In what appears to be a carefully planned suicide...
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I got this from /. and the comment's introduction (used for the title of this thread) was just too perfect to pass up. News Corp to charge for all news websites[^] Just the other day I was telling a friend that the newspaper industry was as clueless as the music business and had failed to learn anything from the latter's demise. What's next, a RIAA like organization that finds some reason to sue the newspaper industry's customers? Here's the part I really don't get. I actually studied journalism in school and learned that the basic business model for print publications was pretty consistent. Subscriber revenues offset the cost of printing. Advertisers pay the bills. While hosting is not free, it's trivial in comparison to the printing costs of the NY Times and thus not terribly relevant to the online version. Newspapers barely even kept up with the web when in fact they should have been the innovators, leading the charge and showing best of class practices for online publishing. But of course, like the music industry, they instead kept their collective head in the sand (or placed firmly in the anterior region of their anatomy) and are now are convinced that Chicken Little was right all along. Morons.
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes In the US? Explore our Career Coaching.
Christopher Duncan wrote:
Advertisers pay the bills.
except that they don't, on the web. not for an organization as big as the NYT anyway. i wish Murdoch would wall himself off completely.
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I got this from /. and the comment's introduction (used for the title of this thread) was just too perfect to pass up. News Corp to charge for all news websites[^] Just the other day I was telling a friend that the newspaper industry was as clueless as the music business and had failed to learn anything from the latter's demise. What's next, a RIAA like organization that finds some reason to sue the newspaper industry's customers? Here's the part I really don't get. I actually studied journalism in school and learned that the basic business model for print publications was pretty consistent. Subscriber revenues offset the cost of printing. Advertisers pay the bills. While hosting is not free, it's trivial in comparison to the printing costs of the NY Times and thus not terribly relevant to the online version. Newspapers barely even kept up with the web when in fact they should have been the innovators, leading the charge and showing best of class practices for online publishing. But of course, like the music industry, they instead kept their collective head in the sand (or placed firmly in the anterior region of their anatomy) and are now are convinced that Chicken Little was right all along. Morons.
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes In the US? Explore our Career Coaching.
Greed kills.
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I got this from /. and the comment's introduction (used for the title of this thread) was just too perfect to pass up. News Corp to charge for all news websites[^] Just the other day I was telling a friend that the newspaper industry was as clueless as the music business and had failed to learn anything from the latter's demise. What's next, a RIAA like organization that finds some reason to sue the newspaper industry's customers? Here's the part I really don't get. I actually studied journalism in school and learned that the basic business model for print publications was pretty consistent. Subscriber revenues offset the cost of printing. Advertisers pay the bills. While hosting is not free, it's trivial in comparison to the printing costs of the NY Times and thus not terribly relevant to the online version. Newspapers barely even kept up with the web when in fact they should have been the innovators, leading the charge and showing best of class practices for online publishing. But of course, like the music industry, they instead kept their collective head in the sand (or placed firmly in the anterior region of their anatomy) and are now are convinced that Chicken Little was right all along. Morons.
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes In the US? Explore our Career Coaching.
Hopefully people won't pay, and go to more reputable news sources. What I'm worried about here in the UK, is that Murdoch will start lobbying for the BBC to stop putting out so much web-news for free because it's damaging the competition, I.E. his.
"...great scott!" Dilbert: Aren't all meetings like this... Richard Dawkins: "What if you're wrong?"
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Christopher Duncan wrote:
Advertisers pay the bills.
except that they don't, on the web. not for an organization as big as the NYT anyway. i wish Murdoch would wall himself off completely.
Yeah, and that's really the larger point that I should have made. The problem with online publishing is not that readers are unwilling to pay for subscriptions, it's that the publishers have failed to make a compelling case to advertisers for the value of online advertising. Companies pay for ads in order to generate revenue. I would imagine that the number of eyeballs on a display ad on a NY Time web page is similar to, or perhaps even much higher than, the number of eyes on the printed page. Since eyeballs are what the advertisers are paying for and that's what the web delivers, then the sales department needs to be fired. I think it all stems from the fact that newspapers simply didn't, and perhaps still don't, take the web seriously. And they'll pay for it with their lives.
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes In the US? Explore our Career Coaching.
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Hopefully people won't pay, and go to more reputable news sources. What I'm worried about here in the UK, is that Murdoch will start lobbying for the BBC to stop putting out so much web-news for free because it's damaging the competition, I.E. his.
"...great scott!" Dilbert: Aren't all meetings like this... Richard Dawkins: "What if you're wrong?"
Murdoch is swimming upstream. The hippies will publish for free everything he wants to charge for, and the readers won't be concerned with the difference in quality. But he'll learn this the hard way.
