It's Not Your Father's News

The New York Times continues to attack Newser. A few weeks ago it was in a legal letter telling Newser not to use the little Times "T" to identify the Times as an original content source; this morning it's in a piece by its media columnist, David Carr, that says "Google, The Huffington Post, and Newser have built their audiences and brands on other people's labors."

Carr's idea is that, in an effort to save newspapers, owners should get together and have every paper charge for its websites so that, among other effects, aggregators won't be able to reference the efforts of news organizations like the beleaguered Times.

What we have here is a deeply plaintive cry: Stop the world, I want to get off.

As it happens, the problems in the newspaper industry are not principally caused by reader attrition, but by the flight of advertisers. Even before the recession, auto, help-wanted, and real estate advertising, the bedrock of the newspaper business, had been migrating to the web. It's just a technological advance: The web is a better place to unite buyer and seller.

Continue reading at newser.com

Comments

[johnnynyc]

You're absolutely right. The problems of the newspaper industry ARE caused by declining ad revenue.

Maybe you'll admit that giving the product away for free isn't the most successful business model either.

I understand fair use, people commenting on what another news source has developed.

Huffington Post does some of that but it also serves as a news source for people who mistakenly believe they are somehow bypassing the MSM.

It seems to stretch the definition of fair use.

If the Times doesn't charge a subscription fee to its online readers I'd at least like to see a charge to the online news aggregators, like this site, who profit unfairly from other's labor.

[Caleb Howard]

Sorry for the long post in six parts. If it doesn't make it through the approval process, I understand. Also, I don't know why the cut-and-pasting tweaked some of my punctuation, but I apologize for that as well.

-caleb

[Caleb Howard]

part 6

Since the time in my childhood when a random circumstance of my employment put a newspaper in my face for an hour every day, I have never been a regular newspaper reader. Nor will I ever be. It would make no more sense than would defending the use of 8-track magnetic audio recording as an exclusive audio playback mechanism. If, as Mr. Carr suggests, Newspapers fold, and I lose the input of all they employed from my aggregate source, I doubt I would notice simply from the news I read. I follow writers, and I follow stories. There are lots of both. Some come from Newspapers, but most do not. Personally, I get more out of aggregated reports from the raw, and often palpably sincere accounts of three random amateurs on the scene than Mr. Carr ever has provided me.

----

Distilling my intent herein down to one sentence, I would say this: Newspapers, vinyl records, 8-Tracks, Bards, Newsreels, broadcast Television, and radio have been usurped by a collected media which mixes and cross-references it all for reflection and uncontrolled dynamic redistribution. Like the exclusive utilization of Latin in academic publication… The time for these media to survive unto themselves, or even as anything more than a source of material for the collected aggregate “information superhighway” has passed.

The King is dead. Long live the King.

-caleb

Caleb J. Howard

[jcwtts1]

I'm reading these out of order but let me just say that the reporters and writers you follow may or may not be employed by the newspapers you disdain. If that is the case, it would be like never buying an album again in any form, but just illegally downloading the music for free (many people, including myself, have done this) but if no one were to ever purchase a song again there is a disincentive to produce music). You've heard all of this stuff before. But you need to take it seriously. Freelance is different than nolance. We have to protect good reporting or it will vanish along with your 8track

[cjh]

I still have my vinyl, and my cassettes (though my 8-tracks may be lost). I don't suggest that I don't read content from newspapers. In fact I explicitly say that I do. I'm just saying that I don't read them except by their being linked to from aggregating sites like the Huffington Post. If the NYT, or any other source of news wishes to protect itself from such linking, then it's irrelevance will be accelerated.

Also, I'd say people made music before it was possible to profit from it, and I daresay they'll make music after it is no longer possible. I prefer to listen to, and read people who express themselves reasons other than money.

-caleb

[Caleb Howard]

part 5

I had never previously looked at nor heard of Newser.com. I would not have run across Mr. Carr’s article in the NYTimes were it not for a reference made to it in another article on the Huffington Post. As happens, I read HuffPo, to find reference to Mr. Carr’s Newspaper Article in the NY Times, (which I will never, ever buy). This led me to read the Newser.com article on Mr. Carr’s NYT article. In the end, I read Mr. Carr’s original article (which was less insightful than the various articles which led me to read it, I thought). I mostly read it so that I could legitimately write this letter, which I hope has value to NYT, and to Mr. Carr.

In general, I never read any newspaper article that is not referred to from HuffPo, or other aggregate sources. Nontheless, I read several stories sourced from the print each day, and many are from the NYT. Any link that demands that I sign up – even for free – generally find that I will not ever click through. If you don’t want me to read your source to the point that I cannot simply link to it, then so be it. I generally won’t read it.

[Caleb Howard]

part 4

When The Huffington Post was launched, I was there. I have been a reader since its first day, and it has always offered me something that no newspaper could – links to associated stories with divergent spin. I read other sources – some technical, some political, and some inane entertainment. I read stories from the NY times *only* because they are indicated in the Huffington Post. If they were not… Hell, if there was a global EMP that wiped out the web – I would not read the NY Times, nor any particular newspaper. I would not read it, because it isn’t close to reflecting my needs – of an encompassing media linking multiple stories with divergent spins together into a amalgam that lets me choose my own position based on rational consideration, rather than by subscription. HuffPo – like all online media – cannot escape the ease with which divergent spins on the same story may be compared, and more often the writers there will offer up opposing viewpoints directly – encouraging direct comparison of their spin with that of their own ideological counterpoints.

Because, in the end, that is the problem, and the death knell of newspapers – The price of subscribing to the news source is deeper than the cost of the paper – it is the subscription to the ideology of the editorial spin. I spin freely, and resent anyone who seeks to yoke me with their own predispositions.

