Stop The Presses! – CBS News
I finally got around to watching CBS Sunday Morning today, and enjoyed their piece on the downfall of newspapers. However, they glossed over the same point I’ve heard time and time again:
Tierney is facing the same dilemma every paper is: while he could save a fortune becoming Web-only, readers don’t pay for it and advertisers won’t pay nearly what they do for a print ad.
This honestly baffles me. With an online ad, you get exposure to more eyes, you have better tracking of success (by click-throughs), and have almost infinite possibilities of what your ad can look like or do. I never have figured out why newspaper companies don’t charge a premium for online ads, or have not started offering the same type of assistance for ad creation that they do for print. On the flipside, I’m not sure why Google (who has been extraordinarly successful in this area) hasn’t approached newspapers to offer help in capitalizing on their readers. With a service like Google news, this would really be in their best interest.
Perhaps when the economy picks up newspapers need to take the bold step of increasing online ad rates–their survival absolutely depends on it!
Sun puts Internet Archive in a box, but will it stay there? – Ars Technica
One of the technologies for really long-term preservation was … a titanium disk about the size of a long-playing record, and it was supposed to last 10,000 years. But then they realized that there were some assumptions that weren’t right, and that it would not last 1,000 years, it might only last 20.
This reminded me of what I’ve always found to be a strong argument against strong copyright–the more copies there are of something, the better chance it has of surviving over time. Perhaps we need to encourage the copying of materials that are important to our society/culture.
Rights Clash on YouTube, and Videos Vanish – NYTimes.com
The Times has a good overview of some of the problems with the YouTube/Warner Music dispute and the removal of videos that infringe copyright in the strictest sense of the law, but perhaps not in the spirit of the law. In one example, a young musician’s video of her playing Winter Wonderland on the piano is removed. She later explains that she:
…has been hesitant lately to use YouTube as an outlet for her musical talents. “I’m kind of nervous now about putting up covers,†said Ms. Weybret, 15, who plays in a band with her friends called the Knockouts.
This is exactly the kind of creativity that copyright was not intended to stifle. How many 15 year olds have the talent to compose an entirely original song and feel that it’s good enough to post online? While there are certainly a few, I would argue that we’ve all “got to start somewhere.” By performing a cover, you get an intimate feel for how a song was constructed–you learn from it. By doing this again and again, eventually you might start writing some good songs on your own.
If we stop nascent creativity–right when it is beginning to bloom–we are doing a disservice to our culture. That’s not what laws are supposed to do.
Staples libel ruling concerns news media groups – The Boston Globe
Staples has asked the full appeals court to reconsider the ruling, and 51 news organizations have filed a friend-of-the-court brief saying that the decision, if allowed to stand, “will create a precedent that hinders the media’s ability to rely on truthful publication to avoid defamation liability.”
I’d be interested in seeing the opinion to figure out the court’s logic (assuming there is any).
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The Media Equation – United, Newspapers May Stand – NYTimes.com
I believe the overarching idea of unity among newspapers argued by Times columnist David Carr is correct, but the specifics run counter to some important ideals–both in the newspaper industry and Internet culture. Let’s look at the specific points.
- “No more free content:” The web works at its best when it is free, or when the costs are hidden to make it appear as free. People are not used to paying for content (applications are a different matter), and I don’t see this changing. There are ways other than subscriptions to make money, which brings us to…
- “No more commoditized ads:” Subscriptions pay a part of the cost of putting together a newspaper, but the majority comes from ads. It’s true that craigslist has taken a bite out of ad revenue and that being beholden to advertisers could be a bad thing for news content. Yet, as Google has shown, it’s possible to profit from advertisement. The localized, affluent, and educated audience of newspapers offer unrealized opportunities for generating ad revenue. This might mean more work on the streets of generating clients, and additional services of developing ad layout and copy. I’m not aware of an organization giving this a serious try.
- “No more free ride to aggregators:” This again runs counter to the emerging sharing nature of internet culture. Sharing and commenting are almost the salon of our age. Also, aggregating is not an on/off propisition–many sites (like Slashdot) are able to make money by aggregating part of a story and bringing in readers with the full content. Aggregators are a means to bring in regular readers; turning them off will drive away a significant portion of them away.
- “Throw out the Newspaper Preservation Act:” I’ll admit that I’m not quite ready to comment on this one…
I would argue that newspapers fulfil two vital and related roles (beyond providing a depth of reporting that is unrivaled) in presenting news–they serve as an editor and organizer. These are human services that technology cannot replace. We need editors to tell us what stories are important and to tell them in a compelling way, and we need organizers to put things together in a way that makes sense to our minds and eyes.
This can happen online–it just needs more changes to the business model.
