

Is free news killing newspapers?  - edw519
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1821376,00.html?cnn=yes

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petercooper
Newspapers are almost free anyway. A dollar is not much for a gigantic bundle
of paper. You're pretty much just paying for the delivery medium.

On the Internet, the cost of the delivery (bandwidth and server costs) is too
low on a per user basis to bother charging, so it's "free" but the paper is
free to make money the same it does with regular newspapers - advertising.

If anything kills the concept of newspapers, whether online or not, it'd be
the self-righteous jerks who run ad blockers. Though, of course, this would
lead to in-line ads, and an ever blurry line between editorial and advertising
as ads get stuffed into the editorial.

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etal
Some newspapers are completely free. Most charge a tiny amount to avoid the
stigma of being a free paper (or, gain the credibility of a for-pay paper).
The majority of the paper's revenue comes from advertising -- which also works
online (setting aside the ad-block arms race).

As for investigative journalism, I suppose it's just a matter of finding
someone willing to pay for it. There's the BBC approach of having everyone pay
a little bit for relatively NPOV news, since that's worth a little bit to
everyone. Alternately, there's what this article discusses: many small groups
are willing to pay more for investigation that may support their own agendas
-- or do the investigation themselves, and blog it.

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mynameishere
We already know that free news is killing newspapers.

The headline of the article is "The Nightly News, Not-For-Profit" and the
point is this: Since companies that produce reporting can no longer sell it,
wealthy donors are stepping in to fund its production in order to disperse it
for free. Herb Sandler (of moveon.org) is the example given and a frightening
one at that. He's a hard leftist, and is using his personal fortune to fund
propaganda operations.

I always wondered what would happen to the dead trade of journalism once
newspapers were gone. I guess I know now. The mild constraints that the
marketplace put on pinko media owners is finished, replaced with direct orders
from the Sandlers.

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herorev
I don't think it will matter much if all the big media outlets become
saturated to a much larger degree with bias, because consumers are no longer
at the whims of "pinko media owners".

In the past, if all the physical newspapers sold if your area had a strong
bias (that went against yours), you didn't have many options. But on the
internet you can easily switch to a different news source. If all the big
players just start pumping out far-left propaganda, consumers can and will go
elsewhere very easily.

Differing opinions are more easily accessible thanks to the internet, but the
internet also allows people to more easily isolate themselves from differing
opinions. In a decade, people may be intentionally consuming news from sources
that are tailored to their bias. It'll be easier to hide away from news
sources that express ideas you disagree with.

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mynameishere
_easily switch to a different news source_

This is because the internet has lowered the costs of distribution and
production. It has _not_ lowered the costs of reporting...you still need
actual salaried workers to report. Thus the problem. Cheap distribution has
lowered the overall price, which is where the money came from to hire
reporters.

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patrickg-zill
Time to read the 1993 Michael Crichton essay, "Mediasaurus". See
<http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.04/mediasaurus_pr.html>

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ojbyrne
Phrasing stuff as a tautology sort of kills any discussion. History is full of
examples of technology advances killing business models. The problem isn't the
"free" part because the alternatives will end up costing money in some way
(ad-supported at the very least), but the giant cost drivers that the now-dead
model is stuck with. Buildings, machinery and people - too many of them.

