Comments on: News’ Forbidden City

By: Alan Mairson

Alan Mairson — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 00:30:14 +0000

All good points, CM. I’d only add that National Geographic Magazine is different from most other media outlets because (a) most of its revenue still comes from members, not advertisers, and (b) it doesn’t typically rely on high-level access for its stories (most of them anyway). … Re: the food issue & Monsanto – I need to go back & find that one. Sounds pretty awful.

By: Andy Freeman

Andy Freeman — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 00:59:13 +0000

No need to apologise. Many of the “professional journalists” who post here make the same mistake. They want things to stay the way that they never were and are incensed when Jarvis points out that they’re going to fail.

By: Y murieron de irrelevancia… : Blogografia

Y murieron de irrelevancia… : Blogografia — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 17:41:04 +0000

[...] embargo, hay algo más preocupante. Desde hace algún tiempo están clamando contra los enlaces como la causa de todos los males. Resulta que si los medios tradicionales tienen problemas económicos, si sus ingresos de [...]

By: Does your information want to be free, too?

Does your information want to be free, too? — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 21:01:51 +0000

[...] Jarvis – serious new media thinker and author of “What Would Google Do?” – labels these media titans “fools.” Jarvis promotes the notion of “the link economy” and the value search engines create by [...]

By: James H

James H — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 19:58:51 +0000

*Shrug* perhaps I have read too much into certain comments/posts then. If so, apologies.

Have the media considered collecting via large men in hand-tailored suits? I understand that can be an effective method …

In all seriousness, I would really like a central service where I could subscribe to a basket of media for $15, $20, or what have you per month.

By: Andy Freeman

Andy Freeman — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 16:52:24 +0000

> Maybe it’s heresy here, but I think I could live with media outlets charging fees to users, particularly for content that is valuable in some way.

If you think that’s heresy on buzzmachine, you’re not paying attention.

Pretty much every everyone on buzzmachine believes that content providers should charge for content in whatever way they like and should charge as much as they can.

However, some/many of us point out that charging isn’t the same as collecting. Readers have a choice too. As a result, certain ways of charging won’t work for certain content providers. Also, certain content providers won’t be able to get more than certain amounts.

I’ll put words in Jarvis’ mouth. He wants journalists to make as much money as possible. That’s why he tells them what’s possible, so they don’t waste their time going after the impossible.

I think that Jarvis loves journalism. I’m pretty sure that the rest of the world doesn’t. Failure to take that into account has consequences.

By: James H

James H — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:26:21 +0000

Maybe it’s heresy here, but I think I could live with media outlets charging fees to users, particularly for content that is valuable in some way. Depends on how and how much they charge, of course. I am of the opinion that if a content creator is providing a useful service, that creator should be paid a professional’s wage. I’m not convinced, however, that online ads would necessarily cover that wage.

By: Vin Crosbie

Vin Crosbie — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 13:11:10 +0000

Jim, I don’t remember saying exactly that, which accidentally conflates two things I have said.

Some time ago I said that for any micropayment system to succeed, it would have to work through the ISPs rather than forcing people themselves to signup and pay each Web site. I’m adamantly against site paywalls because the economics of New Media indicate that such paywalls will clearly fail to produce revenues and will curtail the sites’ usage.

What I’ve stated as being too late is it’s too late for US and UK newspapers to wake up, realize, and fix these problems. They should have done so ten years ago.

By: Jim Meiers

Jim Meiers — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 07:50:52 +0000

Huffpost is in heavy use of AP and other newswires material! How will Huffpost earn enough money to create own content?
The best idea from Vin Crosbie is that internet provider have to pay for the content, but it` s too late!

By: cm

cm — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 20:35:20 +0000

I don’t think that its only foreign powers that limit USA journalists. Internal powers do too. It is only corporate globalisation that extends these influences across continents.

Don’t play ball with your advertisers and they stop advertising.

Don’t play ball with the Whie house/Pentagon/… and they don’t return your calls or delay responses so that you miss your deadlines.

Don’t play ball with military commanders in Iraq and they embed your reporters with the guys cleaning trucks in the transport park instead of frontline forces in the trenches.

But worst, it appears that corporatized media is feeding on itself. Many organisations that have taken decades to build credibility are now cashing up.

I share a disgust with National Geographic. I subscribed for over 20 years but have now stopped because they’ve stopped being a useful source. Witness a recent issue with alarmism about food running out, with a full page ad for Monsanto. The result reads like an infomercial. [The truth on food is that we've never had more food. WHO tells us there are more obese kids in the world than starving kids. We certainly don't need more food.]

Perhaps cashing up and selling out is the right approach. Print media is against the ropes and going out with your head held high might be the honourable thing to do, but cashing up at least gives you money.

