3 ms·

The journalists should really blame themselves for using facebook in the first place. They knew what they were buying into.

surge 9y ago
Sadly, it's where their audience is.
- return0 9y ago
  i dont know. it didn't have to be. journalists embraced social media so tightly both for getting input for their work as well as for audience. They 'd hate to admit it but they became lazy. Partly, they made facebook (and twitter) as mainstream as it is now.
  - stevenwoo 9y ago
    I don't think it was an obvious causal relationship ala newspapers making Facebook relevant. I worked as a contractor at the Mercury News a few years ago and the vast majority of their income came from those Frys' flyers. It might as well be a subsidiary of Frys. Craigslist/Ebay/online marketplaces killed the classifieds/ads that paid for fat newspapers for a quarter when I was a kid in the 70' and 80's. Newspapers were pretty desperate for eyeballs when their income started sinking then in the early days of Facebook and now for survival.
  - dredmorbius 9y ago
    Facebook has over a billion daly actve mobile, and over two billion monthly active users. It is the biggest single media platform in the history of the planet. If you're in the audience business, it's simply a fact of life. https://zephoria.com/top-15-valuable-facebook-statistics/amp/ https://zephoria.com/top-15-valuable-facebook-statistics/amp... Media tends to winner-take-all dynamics for various reasons. Zipf's law means that at best a small number of outlets will be significant. These are characteristics of media platforms, period. Not journalists' or publishers' fault.
_rpd 9y ago
It was inevitable that Facebook would eventually become more selective about which content producers are promoted to their users for free.
robryan 9y ago
I think that most probably couldn’t afford not to leverage the Facebook source of traffic while their traditional print ad business was tanking.

surge 9y ago

Sadly, it's where their audience is.

return0 9y ago
i dont know. it didn't have to be. journalists embraced social media so tightly both for getting input for their work as well as for audience. They 'd hate to admit it but they became lazy. Partly, they made facebook (and twitter) as mainstream as it is now.
- stevenwoo 9y ago
  I don't think it was an obvious causal relationship ala newspapers making Facebook relevant. I worked as a contractor at the Mercury News a few years ago and the vast majority of their income came from those Frys' flyers. It might as well be a subsidiary of Frys. Craigslist/Ebay/online marketplaces killed the classifieds/ads that paid for fat newspapers for a quarter when I was a kid in the 70' and 80's. Newspapers were pretty desperate for eyeballs when their income started sinking then in the early days of Facebook and now for survival.
- dredmorbius 9y ago
  Facebook has over a billion daly actve mobile, and over two billion monthly active users. It is the biggest single media platform in the history of the planet. If you're in the audience business, it's simply a fact of life. https://zephoria.com/top-15-valuable-facebook-statistics/amp/ https://zephoria.com/top-15-valuable-facebook-statistics/amp... Media tends to winner-take-all dynamics for various reasons. Zipf's law means that at best a small number of outlets will be significant. These are characteristics of media platforms, period. Not journalists' or publishers' fault.

_rpd 9y ago

It was inevitable that Facebook would eventually become more selective about which content producers are promoted to their users for free.

robryan 9y ago

I think that most probably couldn’t afford not to leverage the Facebook source of traffic while their traditional print ad business was tanking.