
The Bad News About the News - jonathansizz
http://www.brookings.edu/research/essays/2014/bad-news#
======
msandford
From the article: "Craigslist has destroyed that business (classifieds) for
the Post and every major paper in the country."

Any and all of those local papers could have done their own online
classifieds. They could have charged for the ad and both printed it and put it
online so it was searchable. They could have charged for one or the other or
both. They could have all collaborated and syndicated their individual
classifieds into one big database too.

But they did none of this. They fundamentally didn't understand their own
businesses in the face of change. And their businesses are failing as a
result.

It's sad of course. And it's probably not good for society in the short term.
But it's hard for me to get too worked up about it; it's not as though they
didn't have HUGE advantages versus craigslist. They just didn't take it
seriously and it ate their lunch.

~~~
wwweston
Yep. I'm aware of at least one market where a popular local radio/TV media
outlet created an online presence before Craigslist got there and still
dominates that niche.

I'm also aware of a print shopper with great circulation which had upper
management that saw this coming in the mid 90s, and went to their top
management with plans to leverage their print business to become a CL and eBay
competitor. Upper management shut them down... until about 10 years later
(obviously too late).

So you're right. This seems to be pretty self-inflicted. But it doesn't change
the fact that these aren't _just_ businesses we're talking about, fungible
with any other businesses. They're the businesses we bought our picture of the
world from. News organizations having a grassroots revenue stream is a really
good way to make sure they're not captured in certain ways.

~~~
x0x0
And they're critically important to keep an eye on government. See, for
example, the city administrators in CA paying themselves the better part of
$1m/year in cash, plus various vote fraud and open records violations.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Bell_scandal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Bell_scandal)

~~~
msandford
Yeah I agree with both of you about the need for investigative journalism. I'm
just saying that it's hard to be sad about the papers losing their classified
ads. They had a bunch of chances and they screwed them all up.

I think in the long run this'll probably get sorted out. But you are both
right that in the short run it sucks.

Personally I'm loving what John Oliver is doing right now; it seems like every
week he tackles some kind of genuinely important topic and has such a scathing
review of it. They do such a good job that the institution's bad behavior is
funny insofar as how misguided it actually is.

It's also depressing that one of the better news sources available right now
isn't CNN or some "legacy" media, but rather a guy who came up through The
Daily Show.

I think the reason that Last Week Tonight does so well is that they aren't
beholden to anyhow. Most legacy media has somehow convinced itself that it
needs access to politicians in order to report the news. That has led the
reporters to be very deferential to people in power, which prevents them from
asking tough questions or for evidence or proof of various assertions by those
they quote. And because of that, they've watered down most of the value of
their various brands.

It's definitely sad, but I think that in some way these folks did it to
themselves. When everyone is reporting "An anonymous government official said
Snowden hurt us lots, and he is a bad guy" it's safe to say that they're not
really doing their jobs.

~~~
walterbell
_> depressing that one of the better news sources available right now isn't
CNN or some "legacy" ... the reason that Last Week Tonight does so well is
that they aren't beholden to .._

The show runs on HBO, owned by Time Warner, who owns CNN.

~~~
msandford
I'm not really sure what the point you're trying to make is. That Last Week
Tonight really is legacy media because it's owned by the same company that
owns CNN? In that case, the Washington Post isn't legacy either, because it's
owned by Jeff Bezos who owns Amazon, which is slowly destroying brick-and-
mortar stores.

I think what I meant was "Last Week Tonight isn't beholden to politicians"
(but I didn't get that out quite right) which affords them the luxury of
pointing out how stupid a lot of policies are. They don't need to call
$politician up for information or a quote or whatever, so it doesn't matter if
$politician doesn't like the show and won't play along.

I think the show will continue for quite a while due to excellent ratings, and
those ratings are largely because they're doing the actual work that reporters
are supposed to do. I think a lot of legacy newspeople confused what you did
in order to do your job with the job itself. In other words, that the ends
were the results they were after (having an article, getting on TV, etc)
rather than having something important enough that there was no alternative
but to write an article or what have you. Getting published was the goal, not
having something worth publishing.

