Yet the technology for aggregation and distribution is a commodity -- content is not a commodity.
That is a ridiculous statement. A commodity (in this context) is something that can be purchased from any vendor with very little preference from buyers. Price becomes the only differentiators.
The core has always been printing, not content creation. Actually, what is killing newspapers is that most of what they do/did was either a monopolised commodity tied up with printing or simply no longer necessary. What previously made a newspaper a newspaper?
Classifieds/Notifications They were the only ones that had the ability to make new information available. They competed with each other locally for a piece of this goldmine. Monopoly gone and now unnecessary.
News Aggregation - Come on. How much of what papers print is printing & delivering what other papers/wires/independent journalists wrote. Well, we don't need them for that anymore.
"Analysis" - As far as commenting & analysing all that aggregated info, well they can still do that. But you need to compete with professors, grandmas, retired politicians & anyone else with access to Wordpress, an endless sea of them. You need to be very good & papers certainly don't have a monopoly on quality.
distribution & printing - No longer necessary.
What do they do that isn't like that (no longer necessary part of a monopoly)? Their representatives like to point to investigative journalism (first hand research & fact finding) & community binding (everyone reads the same paper). The latter we can do without, the former is a commodity, of sorts. Actually, not always, but doesn't justify the whole shebang - sorry.
Bottom line is that 1. online ads aren't worth as much, 2. classifieds no longer belong to them, 3. we don't need them to print paper & deliver it to us & 4. they have competition for content creation. Tough bananas.
Google's brand is not a commodity. Google's technology for "technology for aggregation and distribution" is not a commodity.
"Once the content creators and owners realize that simple fact, then we might have a turnaround in the media sector." - yea, Google is empowering more content creators to realize revenue, through adsense, than any newspaper ever did or could.
One thing that's pretty clear at this point in time is that "net worth" is a pretty elastic value. Google stock is under the same pressure (as a "media property") that newspaper stocks are under. Ok, maybe not the same, but as they look more like a media company, they increasingly face the same pressures.
In a time like this, what newspaper are doing is basically nothing. The World Association of Newspapers -- trade org of more than 18,000 newspapers worldwide -- recently talked about their dismay with Google and Yahoo controlling 90% of the online ad market. That's not even the problem.
The problem has been Google's ability to scan and index newspaper archive/content and making money by running ads against that. Eventually they'll wake up and realize what's going on and sue the bajeezus out of Google.
Do you think a lawsuit will be the endgame? How will they explain away 10 years of willing participation?
I completely agree with this article. Newspapers just got outsmarted. They thought their readers cared about the stories when most of them just wanted the headlines. Google serves up headlines that it steals from people who make them at great cost.
That is a ridiculous statement. A commodity (in this context) is something that can be purchased from any vendor with very little preference from buyers. Price becomes the only differentiators.
The core has always been printing, not content creation. Actually, what is killing newspapers is that most of what they do/did was either a monopolised commodity tied up with printing or simply no longer necessary. What previously made a newspaper a newspaper?
Classifieds/Notifications They were the only ones that had the ability to make new information available. They competed with each other locally for a piece of this goldmine. Monopoly gone and now unnecessary.
News Aggregation - Come on. How much of what papers print is printing & delivering what other papers/wires/independent journalists wrote. Well, we don't need them for that anymore.
"Analysis" - As far as commenting & analysing all that aggregated info, well they can still do that. But you need to compete with professors, grandmas, retired politicians & anyone else with access to Wordpress, an endless sea of them. You need to be very good & papers certainly don't have a monopoly on quality.
distribution & printing - No longer necessary.
What do they do that isn't like that (no longer necessary part of a monopoly)? Their representatives like to point to investigative journalism (first hand research & fact finding) & community binding (everyone reads the same paper). The latter we can do without, the former is a commodity, of sorts. Actually, not always, but doesn't justify the whole shebang - sorry.
Bottom line is that 1. online ads aren't worth as much, 2. classifieds no longer belong to them, 3. we don't need them to print paper & deliver it to us & 4. they have competition for content creation. Tough bananas.