Here's A VERY Nice Article On How Newspapers Got Pwned By The Intertubez....

[BlooInBloo]

Kudos to the author.

http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking-the-unthinkable/

Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable

Back in 1993, the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain began investigating piracy of Dave Barry’s popular column, which was published by the Miami Herald and syndicated widely. In the course of tracking down the sources of unlicensed distribution, they found many things, including the copying of his column to alt.fan.dave_barry on usenet; a 2000-person strong mailing list also reading pirated versions; and a teenager in the Midwest who was doing some of the copying himself, because he loved Barry’s work so much he wanted everybody to be able to read it.

One of the people I was hanging around with online back then was Gordy Thompson, who managed internet services at the New York Times. I remember Thompson saying something to the effect of “When a 14 year old kid can blow up your business in his spare time, not because he hates you but because he loves you, then you got a problem.” I think about that conversation a lot these days.

The problem newspapers face isn’t that they didn’t see the internet coming. They not only saw it miles off, they figured out early on that they needed a plan to deal with it, and during the early 90s they came up with not just one plan but several. One was to partner with companies like America Online, a fast-growing subscription service that was less chaotic than the open internet. Another plan was to educate the public about the behaviors required of them by copyright law. New payment models such as micropayments were proposed. Alternatively, they could pursue the profit margins enjoyed by radio and TV, if they became purely ad-supported. Still another plan was to convince tech firms to make their hardware and software less capable of sharing, or to partner with the businesses running data networks to achieve the same goal. Then there was the nuclear option: sue copyright infringers directly, making an example of them.

As these ideas were articulated, there was intense debate about the merits of various scenarios. Would DRM or walled gardens work better? Shouldn’t we try a carrot-and-stick approach, with education and prosecution? And so on. In all this conversation, there was one scenario that was widely regarded as unthinkable, a scenario that didn’t get much discussion in the nation’s newsrooms, for the obvious reason.

The unthinkable scenario unfolded something like this: The ability to share content wouldn’t shrink, it would grow. Walled gardens would prove unpopular. Digital advertising would reduce inefficiencies, and therefore profits. Dislike of micropayments would prevent widespread use. People would resist being educated to act against their own desires. Old habits of advertisers and readers would not transfer online. Even ferocious litigation would be inadequate to constrain massive, sustained law-breaking. (Prohibition redux.) Hardware and software vendors would not regard copyright holders as allies, nor would they regard customers as enemies. DRM’s requirement that the attacker be allowed to decode the content would be an insuperable flaw. And, per Thompson, suing people who love something so much they want to share it would piss them off.
...

EDIT: Oh, and it is my duty whenever this topic is broached, to close with FUCK LARS.

[w4rma]

1. "What we need is journalism."

…
Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism. For a century, the imperatives to strengthen journalism and to strengthen newspapers have been so tightly wound as to be indistinguishable. That’s been a fine accident to have, but when that accident stops, as it is stopping before our eyes, we’re going to need lots of other ways to strengthen journalism instead.

When we shift our attention from ’save newspapers’ to ’save society’, the imperative changes from ‘preserve the current institutions’ to ‘do whatever works.’ And what works today isn’t the same as what used to work.
…

[BlooInBloo]

2. That article is money graf after money graf - one of the best things I've yet read on the net....

Here's another:

"Print media does much of society’s heavy journalistic lifting, from flooding the zone — covering every angle of a huge story — to the daily grind of attending the City Council meeting, just in case. This coverage creates benefits even for people who aren’t newspaper readers, because the work of print journalists is used by everyone from politicians to District Attorneys to talk radio hosts to bloggers. The newspaper people often note that newspapers benefit society as a whole. This is true, but irrelevant to the problem at hand; “You’re gonna miss us when we’re gone!” has never been much of a business model. So who covers all that news if some significant fraction of the currently employed newspaper people lose their jobs?

I don’t know. Nobody knows. We’re collectively living through 1500, when it’s easier to see what’s broken than what will replace it. The internet turns 40 this fall. Access by the general public is less than half that age. Web use, as a normal part of life for a majority of the developed world, is less than half that age. We just got here. Even the revolutionaries can’t predict what will happen."

[roseBudd]

17. Flooding the zone is exactly what bloggers won't be able to replicate...

The only reason we know that Warren County Ohio barred reporters from watching the vote tabulation in Nov. 2004 is because the Cincinnati Enquirer sent a cub reporter to Warren County, just because they send reporters to every BoE in their media market.