~~~
walterbell
One theory for the editorial independence of LWT on HBO is the absence of
advertisers who could pull their advertising in response to content. CNN could
create an LWT competitor without political guests, but they would remain
beholden to CNN advertisers.

~~~
msandford
An excellent point actually. Similar to the funding model of ordinary people
buying papers; there's no one single big sponsor that can get a story shut
down.

------
habitue
Ok, so a lot of people are nit-picking this essay by attacking the weaker
points (whether the gate-keeper role is one we want centralized, whether news
media was truly unbiased etc).

The much stronger central point that needs to be answered is "Where will in-
depth investigative journalism get funding to continue?" Yes, in-depth
investigative journalism is not all that traditional media does/did. Yes, some
of what investigative journalism does can be taken over by better data-mining
and cheaper methods these days.

But there remains, after all that, a certain amount that cannot be done by
bloggers and data mining. That's the central question posed by this essay that
needs answering, and it's obvious there isn't a good answer right now. That
doesn't mean saving traditional media is the best way to solve this problem,
but it does mean this aspect of traditional media needs a viable replacement
we don't have yet.

~~~
x5n1
> "Where will in-depth investigative journalism get funding to continue?"

From people like Snowden and Greenwald who are willing to sacrifice their
lives to get the truth out. As has always been the case. Media for the most
part has been a mechanism for distributing propaganda. That business losing
its profitability does not concern me one bit. As for people who want to be
reporters losing jobs and not having that as a career option, well this is a
systemic problem with the new economy, and that is a much deeper problem than
a business model not working any more because of tech.

~~~
untog
Snowden and Greenwald aren't independently funded, though, so you're not
answering the question.

Greenwald is bankrolled by a generous billionaire, for now. Relying on such
generosity does not seem wise. Would he be as effective if he had to balance a
full time job?

------
toyg
_" News as we know it is at risk. So is democratic governance, which depends
on an effective watchdog news media."_

Post-Iraq (and in the days of government-backed Snowden-smearing) that's a
_problematic_ statement. If the statement is true, democratic governance is
already dead (since news media clearly do not see themselves as watchdogs
anymore, nor do they act like they were). If the statement is false and
democratic governance is still present, then it clearly does not depend on
"news as we know it".

~~~
xenophon
I don't think it's true that news media "clearly" do not see themselves as
watchdogs anymore -- that's a pretty massive generalization.

As the article discussed, the universe of news providers writ large has
certainly moved in two directions that are problematic: (1) ideological
coverage, i.e. the big cable networks, and (2) "short-
form"/entertainment/listicle-style coverage that optimizes for page views
instead of content, i.e. Buzzfeed (although they're developing a helluva
investigative section and stole Mark Schoofs from ProPublica).

But just because the balance has shifted does not mean that all news media
have suddenly abrogated social responsibility. The legacy papers aren't dead
yet and their quality hasn't diminished notably; on the new media front, folks
at places like Ozy and Vox Media aren't half bad at balancing the pageview-
centric culture of most online media with depth and quality of topic selection
and reporting.

In short, I don't think that statement is problematic at all. The author is
worried about the sustainability of quality news, but it seems wildly
inaccurate to deny its current effectiveness at promoting governance.

~~~
toyg
_> The legacy papers aren't dead yet and their quality hasn't diminished
notably_

That's a pretty massive generalisation as well. After Judith Miller, Jayson
Blair and today's Tom Harper, I would say there is a good amount of data
indicating the quality has in fact diminished across the board. The WaPost
itself is a symbol of this decay: in 30 years they went from Watergate hounds
to Iraq-invasion cheerleaders. If you look at the average column nowadays,
it's all a bunch of "senior official sources" briefing utter lies in order to
further their agendas.

 _> but it seems wildly inaccurate to deny its current effectiveness at
promoting governance._

I guess it depends on what you mean by "governance".

Note that I'm not saying this shift is entirely the result of market pressure;
increased knowledge of the mechanisms and inner workings of news media has
produced an increased amount of skilful operators, people who know how to
manipulate and interact with journalists better than ever. Still, I think the
trend is quite clear.

