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The crisis is not one of content. But one of distribution. The internet has destroyed the lock on distribution relied on by; Publishers, MPAA, RIAA, newspapers

The crisis is not one of content. But one of distribution. The internet has destroyed the lock on distribution relied on by; Publishers, MPAA, RIAA, newspapers, governments and even people who expect hard to access (look up in county courts files) means effectively "private". There is vastly more supply of "attention" than there is demand for "attention". Combined with the ease of distribution/search and picking and choosing tiny bits from each "supplier" means it's extremely hard to monetize or even convince your consumers that you provide any value at all. i.e. I can pay/endure ads from you or I can go to the fify other sources/aggregators of same information.

jhayward 10y ago
> The crisis is not one of content. But one of distribution. This is undoubtedly the key aspect of the networked world. Papers have, in the past, tried to do various forms of syndication and distribution bundling deals to establish a viable business model but to my knowledge these have all been abject failures. Compound this with the loss of monopoly income from local classified ads and we have implosion. My suggestion to the industry is to not syndicate content, rather syndicate subscription. I only want to have a single "news" subscription - and it's not going to be on "your" site. So the industry should find a way for me to pay for content wherever I may find it with a single subscription, and without anyone "owning" my account. There may be a business model that works there.
- tcbawo 10y ago
  Better (yet scarier) would be curated content. I would love for someone to filter the firehose of information, but I don't want to live in an echo chamber. I don't want a feed that tries to hide opinions or facts I disagree with. Provide me the basic arguments and rationale from multiple sides, not strawman arguments. Provide fact checking (with context). Today, this function would best be performed by people.
_rpd 10y ago
Yes, this is just another example of the classic and ongoing disintermediation enabled by internet technologies. Once I had access to the raw news feeds available to journalists (Reuters, AP, AFP, etc), it became clear that the novel content of local newspapers was vanishingly small. With the rise of special interest blogs of every sort, there was simply no reason to endure the mangled versions of the news feeds offered by local newspapers.

jhayward 10y ago

> The crisis is not one of content. But one of distribution. This is undoubtedly the key aspect of the networked world. Papers have, in the past, tried to do various forms of syndication and distribution bundling deals to establish a viable business model but to my knowledge these have all been abject failures. Compound this with the loss of monopoly income from local classified ads and we have implosion. My suggestion to the industry is to not syndicate content, rather syndicate subscription. I only want to have a single "news" subscription - and it's not going to be on "your" site. So the industry should find a way for me to pay for content wherever I may find it with a single subscription, and without anyone "owning" my account. There may be a business model that works there.

tcbawo 10y ago
Better (yet scarier) would be curated content. I would love for someone to filter the firehose of information, but I don't want to live in an echo chamber. I don't want a feed that tries to hide opinions or facts I disagree with. Provide me the basic arguments and rationale from multiple sides, not strawman arguments. Provide fact checking (with context). Today, this function would best be performed by people.

_rpd 10y ago

Yes, this is just another example of the classic and ongoing disintermediation enabled by internet technologies. Once I had access to the raw news feeds available to journalists (Reuters, AP, AFP, etc), it became clear that the novel content of local newspapers was vanishingly small. With the rise of special interest blogs of every sort, there was simply no reason to endure the mangled versions of the news feeds offered by local newspapers.