And the only reason we know the additional details is because the Enquirer followed up on the story and used Sunshine Laws and their attorney to force Warren County to release emails and memos.

[aquart]

3. Who is Lars?

[BlooInBloo]

5. Drummer for Metallica, who idiotically stepped in a big steaming pile of this paragraph...

"The unthinkable scenario unfolded something like this: The ability to share content wouldn’t shrink, it would grow. Walled gardens would prove unpopular. Digital advertising would reduce inefficiencies, and therefore profits. Dislike of micropayments would prevent widespread use. People would resist being educated to act against their own desires. Old habits of advertisers and readers would not transfer online. Even ferocious litigation would be inadequate to constrain massive, sustained law-breaking. (Prohibition redux.) Hardware and software vendors would not regard copyright holders as allies, nor would they regard customers as enemies. DRM’s requirement that the attacker be allowed to decode the content would be an insuperable flaw. And, per Thompson, suing people who love something so much they want to share it would piss them off."


Take your pick of links:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22fuck+lars%22&btnG=Search


EDIT: Replaced with link that winnows out some of the irrelevant hits, provided emphasis.

[JackRiddler]

4. Loss of ad revenue is killing them, not free copying...

And the single greatest loss of ad revenue was in classified ads, which no one took away. They've become free and universal. That money is no longer being spent, because people can put their ads on Craig's List and E-bay and dating sites like nerve.com for free or for a small commission.

The only solutions I can think of are socialist. For example, ISPs with charges distributed among news reporters on a per-hit basis. You have something like this in Europe with the GEMA system for music played on the radio. Working out the rules is a huge clusterfuck -- who will count as a news provider worthy of getting a cut? What counts as a hit? It's going to take 20 years or more, if ever.

[BlooInBloo]

6. Sigh.

[nolabels]

18. A bad business model partly what is killing them

Instead of trying to help others sell people what they don't need, helping people get to a better place would serve them much better. They haven't quite got to the point of claiming the world will end tomorrow, but they often get close daily. I would say they are a victims of their own deception as much as anything else. Why would someone habitually want waste part of their day reading something that was slanted, untrue or inconsequential when looking at reality would pay so much more handsomely?

[chimpyisstillsatan]

7. Nobody ever seems to mention

that they tied their own nooses with their "coverage" (perpetuation is more like it) of the relentless hounding of Clinton, their rush to "get over" the jusicial coup in 2000, the jingoistic chest beating after 9/11, and the rush to war in 2002-03.

I personally haven't read a major paper or gotten my news from a major organization since October 2002, when I saw both the WaPo and NPR describe the massive anti-war rally I'd just attended as basically a minor freak show, dismissing it and leading the ay for the war crimes to follow. Speaking of war crimes, they were complicitous in those as well.

Fuck them, they made their bed.

The main question i have now is exactly who is going to cover the local stories? Are we going to see trickle-down, consequence-free corruption run rampant like we have at the Federal level?

[Kalyke]

14. Newspapers did very little of this compared to radio and TV.

Newspapers also covered Bush's crimes more honestly.

But, no one was reading.

[chimpyisstillsatan]

16. Judith Miller chuckled at that one. (nt)

[chimpymustgo]

15. Have to reply to your post - and your name (I couldn't bring myself to change mine during the recent

amnesty period).

As sorry as many newspapers are, we still need journalists and someone to pay them them for what they do. Perhaps new models will emerge from the current chaos.

...and where it lands, nobody knows...

[depakid]

8. A very thoughtful piece- to which I'll pass along some addtional related thoughts by Mark Morford

...let's spin backwards for just a moment, to a time before blogs and Facebook and the Web 2.0 socialgasm. There was this wonderful killer app called email. There was a concomitant killer innovation, called HTML links. As every newspaper hastily rushed its content online, suddenly reporters and columnists and hardcore news jockeys alike began seeing their bylines turned into a sweet, baffling little "mailto" link.

And lo, a revolution was born.

For the first time in more than a century, a fundamental shift occurred in the sacred -- but formerly quite cold and detached -- writer/reader relationship. Suddenly, readers could respond instantly to a newspaper piece, to the journalist in question, and authors could instantly know the effect and accuracy of their words. No more hand-written, snail-mailed Letters to the Editor that might (but probably won't) get published two or three weeks later. The feedback loop was made instant, and enormously compelling. It was lauded as a new era, one that would change the newspaper biz forever.

Or maybe not. Because now, that once-revolutionary connection, all those vibrant reader interactions I once cherished, have changed again. Or more accurately, have devolved dramatically.