~~~
hackuser
> After Judith Miller, Jayson Blair and today's Tom Harper, I would say there
> is a good amount of data indicating the quality has in fact diminished
> across the board. The WaPost itself is a symbol of this decay: in 30 years
> they went from Watergate hounds to Iraq-invasion cheerleaders. If you look
> at the average column nowadays, it's all a bunch of "senior official
> sources" briefing utter lies in order to further their agendas.

I have no reason to believe it was better in the past. News organizations are
human institutions, and like all the others they struggle with corruption and
other failings. An major example off the top of my head:

[http://www.nytimes.com/1990/06/24/books/the-journalist-
and-t...](http://www.nytimes.com/1990/06/24/books/the-journalist-and-the-
dictator.html)

------
SovietDissident
_" Editors and producers pursued stories that interested them, without much
concern for how readers or viewers might react to the journalism that
resulted. Members of this tribe of journalists shared a sense of what “the
news” was. The most influential of them were the editors and reporters on the
best newspapers, whose decisions were systematically embraced and echoed by
other editors and writers, as well as by the producers of television news. As
many have noted now that their power has declined, these news executives were
gatekeepers of a kind, deciding which stories got the most attention. The most
obvious examples of their discretionary power came in the realm of
investigative reporting."_

Should I really bemoan the loss of a system in which a handful of individuals
picked the news which was deemed worthy of publication or air-time?

~~~
hackuser
> Should I really bemoan the loss of a system in which a handful of
> individuals picked the news which was deemed worthy of publication or air-
> time?

What is a better alternative? I'm not sure I know an answer. Crowd-sourcing
editorial decisions doesn't seem useful. The crowd lacks expertise to judge
what is important, at least in many fields. Also, they (well, we) censor what
is unpopular or uncomfortable. Also, outside algorithmic aggregators like
Google News, editors still make the decisions.

Consider tech news. Would the general public do a good job of which tech
stories are significant? (Hacker News readers are a specialized subset, and
still I don't agree with most editorial decisions.) It's the same in
economics, domestic policy, foreign policy, etc.

------
dmfdmf
This is a long winded version of Clay Shirky's article from 2009 "Newspapers
and Thinking the Unthinkable". Shirky's site is down so here is an alternative
link; [http://edge.org/conversation/newspapers-and-thinking-the-
unt...](http://edge.org/conversation/newspapers-and-thinking-the-unthinkable)

Its always good to remind ourselves that we are in the middle of the greatest
social revolution since the invention of the printing press.

~~~
dalke
"we are in the middle of the greatest social revolution since the invention of
the printing press" sets a very high bar. A Google Books search for the phrase
'greatest social revolution' finds many matches, which includes: the US Civil
War, the US civil rights movement, the birth control pill, the switch from
feudal societies to nation states, the introduction of women to the workforce,
the formation of the USSR, and the English Industrial Revolution.

Which current revolution are you considering which surpasses all of those?

[https://books.google.com/books?id=Vc-0lrtU2ZgC&pg=PA486&lpg=...](https://books.google.com/books?id=Vc-0lrtU2ZgC&pg=PA486&lpg=PA486&dq=%22greatest+social+revolution%22&source=bl&ots=G9kD84WLvT&sig=JXWzocg5RAqa2cevT9JAsTDZR6U&hl=sv&sa=X&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAWoVChMIz4uSwZSUxgIVQR4sCh3hZgAv#v=onepage&q=%22greatest%20social%20revolution%22&f=false)
says that the civil rights movement was the "greatest social revolution our
nation has known since the Civil War."

