4 ms·

I honestly think there just isn't enough innovation in the newspaper industry for it to survive. Newspapers are too old school to innovate/iterate their models.

I honestly think there just isn't enough innovation in the newspaper industry for it to survive. Newspapers are too old school to innovate/iterate their models. For example, mng has 50+ newspapers. Why not identify 10 different ideas and test them out on a few newspapers. Some bad ideas that get my point across: - Have a reddit-style front page with upvotes/downvotes - Put all articles on a map so users can see whats relevant near them - Ask users to sign in to facebook and google on the website so that each ad is more targeted and provides more revenue

forapurpose 8y ago
> I honestly think there just isn't enough innovation in the newspaper industry for it to survive. Newspapers are too old school to innovate/iterate their models. This frustrates the hell out of me. The public greatly needs the journalism, not the paper and ink. Despite decades of warning and preparation, many just can't seem to embrace the new medium and find profitable models. You can see it in their generally awful websites: Nobody designing a website from scratch, including for news, would make those choices; you could show me dozens of unidentified news websites and I expect I could easily pick out the newspapers. Also, they can't seem to embrace any medium of communication but text, as if it were 1995 and other media on computer were just being developed. They are still trying to stick to paper-and-ink layout and mediums, just displayed on a website. The New York Times is scary to watch. I know people laud its digital efforts, but I suspect that's based only on reputation because I haven't seen anything laudable. They also can't seem to fully integrate other media; the other media is displayed beside the text, not integrated fluently into it as most bloggers or social media users could do - imagine communicating with images! Looped animations! Short video clips! Their social media manager, at least as of several months ago, was someone who didn't use social media himself. A little while ago, a NYT IT staffer's wriieup of their newly developed "text editor" was posted here - they used the term repeatedly, but it wasn't a text editor; it was a content management or enterprise publishing system; they didn't seem to know that basic terminology - at the NY Times! (It's not that I care about terminology, it's that it's a red flag - if someone referred to a CMS as a "text editor" in an interview, I'd be concerned.)
intended 8y ago
TLDR: News media has tried desperately for many years to innovate. The internet killed what was left. Finally – thinking about “news” is outdated. News are previous era artisanal bread bakers, vs modern factories which A/B test and mass produce sliced bread (engagement). Underlying it all is the mistake in assuming that truth matters, in an advertising revenue based system. Longer - If you pay for specialist news sources, even today, you will immediately see a massive difference in detail and quality of information. For at least 70+ years, if not centuries, the News world has tried to stop the effect of advertising on media. Media targets human brains, and human brains care for rewards more than “truth”. If a newspaper sells salacious gossip for cheap, they obtain a huge readership. This in turn provides them with advertising power and thus revenue. This also translates into political power. Take a look at Murdoch’s empire other than Fox news. All of this generally came under the name “the faster news cycle”. Once we as a species switched to 24/7 news, human attention spans came under increased pressure. This forced news channels to move towards even more sensational (engaging!) news in order to keep their place. And then came the internet. The internet destroys the paid classifieds section, the only thing allowing many smaller news papers to stay afloat. The internet and coders also create tools to perfectly answer other questions “which format ensures maximum engagement, and time on site”. Which font, which design. Which words? An unwholesome amount of human experimentation is done, from game design to UX/UI design to best create addictive sites. This further saturates the average human attention span, and at this point overwhelms it. In todays day and age, News websites are…. Not about traditional news. Everything is about “hacking” the human brain to make it do something. This is all “content”, which has to be “engaging” or “viral” or “addictive”. We are dealing with the industrialization of thought, and the actual product is just “content”. So to ask for Innovation, is to ask a dead man to act. You could have them innovate all you like, but the moment they land up on some sub reddit it just gets converted into echo chamber fodder.

forapurpose 8y ago

> I honestly think there just isn't enough innovation in the newspaper industry for it to survive. Newspapers are too old school to innovate/iterate their models. This frustrates the hell out of me. The public greatly needs the journalism, not the paper and ink. Despite decades of warning and preparation, many just can't seem to embrace the new medium and find profitable models. You can see it in their generally awful websites: Nobody designing a website from scratch, including for news, would make those choices; you could show me dozens of unidentified news websites and I expect I could easily pick out the newspapers. Also, they can't seem to embrace any medium of communication but text, as if it were 1995 and other media on computer were just being developed. They are still trying to stick to paper-and-ink layout and mediums, just displayed on a website. The New York Times is scary to watch. I know people laud its digital efforts, but I suspect that's based only on reputation because I haven't seen anything laudable. They also can't seem to fully integrate other media; the other media is displayed beside the text, not integrated fluently into it as most bloggers or social media users could do - imagine communicating with images! Looped animations! Short video clips! Their social media manager, at least as of several months ago, was someone who didn't use social media himself. A little while ago, a NYT IT staffer's wriieup of their newly developed "text editor" was posted here - they used the term repeatedly, but it wasn't a text editor; it was a content management or enterprise publishing system; they didn't seem to know that basic terminology - at the NY Times! (It's not that I care about terminology, it's that it's a red flag - if someone referred to a CMS as a "text editor" in an interview, I'd be concerned.)

intended 8y ago

TLDR: News media has tried desperately for many years to innovate. The internet killed what was left. Finally – thinking about “news” is outdated. News are previous era artisanal bread bakers, vs modern factories which A/B test and mass produce sliced bread (engagement). Underlying it all is the mistake in assuming that truth matters, in an advertising revenue based system. Longer - If you pay for specialist news sources, even today, you will immediately see a massive difference in detail and quality of information. For at least 70+ years, if not centuries, the News world has tried to stop the effect of advertising on media. Media targets human brains, and human brains care for rewards more than “truth”. If a newspaper sells salacious gossip for cheap, they obtain a huge readership. This in turn provides them with advertising power and thus revenue. This also translates into political power. Take a look at Murdoch’s empire other than Fox news. All of this generally came under the name “the faster news cycle”. Once we as a species switched to 24/7 news, human attention spans came under increased pressure. This forced news channels to move towards even more sensational (engaging!) news in order to keep their place. And then came the internet. The internet destroys the paid classifieds section, the only thing allowing many smaller news papers to stay afloat. The internet and coders also create tools to perfectly answer other questions “which format ensures maximum engagement, and time on site”. Which font, which design. Which words? An unwholesome amount of human experimentation is done, from game design to UX/UI design to best create addictive sites. This further saturates the average human attention span, and at this point overwhelms it. In todays day and age, News websites are…. Not about traditional news. Everything is about “hacking” the human brain to make it do something. This is all “content”, which has to be “engaging” or “viral” or “addictive”. We are dealing with the industrialization of thought, and the actual product is just “content”. So to ask for Innovation, is to ask a dead man to act. You could have them innovate all you like, but the moment they land up on some sub reddit it just gets converted into echo chamber fodder.