Comments on: What If Mobile Were To Become The News Space?

By: kegill

kegill — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 20:23:43 +0000

Hi, Jason — I think we can compare “cable” with “the delivery boy”. Both are distribution channels for content delivered to your home. One difference in the models is that Comcast is an aggregator of content whereas the “delivery boy” delivers only one product. IF newspapers could use the U.S. mail as their “delivery boy” — like magazines do — then the distribution cost would be reduced significantly, one would think. However, that would mean re-thinking “the daily news.”

Both are geographically-centric: your home.

Digital information is easily “unbundled” from geography … and telephony is the first of the mass communication technologies of the 20th century to be unbundled from “a place.” That disruption path:

AT&T monopoly -> LD competition -> Baby Bells -> re-consolidation

Cellular upstarts (Cellular One, for example) -> AT&T Wireless spun off from AT&T -> consolidation -> alignment with domestic and global incumbents

The players were few due to formidable capital costs (barrier to entry).

Not the same structure for “newspapers.”

By: kegill

kegill — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 17:46:19 +0000

Hi, Ross — I agree that deciding “who’s a journalist” is problematic. I do think that an algorithm could be developed that could analyze a web site’s content and break it into categories: wire stories (very easy – no credit) … most sports, movie reviews, local weather (pretty easy – no credit) … most business stories (the Dow is up, so-and-so released quarterly earnings – pretty easy, no credit) … stories about government (city council meeting, legislature, congress – pretty easy – credit) … investigative stories (not as easy – credit).

It’s not that those “no credit” stories aren’t important … it’s that they have a natural constituency willing to pay (see the WSJ, ESPN, People magazine). “Public interest” journalism suffers from freeloader effect — it’s important to everyone, but why should *I* pay if someone else will pick up the tab. So to speak. (I do “pay” — a lot each year, I’ve figured out.)

By: jpreston

jpreston — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 18:33:11 +0000

You’ve covered a lot of good ground here. I think ultimately, the real issue is that open technologies unbundle the revenue stream from the cost of content production.

Advertisers don’t pay for content, they pay for access to eyeballs.

Readers don’t pay for content, they pay for the distribution channel (hence: we pay Comcast, but not the NYTimes.com)

Eventually, content is going to come around to a place where it will have to be largely if not primarily supported by consumers assigning value to it, and buying it. Actually, I think I need to write my own blog post about that…thanks for the idea!

By: rossophonic

rossophonic — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 04:58:32 +0000

Edwin Baker offered a tax subsidy option in January in the Seattle Times. He would have government offer a tax credit up to 100k for each journalist. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2008638058_opinc18baker.html.
The problem comes with letting government decide who is a journalist. They are bound to eventually go after critical journalists.
Likewise, having government audit content to decide what deserves to be called public service is bound will lead to problems. Politicians are not suited to be good arbiters of journalism. They’re too much a part of the story. Which is also why these calls to revive the Fairness Doctrine are not well thought out.

By: kegill

kegill — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 19:37:02 +0000

This article has been cross-posted at TheModerateVoice and Newsvine.