Creative professional based in Arlington, MA. Specializing in web design for political campaigns, nonprofits, and small business.
More About Me
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
Goodbye Hulu Plus. Even when Netflix was irritating me, you were always the bigger disappointment.
What fascinated me about this week’s events in the Middle East, Egypt particularly: that Al Jazeera lapped the field on actual down and dirty reporting. Cameras on the scene, field reports, live updates on events on the ground AS THEY HAPPEN. It’s something that seemed absolutely refreshing in these days of corporate-owned American media, slick graphics, talking heads, and ‘War Rooms’ that put opinion before reporting. I don’t watch enough Al Jazeera on ‘normal’ days to make a more general judgment, but I’m wildly impressed that when there was action on the ground, the network ceded all of their time to the reporters in the field.
Cardin's Bill Ignores the Real Debate
OK, let me preface this by saying I appreciate where Cardin is coming from. His goal is to preserve the segment of the newspaper industry focused on providing information and coverage to the average citizen, ie, the local and regional papers. He states pretty clearly that this isn’t designed to provide aid to the conglomerates and national chains, though I wonder how they would differentiate.
Ignoring the obvious questions about local newspapers that are overtly political being granted 501(c)(3) status (and local newspapers are certainly NOT immune to partisanship, in some cases outFoxing Fox News), I just have to ask the obvious question: why are newspapers so important?
For a little background, I’m not exactly asking this question out of the blue. I worked for a regional newspaper in college, considered making a career out of journalism afterwards, and worked on the other side of the table in corporate communications for a global financial firm. I’m not discounting the very real contributions that under-appreciated journalists do on a daily basis; in fact, I’ve been railing for years about the hidden purges of copy editors and other back-room staff at profit-conscious newspapers. An average article in a NATIONAL paper contains a half-dozen errors that a decent copy editor would catch, yet they’ve been shuttled into early retirement or worse by publishers conscious of the low reading comprehension of the average customer. Newspapers should be improving our grammar, vocabulary, and usage, not dumbing it down - but again, that’s another debate.
No, what I’m asking here is something much simpler: why are we focusing on the distribution network (printed paper deliveries/newstand) rather than the content creators? The best-case scenario for the papers in any of these proposals is propping them up for another few years before they’re completely overtaken by digital delivery. Isn’t it time to let demand dictate the survival of the delivery network?
This would allow us to focus more energy and attention on the truly invaluable resource here, the journalists. Marginalized, under-appreciated, and forgotten, these are the men and women doing the actual work that is so valuable and necessary. Every year their numbers dwindle and the quality of the new blood diminishes as intelligent candidates take stock of a dying industry and go elsewhere. Shouldn’t we be more worried about the overall health and quality of this eternal resource than a dying business model?
Newspapers will eventually be as dead as the telegraph or the town crier. I just hope that there is still some shared journalistic knowledge to pass down by the time they are completely gone.
There is a lot big media can learn from the software industry
I try not to write about why big media is broken or needs to be fixed. It’s complicated and there is huge money at stake.
But I’ve been part of a number of so many conferences, dinners and meetings on the subject lately. I just can’t keep still (read quiet). And I hear that “analog dollars vs digital pennies” thing one more time….
First a few things.
1. I don’t think big media is stupid. There are amazing businesses built from big media and I love their content.
2. I don’t believe that all big media has the same shortcomings and risk (sig difference between newspaper woes and that facing cable networks and msos)
3. i believe that content owners should be paid.
Okay, with that out of the way, let me share some thoughts.
I believe that big media could learn a lot from the software industry.
The software industry has changed tremendously over the years. It’s clear to me that the old traditional software approach (expensive, finsihed goods, big licenses, piracy risk) is long for this world. MSFT knows this and they are trying to reinvent themselves (I give them credit for that).
The busines model for great software has changed. It’s about open source (mysql), it’s about open api (twitter), it’s about professional services (red hat), it’s about advertising (google), it’s about subscription services/asp (amazon s3/ec2) and it’s about bottom up (salesforce.com).
Why did this happen? I could write a long blog post on that but there were market pressures combined with innovation. And the old model simply wasn’t going to scale.
The best part about these new models is they created bigger and new value for end users, developers and creators. New entpreneurs could build new things. New businesses could bulid new things. People & companies are making a living with these new models and it’s working.
Consider the iphone app store. if they kept it closed they would have sold less iphones and less developers would be making money.
I’m sure MSFT would’ve liked to remain in the old world forever but wishing for it just doesn’t make it so.
Big media needs to learn from this. Instead of fearing the internet they need to think about a world where every home has 100Mbps up and downstream. And my mobile device will have it too since it has wifi. And cellular will give me 10mbps downstream at some point in the near future as well.
And that is a good thing. More distribution and faster pipes is a gift.
Big media needs to take that and run. Create new forms of content, new packing, new distribution, new business models. Just like the software folks did.
Don’t hide. Time to put stakes in the ground and build the future.
—
ps: there is a lot the tech community can learn from big media. I’ll cover that in a future post.
Excellent points, and one more thing I would add. These big media companies are falling into the same trap that the music industry has: they can’t decide whether they want to be content producers or content distributors. NBC and Fox are trying to limit the innovation at Hulu, which has proven to be a legitimate distribution network for their content, because it overlaps with their own distribution network. If they could just concentrate on creating great content and being platform-agnostic, they would eventually find a way to make plenty of money through new channels…but they can’t, because their conglomerate business model is so dependent on the legacy distribution network, just like the record companies.
Twenty years from now, there will still be content producers and there will still be consumers. They are eternal and necessary. Distribution networks and middlemen are not, and will continually be replaced with better systems through the gradual process of evolution and the violent upheaval of revolution.
ok, one last inspiration post before I make some popcorn and watch a bad movie on a very quiet friday night. My German skills are failing me, and the text is really small, but if memory serves this is Death saying that he can’t take any more (after the trench warfare in Belgium has caused such stupefying levels of carnage).
Old Mole magazine (via doddcenter.uconn.edu)
I’m designing and coding an underground press-inspired site for a friend (thus, the Simplicissimus reference just now), and I’ve been digging up some info on the Old Mole. As far as I can tell, this publication was a member of the Underground Press Syndicate that was formed by recent Harvard grads and based in Cambridge, MA. Interesting stuff, so far.
