Digital business models: a retrospective and maybe a class (or keynote)

Digital information breaks the premise of classical economics: that of divvying up scarce resources between competing actors. 

I need your help! Should I develop a class or keynote speech on this topic? Read on for details …

I’ve been thinking about our zero-sum game model of economics this week because I’m finally (finally!) reading Yochai Benkler’s The Penguin and The Leviathan: How Cooperation Triumphs Over Self-Interest. (If I were reading the eBook, instead of paper, I’d be tweeting about it under the hashtag, #readingOutLoud.)

Later this month I’m going to be a guest speaker for Howard Rheingold’s class at Stanford. And although my topic is “crap detection” (Howard’s term – I love it! – for something I’ve been doing since the mid-90s), talking to Howard seems to have brought my mind back around to cooperation. And economics.

So I just put together a list of my WiredPen posts that relate to economics and business models, specifically as it relates to media (mostly newspapers). It’s a pretty long list, covering 10 years. It’s not a Clay Shirky kind-of-list, but his writing influenced my early thinking about discussion group dynamics.

The process led me to this insight: I love economics. (Which is a good thing, since my MS is in ag economics!)

And I want to teach it.

I want to pitch a class on digital economics to a department/college at UW (or anywhere, really) with the possibility of turning it into a MOOC. This is a topic that I think every freshman should be encouraged to consider. It doesn’t have to be a 5-credit hour class; it could be a 1-credit hour or 5-credit hour or even graduate-level class: the difference would be in the extent of readings and complexity of student assignments.

What do you think? Do-able? 

Alternatively – or in addition – maybe this is a pay-me-to-speak keynote that I can craft and pitch.

How could I make you interested?

Thanks in advance for any help!

Here’s the list of my essays on digital economics and media business models:

• Facebook’s walled garden: too seductive for news companies to ignore? (March 2015)
• Upworthy headlines and copycats: just say no. Please. (February 2014)
• Newspaper ad revenue down another 6% in 2012, but Google is not the reason (Apr 2013)
• Seattle Times to erect paywall (Feb 2013)
• Beating a dead horse: another post about newspaper economics (June 2012)
• Carnival of Journalism: journalists as capitalists (Jan 2012)
• Online revenue cannot rescue newspaper business model (Feb 2011)
• WSJ iPad pricing model is bad news (Mar 2010)
• Mythbusters: Subscriptions Don’t Cover Salaries (Mar 2010)
• Why the iPad (and kin) is unlikely to yield consumer savings (Feb 2010)
• Digital Information: Business Models in Flux (Jan 2010)
• Repeat after me: Newspaper consumers have never paid for content (Jan 2010)
• Putting numbers into context: a Hollywood primer (Dec 2009)
• Publishing Industry Responds to Digital Disruption by Delaying eBook Availability (Dec 2009)
• Murdoch on Google and pay-to-view (Nov 2009)
• Thinking about “free” (Oct 2009)
• “Aggregation” is not a villain (June 2009)
• Digital goods are non-rival: why is this concept so foreign to people? (May 2009)
• Future of journalism discussions need reality economics (May 2009)
• Response to “Ink-Stained Wretching” (Mar 2009)
• Follow up: No more free content (Mar 2009)
• No more free content (Mar 2009)
• Print model shifting (Nov 2008)
• Want to increase online news readership? (Oct 2008)
• Google, Others, Syndicating Video Into The Long Tail (Jul 2008)
• Book revision: Wikinomics (Jul 2008)
• The Long Tail, HBR Style (June 2008)
• Publishers Experiment With Online Editions (Feb 2008)
• Proposed internet radio license fees dwarf terrestrial radio (Apr 2007)
• Economics of scarcity (Nov 2006)
• Citizen journalism site gets $11 million investment (Feb 2006)
• It’s a la carte by any other name (Dec 2003)

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