[https://books.google.com/books?id=SoZMO6lYDNIC&pg=PA209&dq=%...](https://books.google.com/books?id=SoZMO6lYDNIC&pg=PA209&dq=%22greatest+social+revolution%22&hl=sv&sa=X&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAWoVChMIodWappWUxgIVBlksCh3Xgw0v#v=onepage&q=%22greatest%20social%20revolution%22&f=false)
talks about the social revolution from the ancien régime to a new society of
individualism and economic ties.

[https://books.google.com/books?id=wff_AwAAQBAJ&pg=PR6&dq=%22...](https://books.google.com/books?id=wff_AwAAQBAJ&pg=PR6&dq=%22greatest+social+revolution%22&hl=sv&sa=X&ved=0CE0Q6AEwBmoVChMIodWappWUxgIVBlksCh3Xgw0v#v=onepage&q=%22greatest%20social%20revolution%22&f=false)
writes "I hope the republication of this detailed account of the greatest
social revolution of the modern age will be of service to students who are
interested in the origin, background and early vicissitudes of the Soviet
state ..."

[https://books.google.com/books?id=YT-
WLCYbLqMC&pg=PT70&dq=%2...](https://books.google.com/books?id=YT-
WLCYbLqMC&pg=PT70&dq=%22greatest+social+revolution%22&hl=sv&sa=X&ved=0CB4Q6AEwADgKahUKEwjD0OO_lpTGAhXJlSwKHSxWACo#v=onepage&q=%22greatest%20social%20revolution%22&f=false)
comments "The second entrenched reality, this one testing social
conservatives, is the sexual revolution, perhaps the greatest social
revolution in human history. The invention, and popularization in the
mid-1960s, of the birth control pill ... meant that for the first time in
human history, women could reliably control reproduction without abstinence."

[https://books.google.com/books?id=_6aS8Y4O1MMC&pg=PA220&dq=%...](https://books.google.com/books?id=_6aS8Y4O1MMC&pg=PA220&dq=%22greatest+social+revolution%22&hl=sv&sa=X&ved=0CEsQ6AEwBjgKahUKEwjD0OO_lpTGAhXJlSwKHSxWACo#v=onepage&q=%22greatest%20social%20revolution%22&f=false)
"Perhaps the greatest social revolution in this century in the United States
is the influx of women into the paid labor force."

[https://books.google.com/books?id=gVUKAQAAIAAJ&q=%22greatest...](https://books.google.com/books?id=gVUKAQAAIAAJ&q=%22greatest+social+revolution%22&dq=%22greatest+social+revolution%22&hl=sv&sa=X&ved=0CFoQ6AEwCDgKahUKEwjD0OO_lpTGAhXJlSwKHSxWACo)
writes "The English Industrial Revolution, Edwards points out, "was probably
the greatest social revolution which has occurred on this planet" ; yet there
was almost no violence connected with it."

~~~
dmfdmf
Yes, a very high bar indeed. In the broad sweep of history the printing press
led to a revolution in science, technology and ultimately the Industrial
Revolution. Moreover, as Shirky mentions, it destroyed the monolithic
political and social power of the Catholic Church. In its heyday the Catholic
Church was the sustainer and maintainer of the culture and social order.
Eventually, as the Church's power faded it was the newspapers that served this
role and what the internet has broken and not yet replaced with a new cultural
and social maypole. All we know now is that it won't be the newspapers.

From a different angle, the Industrial Revolution is to body as the Internet
Revolution is to mind. The Industrial Revolution leveraged mechanical power to
replace human and animal power in the production of goods. The Internet
Revolution is leveraging communication to increase the power of the mind in
the production of new ideas and knowledge. This has exciting implications for
the future if you understand role of the mind in human development and our
history.

