5 ms·

You forgot the big guns: Google and Facebook, who literally exploit small publishers and individual content creators. They are killing journalism and content cr

by mudil 10y ago

You forgot the big guns: Google and Facebook, who literally exploit small publishers and individual content creators. They are killing journalism and content creation, and all for the ever escalating profit. (I run a med tech website that reports on medical technologies for doctors and med professionals. I am an MD. We are publishing every day since 2004. News, interviews and exclusive reports. We have a half a million page views a month from professional readership, and Google pays us pennies for Adsense. $60/day? WTF!)

Kalium 10y ago
Once upon a time, an executive said “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.” It turns out that once you can measure very closely, it's often much more than half.
- mudil 10y ago
  In the space of a decade the share of the UK advertising market going to UK regional and national newspapers has declined from nearly a half to little more than 10 per cent. Money which had been spent on journalists holding those in power to account, particularly at a local level, has been transferred to two US-owned digital platforms which exist purely to exploit content rather than create it.
  - battlebot 10y ago
    Big yup! Journalism as a profession is dying/dead and with it, we have lost a major check against oppression. My city get vanishingly little news coverage and so residents are not well informed unless they attend city council meetings, which nobody does. It's a city run by real estate people, mostly.
  - Kalium 10y ago
    Yup. When you can measure how useful marketing spend is, it gets redirected in more optimal ways for the goals of those with the marketing budgets. It's of course completely possible that I'm totally wrong in every way, but I'm under the impression that the primary goals of those with marketing budgets do not generally include supporting journalists holding those in power to account.

by mudil 10y ago

Kalium 10y ago

Once upon a time, an executive said “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.” It turns out that once you can measure very closely, it's often much more than half.

mudil 10y ago
In the space of a decade the share of the UK advertising market going to UK regional and national newspapers has declined from nearly a half to little more than 10 per cent. Money which had been spent on journalists holding those in power to account, particularly at a local level, has been transferred to two US-owned digital platforms which exist purely to exploit content rather than create it.
- battlebot 10y ago
  Big yup! Journalism as a profession is dying/dead and with it, we have lost a major check against oppression. My city get vanishingly little news coverage and so residents are not well informed unless they attend city council meetings, which nobody does. It's a city run by real estate people, mostly.
- Kalium 10y ago
  Yup. When you can measure how useful marketing spend is, it gets redirected in more optimal ways for the goals of those with the marketing budgets. It's of course completely possible that I'm totally wrong in every way, but I'm under the impression that the primary goals of those with marketing budgets do not generally include supporting journalists holding those in power to account.