or billions of dollars, of revenue for other people,” Denton says, “but without capturing it all yourself.”

Read the whole thing.

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Tags: Craigslist, New Media, New York Times

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+3 Vote up Vote down devilgold 44p · 1 day ago

There are no real journalists left, most are just "headline plagiarists" with nothing more than theoretical experience, and zero real substance and depth. Worthless.
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1 reply · active 1 day ago
+1 Vote up Vote down Couerl 69p · 1 day ago

In a sense this is true since the AP is the news and they're all libs on the board.. If the AP doesn't back it, it won't get any traction..
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+4 Vote up Vote down nolotrippen 96p · 1 day ago

I will miss all the "accredited journalists" who skip stories like Holder's not having read the Arizona law. Nothing to see here, readers. We'll just stick to the liberal, Democratic line.

It was plain when they refused to acknowledge the Tea Parties until months after they were already a major force -- and then treated them as a freak-show curiosity -- that the press had become fossilized in its bias.

I welcome the new press and its hard working, actual journalists.
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0 replies · active 1 day ago
+2 Vote up Vote down jakee308 · 1 day ago

They still don't get it. Just because they offered some content from the print side on their websites doesn't mean they lost that much circulation to the websites.

The old media still doesn't get that folks were starving for any other source of news (actual news not opinion laced with news).
The sequence is
1. new news sources appeared and people began using it for a variety of reasons and not just because it was free.
2. old media saw that and decided they could get in on it because they already had the infrastructure to get the NEWS.
3. People still flocked more and more to the new sources of news. (some of this news was 'stolen' from old media.)
4. old media decides that since people aren't paying 'their fair share' for old media's news on the web and their losing their butts in print, they try to stem the flow by trying to limit or charge for access. This will just hasten the demise of old media in my opinion.

I don't buy access and won't unless they present it in a form that is useful to me. The best one I've seen is a site that you purchase 'copies' electronically of the newspaper you wish to read. It is cheaper and easier than buying the actual paper but still your forced to take it all or reject it all.

The old news media have made some bad assumptions.

They're about to compound the problem with a 'paywalls' structure but still using the old business model: you pay for the whole 'paper' to read our stuff and the ads we got paid to put up. If some of what we print is of no interest to you, you still have to pay for it. All or nothing.

Instead of rethinking the problem, they've just twisted the old business model to fit the new technology.

For the pay model to succeed it has to be fast and cheap. No monthly, quarterly, yearly subscriptions to pay for whatever the outlet chooses to put on their pages. Even if they print drivel, you still have paid for it in advance and can only cancel when the subscription is finished. (which is what happens now. It's been accelerated by the Depression but it still would have happened without it. BTW. It's the lack of advertising that is actually killing the old News media. Subscriber costs mostly only pay for distribution. The profit has always been in the classifieds and the print ads and with unemployment rampant and it's easier to advertise on the web, those ads have plummeted.)

A new pay model needs to be flexible, a buffet if you will, so that the user can pick and choose what they consider of value and they can refuse to pay for that which they either don't agree with or aren't interested in.

Old media thought processes are not going to work.

There also needs to be bundling of news and considerations of when and how we actually read and use the news. The old 3 or 4 editions a day might need to be revived along with a difference in focus depending on the time of day (which can indicate the type of user)

Plus it will take an agreement with all the other large outlet news website's in the world for the pay model to be effective. If just a few offer free access then the pay for access model is broke and so will the old media.
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+2 Vote up Vote down William_Z 69p · 1 day ago

Yes, it’s a long article and after reading it, I think Mickey Spillane summed it up best:

"I have no fans. You know what I got? Customers. And customers are your friends."

If the Old Media understood what Spillane understood, it won’t be going the way of the DoDo bird. Also, those digital outlets better not forget what Spillane lived by, wrote by and made money by, either.

Financial death is financial death whether its hardcopy or electronic, because electricity isn’t free either. Keep in mind, Big Brother FCC wants to wrap his totalitarian fingers around the Internet, so customers and currency are the only thing which will keep informational websites alive.
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+1 Vote up Vote down infinitefreedom · 1 day ago

In my mind, it's a moral dilemma, rather than a money issue. America is starting to wake up to the fact that it's being manipulated by leftist media. The fact is, they do not report the news, they tell us what they pick & choose, according to their liberal agenda. & we are getting screwed by this. & the democratic party that has been supported by this, is now trying to support yet more failure.

I say we have a Revolution of the People. Let the left fail, they are held up by lies anyway. Words are worth more today than they were in 2008, the height of liberalism in America. Today, we want more honesty. & that is a good thing.

Let the left die, just let it die. & then we can get our America, & our Liberty back.
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+1 Vote up Vote down Mr.Lincoln 86p · 1 day ago

It will be painful, but we will do exactly that. Let the left die, just let it die. & then we can get our America, & our Liberty back.

Restore the Republic,
God Bless America
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+1 Vote up Vote down Mr.Lincoln 86p · 1 day ago

Here is a YOU TUBE record of the President, that the President who want's to control the internet with net neutrality.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCAffMSWSzY&fe...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AP-IM7maxbI&fe...
Restore the Republic,
God Bless America
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+2 Vote up Vote down Lorben 105p · 1 day ago

I love being a capitalist and letting capitalism work....
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3 replies · active 1 day ago
+1 Vote up Vote down Mr.Lincoln 86p · 1 day ago

Ayn Rand pointed this out in her books.
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+2 Vote up Vote down Lorben 105p · 1 day ago

Whom I have been a student for years...in a Christian context though. I am currently reading "We the Living"...I just started it.
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+1 Vote up Vote down Mr.Lincoln 86p · 1 day ago

I know Ayn Rand was an atheist, but she had a great understanding on capitalism. What would happen if Atlas shrugged? It was not by choice, because she grew up in the Soviet Union were she did not have the opportunity, or freedom to learn,or to study religion.

Restore the Republic,
God Bless America
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0 Vote up Vote down Annie · 1 day ago

Amazing they cater only to the left when there's another 50% out here hungry for decent information. I guess it's why they're marxists...
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0 Vote up Vote down Annie · 1 day ago

It's why we come to blogs like the Bigs....thanks Frank and the rest of you truth-seekers. :)
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View IntenseDebate profile +1 Vote up Vote down Couerl 69p · 1 day ago

The AP is the death panel of news and Journalism.
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0 Vote up Vote down Mt Top Patriot · 1 day ago

It is a downfall of their own making. I read the entire article, and the constant thread about the demise is its everyone Else's fault. Like Rude blogger journalism, and the oh so evil predatory practices of crag's List, nothing is as special as the main stream press, bla bla bla, boo hoo.

This reader is very happy and most grateful for the New Media. The one thing these chumps in the lamestream press fail to grasp is the singular paradigm unique to The New Media is that, like right here for instance, I get to put my 2 cents worth into the mix, and read what my fellow Americans got to say. THAT is profound and a sea change that is a huge plus for The New Media. Not to mention I'm not a taken for granted and abused reader any longer. The New Media is rude in comparison to the dinosaur press, and that is the beauty of it, one knows exactly what motives and bent, and why, about a particular New Media source. Something that is at the root of the demise of the lapdog press, which treats the news and my intelligence as their property that they can do with whatever suits an agenda doctrine and motive. The New Media is bare assed naked, it is why it works and is going to rule the journalism roost.