~~~
dalke
Yes, quoting now from Bacon:

> Printing, gunpowder and the compass: These three have changed the whole face
> and state of things throughout the world; the first in literature, the
> second in warfare, the third in navigation; whence have followed innumerable
> changes, in so much that no empire, no sect, no star seems to have exerted
> greater power and influence in human affairs than these mechanical
> discoveries.

My goal in giving all those quotes was to suggest that the very phrase
"greatest social revolution since the invention of the printing press" is
likely hyperbole.

Also, it wasn't until the 1800s that the newspaper in the modern sense it came
about. Other pieces of technology which have had caused social revolutions
include the telephone, telegraph, radio, television, camera, automobile,
train, airplane, and water and sewage treatment. It's hard for me to really
tell which is the greatest.

"The Internet Revolution is leveraging communication to increase the power of
the mind in the production of new ideas and knowledge"

That comes across like you have left out a chunk of history. The "Internet
Revolution" is a subset of the Digital Revolution. Even then, information
systems started in the late 1800s, such as the vertical filing system (created
by Edwin G. Seibels in 1898) or the Hollerith cards used for the 1890 census.

For that matter, we are still in the Space Age and the Jet Age, and we still
use the Information Superhighway, but those terms sound outdated to people who
use GPS to figure out directions. "Internet Revolution" to me is starting
itself to sound a bit dated.

~~~
dmfdmf
> It's hard for me to really tell which is the greatest.

I think you are getting mired in concretes and missing the forest for the
trees. Moreover, I don't know how old you are but I suspect you are too young
to realize how the world worked prior to the internet. It is true that "it
wasn't until the 1800s that the newspaper in the modern sense it came about"
but this is irrelevant to my point. The modern form of the newspapers was the
endpoint of a long consolidation -- ripples from the invention of the printing
press. Nevertheless the modern form survived for over 100 years.

Once the social role of newspapers was established it was impossible to
supplant them prior to the internet. The New York Times (primarily) really
replaced the Catholic Church as the cultural maypole. Moreover, if you were
even alive in the 60's and 70's you would know that all the major TV networks
took their lead from the NYT, they were followers. Old habit die hard so TV
continues to follow in the internet age (partly because TV is now just
entertainment not a major cultural influence). I think we agree TV was a major
technological creation and certainly changed society but it did not challenge
the newspapers for social power and influence nor change the power structures
of society like the printing press or the internet. Today the NYT is dead as a
cultural institution and something WILL take its place but I don't think
anyone really knows what that will be.

In any event, my point is obvious to me but won't be obvious to everyone until
100 years out which is the nature of a revolution of this scale.

~~~
dalke
And I think you are standing close to a clump of trees labeled "internet" and
mistaking that grove for the entire forest.

FWIW, I'm about as old as ARPANET. I also have a special interest in
information systems of the 1950s and 1960s - the era of the "information
explosion" \- and have been reading many papers and essays from that era.

What you say about the Gray Lady is true, but only a part of history. I'm also
old enough to remember Walter Cronkite's "And that's the way it is" signoff.
You might remember that Johnson is said to have said "If I've lost Cronkite,
I've lost Middle America" after Cronkite's "Report from Vietnam: Who, What,
When, Where, Why?" editorial.

"The New York Times (primarily) really replaced the Catholic Church as the
cultural maypole."

That is nonsense. For one, it's American-centric, as "The Times" of London
(and source for Times New Roman) used to be much more important on the world
stage than the NYT. The NYT both started later than The Times, and derived its
name from the London paper. Remember, it was The Times (of London) which first
reported on Krakatoa, which was the first major natural disaster to appear
after the world-wide telegraph was put into place. Not the NYT. And London was
the world center in telecommunications.

For another, the US was anti-papist long before the NYT started. The Catholic
church was not a 'cultural maypole' in the US. (And how delicious to use the
pagan maypole to describe the Catholic church! But do you mean 'touchstone'?)
We were still wary about Catholicism in 1960, which is why Kennedy declared "I
am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic Party's
candidate for President who also happens to be a Catholic. I do not speak for
my Church on public matters – and the Church does not speak for me."

