

Andreessen’s Advice To Old Media: "Burn The Boats" - hn
http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/06/andreessen-media-burn-boats/

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hexis
Is there an example of any news organization like the New York Times that is
purely web based? I don't mean in terms of size, or even prestige, but just in
terms of content. Does there exist a self-sufficient, general interest, maybe
high-end, news organization that is not a part of the old media? There seem to
be lots of profitable and high quality niche news sites on the web (obviously
a huge niche on the web is tech/gadget news), but I'm coming up blank for
anything like a general interest news organization.

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pronoiac
The Christian Science Monitor (a really informative paper, not evangelical,
despite the name) shifted online in 2009, ceasing print for the daily issues,
at least.

Salon & Slate come to mind.

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hexis
The CSM is a really interesting case, as they did seem to transition from old
media to new. But, after looking around their site for a minute, I noticed
this subscriptions section that offers a weekly print edition. I wonder how
much they make off of that - <http://www.csmonitor.com/About/Subscriptions>

Relatedly, Politico, a US politics site, makes a lot of money from its print
edition -
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politico#Distribution_and_conte...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politico#Distribution_and_content)

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bjelkeman-again
In the commentary there is a lot of talk back and forth about whether old
media understands tech or whether tech people understand media and journalism.
I think this misses the point.

I subscribe to The Economist and New Scientist, as reading them online just
isn't very user friendly. With the Economist and New Scientist I get full
access to the archive and the online edition when I subscribe, but I don't
want only the online edition, it is a hard reading experience compared to the
magazine. Will the iPad change that? Time will tell.

I have recently dropped my newspaper subscription, which I actually miss.
Their website is good, but not at all a replacement for the paper edition. The
content is structured differently and more importantly, hard to browse
quickly. Wherea the newspaper is very good to allow me to quickly get an
overview of what is going on. But I dropped it as an experiment because I
don't read it enough and I get a ton of paper to recycle.

I am looking forward to news delivered to me electronically in a way I will
consume as willingly as printed news. The web as it looks today is not it.

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anthropocentric
Out of curiosity: how old are you?

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samdk
For what it's worth, I have a pretty similar opinion, and I'm 19.

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bjelkeman-again
Well I am more than twice that. So yeah, an old fogy. :)

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dsplittgerber
Sometimes, I do get angry with myself for reading stuff like this, despite
suspecting beforehand that there is no newsworthy reporting whatsoever in
pieces like these. Andreessen said nearly exactly the same a full year ago -
<http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10093>.