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes In the US? Explore our Career Coaching.
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Yeah, and that's really the larger point that I should have made. The problem with online publishing is not that readers are unwilling to pay for subscriptions, it's that the publishers have failed to make a compelling case to advertisers for the value of online advertising. Companies pay for ads in order to generate revenue. I would imagine that the number of eyeballs on a display ad on a NY Time web page is similar to, or perhaps even much higher than, the number of eyes on the printed page. Since eyeballs are what the advertisers are paying for and that's what the web delivers, then the sales department needs to be fired. I think it all stems from the fact that newspapers simply didn't, and perhaps still don't, take the web seriously. And they'll pay for it with their lives.
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes In the US? Explore our Career Coaching.
Christopher Duncan wrote:
it's that the publishers have failed to make a compelling case to advertisers for the value of online advertising
is there a good case to be made for it? my little company has been advertising for years. we ask people, when they register, where they heard about the product. i don't think i've seen a single person say "from your ads". instead, 90% of them tell me "internet search". i dunno. maybe i'm not doing it right.
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Christopher Duncan wrote:
it's that the publishers have failed to make a compelling case to advertisers for the value of online advertising
is there a good case to be made for it? my little company has been advertising for years. we ask people, when they register, where they heard about the product. i don't think i've seen a single person say "from your ads". instead, 90% of them tell me "internet search". i dunno. maybe i'm not doing it right.
You know, in all honesty, I think the root cause of the problem is the fact that the transition from print to web for display advertising has simply given people a moment to realize how little display advertising in print delivered. Print advertising has always been wicked expensive, and extremely hard to track in terms of effectiveness. I worked in sales for many years (long before the web) and of all the things I sold advertising was hands down the most difficult sell, by orders of magnitude. When people are spending money, they want to know that they're getting the possession or the results that they're paying for and this was almost impossible to prove with print display advertising. Perhaps the transition to the web is just one of those moments in time where the business community collectively says, "Hang on. We've been getting fleeced here." I think that, much as it is with lawyers, the only people who really win in the advertising game is the people who create the ads.
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes In the US? Explore our Career Coaching.
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I got this from /. and the comment's introduction (used for the title of this thread) was just too perfect to pass up. News Corp to charge for all news websites[^] Just the other day I was telling a friend that the newspaper industry was as clueless as the music business and had failed to learn anything from the latter's demise. What's next, a RIAA like organization that finds some reason to sue the newspaper industry's customers? Here's the part I really don't get. I actually studied journalism in school and learned that the basic business model for print publications was pretty consistent. Subscriber revenues offset the cost of printing. Advertisers pay the bills. While hosting is not free, it's trivial in comparison to the printing costs of the NY Times and thus not terribly relevant to the online version. Newspapers barely even kept up with the web when in fact they should have been the innovators, leading the charge and showing best of class practices for online publishing. But of course, like the music industry, they instead kept their collective head in the sand (or placed firmly in the anterior region of their anatomy) and are now are convinced that Chicken Little was right all along. Morons.
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes In the US? Explore our Career Coaching.
Looking at the crap quality of news channels and websites today, I thought they must pay me for reading the kind of rubbish 'news' they come up with.
It is a crappy thing, but it's life -^ Carlo Pallini
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I got this from /. and the comment's introduction (used for the title of this thread) was just too perfect to pass up. News Corp to charge for all news websites[^] Just the other day I was telling a friend that the newspaper industry was as clueless as the music business and had failed to learn anything from the latter's demise. What's next, a RIAA like organization that finds some reason to sue the newspaper industry's customers? Here's the part I really don't get. I actually studied journalism in school and learned that the basic business model for print publications was pretty consistent. Subscriber revenues offset the cost of printing. Advertisers pay the bills. While hosting is not free, it's trivial in comparison to the printing costs of the NY Times and thus not terribly relevant to the online version. Newspapers barely even kept up with the web when in fact they should have been the innovators, leading the charge and showing best of class practices for online publishing. But of course, like the music industry, they instead kept their collective head in the sand (or placed firmly in the anterior region of their anatomy) and are now are convinced that Chicken Little was right all along. Morons.
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes In the US? Explore our Career Coaching.
<sarcasm>It's lucky that the internet isn't full of competiting news sites, bloggers and social networks that actually product the same, if not more news</sarcasm> While breaking news or in-depth coverage of things like finance or politics is sometimes better delivered by a reporter whose job is to carefully research, verify and prepare a professional report, a lot of the other stuff is already out there. News Corp will have a hell of a time trying to provide a value proposition in order to convince consumers to pay.
