Jeff’s and other’s entire model is based on the premise that people will always choose to receive the ads. Digital information is inherently filterable according to a browser user’s preferences as long as users have control over their browser instead of the browser controlling them. What happens when the majority, or even a sizable minority, of users decide they don’t want to see the ads that can be filtered?

Yes, you can enmesh the ads more confusingly into the media, but this is costly and forgoes the use of distributed ad network markets. If you’ve ever listened to Eben Moglen he talks about the probability of more people choosing not to see the ads by installing ad blockers on their browsers.

As long as people have the freedom to control their computers, they don’t have to see the ads if they don’t want to. I think eventually most people won’t want to.

I don’t know about “the web pundits”, but Jarvis has never said that all news should be free. He has pointed out that a lot of news is competing with free, which is a very different thing.

Jarvis is all about monetizing as much as possible in different circumstances. He points out that what works in one circumstance won’t necessarily work in another.

There’s a bigger problem here as well, one that lies at the very heart of how we use the Internet. Our use of the web is migrating away from sites as a destination toward sites as a source to be aggregated into our hyper-personal stream. As that happens, relying on on-site ads to generate revenue will be a big time fail… because we won’t be going to the site…. unless…. there is a compelling reason to visit the site.

As much as I enjoy Jeff’s posts, I usually only visit the site when I want to comment. Otherwise, I read the posts in Google reader. In the case of news, I actually prefer Yahoo! news. To the extent I can get all the info I need from the Yahoo page, I won’t go to the source… and here I can understand Murdoch’s problem. Of course his solution is crazy, but…

Short of finding a way to monetize the aggregated content, the real solution to the news problem has to include added value. What is the added value the reader receives by reading the content on “my” site? If I can’t create value, what claim do I have to the loyalty of the readers? Its kind of like running off the cab driver that’s bringing all the customers to your store, because the customers won’t buy once they’re in the door. Who’s fault is that?

Bottom line, create compelling content and add value to the reader’s experience… and quit whining… its annoying.

jtrigsby

Isn’t it kind of strange to hold up About.com as a sight that attracts and keeps readers when you’ve previously said that 80% of its visitors come from search? That would seem to indicate that readers do not return to About.com, which certainly fits with my anecdotal knowledge. In fact, once bitten by an About.com site, most people go out of their way to avoid them.

On top of this, About.com’s main goal is to get readers to click on expensive ads so that it earns money. In fact, they have thousands, maybe tens of thousands of pages that are just ads, designed purely to cause confusion and clicks.

About.com owes its success to date to figuring out search and the web and “SEO” earlier than everyone else but it’s unlikely it will be around in its present form much longer. And it’s certainly not a model for others to follow.

As for the “topic” theory of news, that sounds well and good, and yes topic pages are good for some subjects but, in the end, daily news is fleeting and it’s different from encyclopedic articles even those about breaking stories.

Even if Wikipedia sometimes does a better job at synthesizing and aggregating a breaking news story than news organizations, it uses the reporting of news organizations to do this. Take a look, for example, at its new Climategate page. It’s a good synthesis of the type that news organizations aren’t doing, but its drawing on the actual reporting done by journalists as well as writing by scientists and experts.

Also, as a news junkie, I’ve always found Wikipedia’s breaking news coverage too slow. It reminds me of a newsweekly — too little, too late.

Also, what Howard and Patricia said.