[Caleb Howard]

part 3

I have become more aware of the world than I was ten years ago. In fact, I’ve become quite avid – rabid some would say. I am more aware – not only of the American, Canadian, British, Israeli, and Arab perspectives, but also of the conspiracy theorists, the fascists, the socialists, and the anarchists. This has been entirely due to the web. Newspapers were always disheartening to read because the spin was palpable, and inescapable. I didn’t have time to read multiple newspapers in a day. I don’t have *any* interest in holding a dead tree in my hands to read my news. So newspapers are quite completely inadequate to the needs on a typical newsreader like myself – who wishes to read according to my own interests and not according to the agenda of a specific writer or newspaper.

[Caleb Howard]

part 2

After my paper route morphed into a job at the local swimming pool, into a job on a farm, into University, and a career with computers, I stopped reading newspapers. My feelings about newspapers growing up were; that I was always bound to get one perspective, but not the story. That’s more or less the impression I still have of single-source media and news. I don’t mind aggregating news from many papers in my morning read, but I will never pick up a single newspaper.

After the destruction of the WTC in NY, I became far more interested in world politics. I didn’t have the detailed historical context that the situation demanded, and so I went looking for it. About all I could be sure of was that the people on the news shows were lying, deflecting, spinning, changing their stories, and very clearly actively engaged in some sort of disinformation. The same was true of newspapers, and virtually all sponsored commercial media. So I started to read up on the history of the middle east – focusing on the last two centuries. What I learned, I learned on the web. No newspaper, nor single source could ever have filled my interest as broadly as the web. In the process, I became more aware of editorial bias than I had ever been in the past. It is editorial bias which is the chief reason why I have no interest in reading newspapers.

[Caleb Howard]

My letter to Mr. Carr, and the editors of the NYT:

part 1

------------------------------

I am writing, first to thank Mr. Carr for the pointer to Newser.com. Secondly, I am writing as a news reader – presumably your target audience, and most important asset (aside from the ads, of course. ;-).

Now, I am a 42 year old man – university educated, with kids and a house, and a job, and a car – I am that dying middle-class I read about so much. I work in a high-technology industry, and so it’s probably no surprise that I use computers as my first source of media entertainment and news. I wasn’t always a news reader. I was when I was a kid, and delivered the Toronto Star in my neighbourhood. That was in the mid-seventies, and I was eleven. I was pretty informed at the time (as informed as an avid reader of one newspaper could hope to be, anyway). To this day I have a detailed understanding of the arrest, trial and death of Sid Vicious, and I was pretty familiar with Toronto politics of the time.

[Roci]

Things change, that's the only sure thing. If you look at the "broadsheet" newspapers of the Civil War, and post Civil War eras, adverts were little tiny half column inch things that were lost on a page. These days your paper weighs two kilos, and you can't strain it for two grams of news. Most newspaper copy comes from the news wires (AP, UPI, AFP) anyhow. These newspapers would rather pay "for someone else's work" to report all but the most local news, while the same Newspapers bulk up by the pound with advertisements, most for National chain stores, rather than local shops. These days, there is NOTHING in the Newspapers including births, obits, weddings,classifieds,community events, and the local police blotter, that cannot be done just as well by the local "penny press" papers. So tell me again why in heavens name subscribers or advertisers should pay premium rates to reach people who don't need/want/trust big papers anymore, when everyone can get their on the kids computer to find out for them what's on sale this week at the local temple of consumerism?
Big papers have made themselves irrelevant to the local people who propped them up for two generations, and it is their own fault. And the super rich who own them are whining like spoiled brats.
Let them cry. Save the hard working staff and reporters from the bad management who brought them to this end.

[InnocentBystander]

I see both sides of this. On one hand, there is a legitimate financial stake to those organizations that actual pay people to gather and report the news. OTOH, the internet is where people are going more and more to get informed. Newspapers are constrained by paper, time, limited budgets, and their publishing model. Perhaps the future lies in between....organizations like AP, Rueters, NYT, WaPo push their product through aggregators like HuffPo and the consumer subscribes to their favorite website(s) in a pay-to-read model. I don't think the current model is sustainable without $ to make it work.

[GrainOSand]

In a network a router is not a sexy application server or a database server. It does ot generate the content but it insures the content reaches its intended/desired destination. Remove the router and content servers can produce all the content in the world and not have it reach their target audience. The shoe leather, news stand network is becoming obsolete. The newsstand was the old router. The Huffing Post and sites like it are routing the relevant information of the day. In the Huffington Post's case it is also serving as a content server in that it produces its own stories. News is only as relevant as the interest level of the audience and/or their “reachability”. Data is showing that the old model is not working for hardcopy journalism. It is time to change, but the way to change is not to try to disparage others who beat you to the punch concerning becoming the new distribution mechanism for news content. Join the party, do not try to control the party. You can dance, but do not put that lampshade of hubris on and think that because you dominated the old network you can continue to dominate. The ground has changed under the feet of many. The world is changing around us in how we interact with it and also how it interacts with us in terms of how we interact with it (climate change).

This is an important story. It highlights the flight of the dinosaur.

[AnnfromCA]

In a recent piece, a group of journalists from San Diego were featured, and I personally think they are the true future. They aren't intested in blogging. They are bona fide journalists, going out into the community to do the job. HOWEVER, they are a niche market. There is no print costs. It's all on-line.

AND, they are thriving without charging.

Recently, they added journalists to staff, and they were surprised by the quality of the resumes as people are bailing out of traditional print.

That's the future.

Blogs will end up being nothing more than a collection of unsubstantiated stories and editorials nobody believes.

Because the traditional sources will have died.