Ununderstanding the link economy
David Ardia reports on the fundamental misunderstanding of the link economy of media at the Carnegie-Knight Conference on the Future of Journalism. I got the quote from Jay Rosen’s tweet; he and I aren’t there (why? not sure; could be because our journalism schools aren’t part of the club or it could be because we’re not). Ardia blogs at the Citizen Media Law Project complaining about the one-way panel structure of such conferences:
For example, one attendee asked this morning’s panel on Working Journalists and the Changing News Environment whether news organizations should start charging a penny or two to everyone who links to newspaper content. Aside from the complete lack of any legal justification for such a licensing scheme (see the CMLP legal guide’s discussion of linking), the idea is preposterous and ignores the essential structure of the link architecture of the web. This should have sparked vigorous discussion of how the Internet has fundamentally changed the creation and distribution of news, but it didn’t.
I’d like to know who said it and who didn’t argue so we can spark that conversation. This is vital — vital — to the future of journalism. But I don’t find any evidence of streaming, live-blogging, or other blogging from the event. Too bad.
Tags: journalism, links, newarchitecture, newbiznews, wwgd
June 21st, 2008 at 12:13 pm
I’ve live tweeted the event: http://www.twitter.com/jenleereeves. Visit my blog for a review of yesterday.
June 21st, 2008 at 2:00 pm
yawn…sure Old Media. a penny per link. tell me how that works out for you.
last one out, don’t forget to turn out the lights…
June 23rd, 2008 at 3:26 pm
Jeff,
I’ve posted my comments at the conference. I welcome the thoughts of you and your readers, and I hope my fellow panelists will also post.
rt
July 2nd, 2008 at 12:47 pm
[...] De hecho, pensado con detenimiento, una locura que atenta contra la idea que defendíamos en el párrafo anterior, el enlace a modo de conversación como única manera de acercarse al contenido de calidad, y que de hecho ataca la arquitectura sobre la que se construye la Web. Supone no comprender la verdadera economía de los enlaces. [...]
July 30th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
[...] I have been doing Web work since the the 90s, but blogging has taught me so much about the link economy of the Web. More journalists need to understand that [...]