Early American anti-papist leanings come from its British cultural heritage.
Great Britain was institutionally anti-Catholic since the Act of Supremacy of
1534 and restrictions against Roman Catholics were still in place until full
Catholic Emancipation in 1829.

It's easy to prove me wrong. The NYT started in 1851. Can you demonstrate how
the Catholic church was an important 'cultural maypole' in the US before then?

> I think we agree TV was a major technological creation and certainly changed
> society but it did not challenge the newspapers for social power and
> influence

Yet there are articles like "The Kennedy-Nixon Debates: When TV Changed the
Game" describing the growing social power and influence of televion
[http://time.com/26035/kennedy-nixon-debates-1960-the-tv-
land...](http://time.com/26035/kennedy-nixon-debates-1960-the-tv-landmark-
that-changed-the-game/) . And the modern day Hearst is Rupert Murdoch, who
started in newspapers (and bought 'The Times' and 'The Wall Street Journal')
and also several TV networks, including Fox News, which he uses to help
influence US policy.

It's hard to argue that Fox News does not have significant social power in the
US.

And the major cultural development, from sports to political debates to "Game
of Thrones" to satirical news sources likes "The Daily Show", are still
structured as TV shows, even when they are 'broadcast' over the internet.

~~~
dmfdmf
> It's easy to prove me wrong. The NYT started in 1851. Can you demonstrate
> how the Catholic church was an important 'cultural maypole' in the US before
> then?

Again you need to widen your context to the whole history of Western
Civilization. My point compares the Catholic Church prior to the printing
press (1400's) and the NYT prior to the invention of the internet (1900's) --
this was Shirky's point too.

~~~
dalke
This has nothing to do with Shirky's essay. You said "The New York Times
(primarily) really replaced the Catholic Church as the cultural maypole."

Please demonstrate the validity of that statement.

In the "whole history of Western Civilization", when did the NYT become "the
cultural maypole" of Italy, Mexico, and Brazil, and have more cultural
influence than the Catholic Church?

How is it that The Times of London did not have similar sway on the world
stage in the 1800s, nor the the BBC (especially with the BBC World Service) in
the 1900s?

Why do you pick "Western World" when the Catholic church also has a big
influence in Africa (140 million members) and the Philippines (80 million).
Which has more social influence in the Philippines, the NYT or the Catholic
Church? Which has more social influence in India, the NYT or the BBC?

------
SandersAK
It's important to distinguish the business model of publishing journalism from
actual journalism.

The News Industry is dying. But the creation and effective dissemination of
important information is thriving.

------
kansface
I feel like much of what was lost wasn't very valuable. How many reporters do
we actually need sitting in the room with the Press Secretary? If reporters
just report the news and only the news, how many do we need to send to each
natural disaster to get the story? If readers can (and will) read only the
best report or the one that most closely aligns with their political beliefs,
why bother rewriting the same story one hundred times over (every major
paper)?

At any rate, there will always be journalism even if it is wildly unprofitable
for the same reason there will always be musicians. Long form journalism is
often advanced as the biggest loss - I don't see the equivalent of t shirt
sales or patronage keeping it around but I haven't seen any numbers either.
Anyone know how it is actually doing?

------
InclinedPlane
Seems like the same old story in new clothing: the internet and craigslist
destroyed the jobs of those poor little old honest, hardworking newspapermen.

This is a very sexy narrative, especially for newspapermen, but I think it's a
false one. The problem hasn't been ad dollars, the problem was that newspapers
survived largely because they were a _medium_ and because they had a sort of
monopoly on a communication channel that people had come to rely on.