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
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I got this from /. and the comment's introduction (used for the title of this thread) was just too perfect to pass up. News Corp to charge for all news websites[^] Just the other day I was telling a friend that the newspaper industry was as clueless as the music business and had failed to learn anything from the latter's demise. What's next, a RIAA like organization that finds some reason to sue the newspaper industry's customers? Here's the part I really don't get. I actually studied journalism in school and learned that the basic business model for print publications was pretty consistent. Subscriber revenues offset the cost of printing. Advertisers pay the bills. While hosting is not free, it's trivial in comparison to the printing costs of the NY Times and thus not terribly relevant to the online version. Newspapers barely even kept up with the web when in fact they should have been the innovators, leading the charge and showing best of class practices for online publishing. But of course, like the music industry, they instead kept their collective head in the sand (or placed firmly in the anterior region of their anatomy) and are now are convinced that Chicken Little was right all along. Morons.
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes In the US? Explore our Career Coaching.
Christopher Duncan wrote:
Newspapers barely even kept up with the web when in fact they should have been the innovators
One word: unions. Marc
I'm not overthinking the problem, I just felt like I needed a small, unimportant, uninteresting rant! - Martin Hart Turner
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I got this from /. and the comment's introduction (used for the title of this thread) was just too perfect to pass up. News Corp to charge for all news websites[^] Just the other day I was telling a friend that the newspaper industry was as clueless as the music business and had failed to learn anything from the latter's demise. What's next, a RIAA like organization that finds some reason to sue the newspaper industry's customers? Here's the part I really don't get. I actually studied journalism in school and learned that the basic business model for print publications was pretty consistent. Subscriber revenues offset the cost of printing. Advertisers pay the bills. While hosting is not free, it's trivial in comparison to the printing costs of the NY Times and thus not terribly relevant to the online version. Newspapers barely even kept up with the web when in fact they should have been the innovators, leading the charge and showing best of class practices for online publishing. But of course, like the music industry, they instead kept their collective head in the sand (or placed firmly in the anterior region of their anatomy) and are now are convinced that Chicken Little was right all along. Morons.
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes In the US? Explore our Career Coaching.
The thing I find amazing about this is that they've been down this road before, and it failed <i>miserably</i>. What makes them think that walling off all their content will work this time?
Christopher Duncan wrote:
Newspapers barely even kept up with the web when in fact they should have been the innovators, leading the charge and showing best of class practices for online publishing.
Hear, hear! I worked in IT in a media company for ten years (half in traditional IT, half in web), and while there was always a relatively small group pushing the company to take advantage of the web's potential and be a leader, they could never get enough attention to really get momentum. I suspect that at least part of it was because the revenue from web ventures is so much less than print or broadcast, but part of it was fear on the part of those who had spent their careers working with traditional media. Your comparison to the RIAA is apt. Traditional media, like the RIAA and MPAA, thrived for so many years because they were the gatekeepers - they were the only way to obtain the content on the other side of their walls, giving them nearly absolute control and huge audiences for their wares. What are the gatekeepers to do when the wall has been dismantled around them?
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Christopher Duncan wrote:
Newspapers barely even kept up with the web when in fact they should have been the innovators
One word: unions. Marc
I'm not overthinking the problem, I just felt like I needed a small, unimportant, uninteresting rant! - Martin Hart Turner
Marc Clifton wrote:
One word: unions.
Maybe in some cases, but many media companies (especially the smaller ones) haven't been unionized for quite some time. Fear and loss of revenue have been much bigger inhibitors.
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The thing I find amazing about this is that they've been down this road before, and it failed <i>miserably</i>. What makes them think that walling off all their content will work this time?
Christopher Duncan wrote:
Newspapers barely even kept up with the web when in fact they should have been the innovators, leading the charge and showing best of class practices for online publishing.
Hear, hear! I worked in IT in a media company for ten years (half in traditional IT, half in web), and while there was always a relatively small group pushing the company to take advantage of the web's potential and be a leader, they could never get enough attention to really get momentum. I suspect that at least part of it was because the revenue from web ventures is so much less than print or broadcast, but part of it was fear on the part of those who had spent their careers working with traditional media. Your comparison to the RIAA is apt. Traditional media, like the RIAA and MPAA, thrived for so many years because they were the gatekeepers - they were the only way to obtain the content on the other side of their walls, giving them nearly absolute control and huge audiences for their wares. What are the gatekeepers to do when the wall has been dismantled around them?
Ed Leighton-Dick wrote:
What are the gatekeepers to do when the wall has been dismantled around them?
Buy politicians to outlaw explosives, artillery, cannons, trebuchets, catapults, Ballista, battering rams, picks, rock hammers, etc...
The European Way of War: Blow your own continent up. The American Way of War: Go over and help them.