

Why NPR.org Scrapped The Fees And Made Transcripts Free - mhb
http://www.npr.org/blogs/inside/2009/08/why_nprorg_scrapped_the_fees_a.html

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lsb
In Joel Spolsky's talk about StackOverflow, he says that one of the 9 key
points is that Google is your UI. It sounds that NPR traded a few people
paying for transcripts to get many more people discovering npr.org.

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windsurfer
Okay, so lets say Google is your UI. What are you supposed to do about that?
Does it matter at all? Everyone elses UI is also Google, if that's the case.
So by using Google, you're actually doing yourself a disservice by going with
the flow and not innovating.

Wouldn't it be awesome if StackOverflow did something better than a google
search? Like, say, given a set of programming languages or similar projects,
you could get a list of most commonly hit problems for you to avoid in the
future. Or they could give you a sort of 20 questions of "did you try this"
for certain difficult problems. Or anything else other than search. _That's_
innovating.

Accepting your UI to be "Google" is giving up and letting your competitors
pass you.

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dantheman
I think you're missing the point; it's not that you should innovate, it's that
the majority of your users will be using google and then find your site. You
can innovate all you want but if no one knows about it or uses it then it
doesn't really matter.

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flatline
A sudden outbreak of common sense, in contrast to the current discussions
among the major media conglomerates of how to monetize their online content.
Not the same thing but the attitudes of NPR vs. Murdoch in particular couldn't
be more different.

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pasbesoin
(U.S.) Public radio's model has always been "open" and "opt-in" (aside from
the tax dollars -- which, by way of comment, I do not personally begrudge).
This seems a better alignment with their overall model.

Regarding that, social cooperation seems to have been under/de-valued as a
organizational model, in recent times. Maybe it's making a comeback.

Locally, public radio stations have significantly reduced the length and
intrusiveness of their fund raising drives, by communicating to their audience
that they are trying to achieve precisely this. It seems to be working, so
far. I don't know how the contributions break down, e.g. more from pre-
existing donors versus new donors.

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drhowarddrfine
NPR is a first class operation and one which I love to listen to all day long.