Much more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2009/02/13/notes021309.DTL

[BlooInBloo]

9. Poor guy.... Still trying to play by the same old rules.

[depakid]

10. More likely a writer- and newspaper professional in transition

His best stock in trade for the past 8 years has been in Bush, fundy and assorted other screeds- or rants, as the case may be. While there's surely still some "market" in it- times have changed (or more accurately, times are changing). It's a slower process than most of us would like- or can clearly see, but that's how it is with paradigm shifts-, which seemed to me one of the take home messages in the OP.

The bit about using anonymous messages under stories (or commentary) to get clicks, etc., and drive advertising revenue is just one of many gasps "mainstream" papers are making. Of course, some online papers's comments are more salient than others. And within each paper, some stories attract a higher percentage of insightful, reasonably mature- and relevant comments.

For example, stories about various tragedies where people who knew the participants wrote in added a LOT of value to me, as a reader. How much it added to the bottom line of the publisher- not sure.

Another observation is that the sports folks often have better dialogue- and often seem far more intelligent and articulate than the folks who comment on public policy and such.

Shouldn't it be the other way around?

[BlooInBloo]

11. I suspect they are more intelligent-seeming because it's a much easier topic to discuss....

Even someone as stupid as Katie Couric can look like a genius - win awards even - if she gets to interview someone even dumber, to take another example.

[depakid]

12. That's one take

I've noticed that sports types (and this applies across continents) tend to be pretty good observers, often record data- and more than one would expect, can apply statistical and pyschological principles to their observations.

Now granted- they get to hear much more and practice (or perhaps simply get broader opportunites to hear much more and practice). Yet still- it's sometimes impressive.

[BlooInBloo]

13. Yep.

[nichomachus]

19. Self-serving bullshit -- newspapers committed suicide -- don't blame the Internet

I am an old newspaper person. It was my first job out of college -- back when we used black, manual Royal typewriters and I came up through the ranks -- going from electric typewriters to computerized publishing.

And, the Internet didn't kill newspapers. They killed themselves. The Internet just came along and put them out of their misery with a merciful coup de grace.

Two things killed newspapers -- the increased corporate concentration and the resulting failure to cover the local market.

When I was a cub reporter, if you farted in town, it was in the local paper -- probably along with a picture. People needed to get the paper to know what was going on. The reporters knew the town like the back of their hands and the editors knew even more. The newspaper cared about the town because it wanted to serve the community.

Even chain newspapers served the community. Part of a publisher's evaluation -- back in the day -- was how well the community interests were being served.

Then, the newspapers were taken over by MBAs (management by asshole) and the corporate bean counters. Reporters and editors were brought in who had no real ties to the community -- just passing through on their way to bigger and better things. Many of them didn't even live in the communities they covered. Consequently, they lost touch with the community.

I left my hometown newspaper when they brought in a "carpet bagger" for a publisher. He hired editors and reporters who had no ties to the community. They began writing in-depth, four-page pieces on El Salvador -- and not covering the city and the surrounding towns in any appreciable depth.

When I was a reporter there, I knew all the politicians and the cops. I grew up with them or their kids. There was very little going on in that town that I didn't know, that someone didn't call me to tell me, and that I didn't know the history of.

If people wanted news of El Salvador, they could get that from the national news mags and later on the internet. They couldn't get the latest skullduggery in the police department or city hall from either of those two places. When the newspaper stopped carrying it, they couldn't get it anywhere at all -- and there was no longer the need to buy a newspaper.

The corporate influence was fatal. Now, according to friends still in the business, the corporate bosses no longer want to know anything about how the paper serves the community. They have one measure only -- how much money do you make?

As the newspapers committed suicide, another phenomenon came in -- the mallification of America. It used to be that local merchants advertised in the local paper, which was the financial lifeblood of the paper. Now, the downtowns are pretty dead and the only ones advertising are the mall stores, who stuff circulars inside select metro papers. That doesn't quite provide the same revenue and it provides it to fewer papers. The paper at which I spent the most time finally died because of its own failure to serve the community and because the mall -- ironically located within sight of the paper -- chose to spend all its money in our competitor.

The final factor, which is connected to the Internet, was classified advertising. Help wanted, items for sale, and real estate ads provided a lot of revenue. But Monster, Craig's List and the death of the real estate industry has dried up that source of revenue.

All of the above is what killed newspapers. Blaming copyright infringement is just a cover story -- and it's bullshit. The Miami paper isn't in trouble because some kid posted Dave Barry's column online.

[SidDithers]

20. kick...

long but very good read.

Sid