By: John Evans

John Evans — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 14:56:56 +0000

If you spot obvious bias in an AP story, is it plagiarism to say what they said was wrong (or technically correct but aiming to push an agenda) and detail why?

Huffington Post will thrive when newspapers die.

By: Arash Robinson

Arash Robinson — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 14:41:50 +0000

Perhaps Google should charge News Corp. every time one of their employees googles something while researching an article. Crazy.

By: AP’s Tom Curley on the “oversupply” of news and what he’s doing about it » Nieman Journalism Lab

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 12:40:27 +0000

[...] all the criticism of Curley and the AP, he had few really smart observations about the economics of news. Regarding [...]

By: MM4J

MM4J — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 00:51:40 +0000

[...] a good topic, I brought it up in my online class just today, and I notice Jeff Jarvis responded with similar head shaking. It struck me that the text here was that, despite all they have learned [...]

By: Andy Freeman

Andy Freeman — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 20:54:31 +0000

> If the papers die the newswires die and then google, huffpost, daylife dies…

Not at all.

http://www.michaelyon-online.com/

Folks who produce good, valuable, and unique news have a future, but it will be tough for those missing any one of those three. In particular, good and valuable but not unique is a commodity, so it won’t be lucrative.

Folks who reprint press releases are in trouble.

By: Tex Lovera

Tex Lovera — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:50:25 +0000

Walter-

You sort of beat me to it. The funniest thing about Jeff’s link to AP’s own story about this issue, is that AP’s article has no comments section. At all.

What would I have written there if I’d had the chance? This:

“Hey, dumbasses. The only way I found out about your whining tirade was because a blogger linked to it. You STILL don’t get it!!”

I also agree that Google et al should call their bluff: cut ‘em off at the knees, pull all links to their stories, and see how irrelevant they become.

By: Jim Meiers

Jim Meiers — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 11:33:41 +0000

Hi Jeff,
many media people here in Germany celebrate you as “media guru” I think the biggest question is “What would google do without newspapers and newswires?” Here in Germany and Europe the newspapers own the newswires (oh, oh, for Americans that sounds like communism). If the papers die the newswires die and then google, huffpost, daylife dies…
Huffpost, google and daylife for example have no journalist in Iraq or Afghanistan! You can give your neighbours flip camcorders but the hard news never come from “citizen journalist”. What is your solution?

By: Digitale medier, håb & falliterklæringer – Vil medierne gerne være som Kina?

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 06:38:25 +0000

[...] indtryk kan man i hvert fald få, hvis man læser Jeff Jarvis’ ganske underholdende beretning om World Media Summit i Beijing, hvor han maler med den store pensel omkring centralisering af kontrol, et slags mediernes [...]

By: Teacher Gina

Teacher Gina — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 23:03:38 +0000

Instead of wringing their hands like spoiled little kids these guys need to learn how to play, if not change the game altogether.

By: JHMcFadden

JHMcFadden — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 01:28:27 +0000

“Content Kleptomaniacs” might be my favorite new phrase. I’m going to launch a new site, http://www.contentkpleptos.com, and just write 250 word summaries of AP and News Corp. articles. Ridiculous.

By: When kleptomaniacs collide: Old media declares war on new media « Woolly Days

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 15:27:18 +0000

[...] economy advocate Jeff Jarvis at Buzz Machine also condemned the “Proletariat of the Press”. He said the Beijing conference was a “suicidal [...]

By: Andy Freeman

Andy Freeman — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 13:33:12 +0000

What is Jarvis wrong about? Is Levine claiming that adding “Fools” did not affect whether people clicked and distributed? Or is he claiming that affecting whether people clicked and distributed is not adding value? Or is he arguing that while producing those effects is usually considered adding value, doing so with “fools” doesn’t count.

Or is it something else?

By: Walter Abbott

Walter Abbott — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 12:38:03 +0000

Speaking of local content, read here about how it will be in the future. Do all you editors and publishers remember those “cranks” whose letters to the editor you never would publish? Well, we are starting our own blogs and doing our own city council/county commission/school board reporting.

Deal with it.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/216703

Peytonplace.com
Bloggers across the country are obsessively chronicling small-town life.

By: fjpoblam

fjpoblam — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 03:07:18 +0000

I’d almost like to see GOOG YHOO MSFT call the AP’s bluff http://is.gd/4awkN http://is.gd/4avfG and fetch all their news from [an]other source[s] …and let the AP die a slow and painful death

By: pd

pd — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 02:56:15 +0000

2 points:
1) Would it be regarded as plagiarism if a TV network were to broadcast a scrolling presentation of tweets on the day of the American Presidential election?
2) WSJ posted three lines about Steve Jobs’ recent operation. WSJ published the rest of the story behind the wall/curtain. I don’t know of anyone who paid to read the rest of the WSJ article. The rest of the world managed to get the story out there.