The reality is that newspapers had not been doing a particularly good job for
a very long time. The conceit is that the office at a newspaper is a buzz of
journalistic activity. The reality is that it was mostly drudge work, just
going through the motions to ensure that classified ads, lazy PR puff pieces,
marmaduke cartoons, and regurgitated wire reports got churned out day to day.
The kernels of quality, original reporting, investigative journalism, have
typically been very tiny even at the best newspapers of the 20th century
through today, and completely absent at many others. It's foolish to believe
that people didn't notice, that the public doesn't care because they are just
a bunch of uninterested, unsophisticated louts. The news media spent decades
methodically transforming themselves into a useless, valueless tabloid media
caricature of themselves.

It's shocking that some of the best journalism in traditional media being done
today is being done by comedians. But the narrative that newspapers are dying
due to no fault of their own remains firmly entrenched, and for that reason I
don't expect them to be able to claw themselves back from the abyss they've
found themselves in.

------
seizethecheese
Newspapers have never been an unbiased source of information as a public good.
My dad was a newspaper journalist and tells a story of almost getting fired
for a minor factual error in a story about a major advertiser. Newspapers have
always been businesses primarily.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Bias isn't necessarily a bad thing in reporting, in many ways it's good to
have an agenda (examples: anti-corruption, pro-world peace, pro liberty, etc.)
It's when the agenda overrides the facts or when the agenda is covert rather
than overt that things get messy.

------
chris_va
We spent a fair bit of time researching this trend at Google News (former TL),
and talking to the industry. I cannot speak for the company anymore, but the
major finding was:

"The newspaper industry was not in the business of delivering the news, it was
the the business of delivering ads."

News was their product, but they made their money by delivering ads to
everyone's doorstep on a daily basis. The subscription rates they charged
consumers were insufficient to cover their costs (by a large margin). The rest
of the revenue was made up in classified ads, job listings, consumer ads, etc.
None of those markets were particularly efficient, and as a result the
industry was highly exposed to any changes in those markets.

Enter the internet, and:

1) Craigslist probably dropped the industry revenue about $20B/year.

2) Monster.com and competitors took another $10B/year or so.

3) Google, Yahoo, DoubleClick, etc took another bite. Though less so,
ironically, because newspapers are still considered a great vector for brand
advertising, and that sort of advertising is still difficult to quantify
online.

4) Equal access to worldwide publication means that you (the consumer) are no
longer fully reliant on your local paper. You can read the best article from
the best source. This has multiple consequences, good and bad for publishers.
The good (well, for cost reasons, not quality reasons) is that publications
can skip covering events that will be better covered by a syndication partner
(like AP), or just re-hash content from the local sources. The bad news is
that the local market no longer has to buy your paper, and can now find a
better source online.

The industry also continues to make a lot of strange choices, which don't
help. For example, they make more with an extra 20% distribution on ads
(publication dependent) than they do from the entirety of their subscription
revenue. Given the demand elasticity for news content, one would then expect
publications to drop subscription fees entirely. That they don't is somewhat
mind boggling, but the explanation I received was that "distribution"
(printing, shipping, etc) has its own P&L (for historical reasons). The other
angle might be "exclusivity" (you value something you pay $6 more than
something you get for free), but I am not enough of a brand expert to judge
this argument.

The industry also tries to latch onto online subscriptions and micro-payments,
which is maybe the stupidest thing I have seen them do from an economics
standpoint. The numbers just don't add up (the number of people willing to pay
versus the opportunity cost from lost ad revenue). Even if every person on the
internet paid into a newspaper subscription fund, we are still back to _the
industry was never in the business of selling news_.

~~~
misuba
> News was their product, but they made their money by delivering ads to
> everyone's doorstep on a daily basis.

How does Google make money?

------
jqm
Given that national news seems little more than tired and ridiculous
propaganda (for the last decade and a half at least) whatever happens to the
outlets is of little concern to me.

------
javadrone
i wonder if this is why the news media is so hostile to the tech industry and
tech workers lately...

