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> Newspapers used to be the gateway of fast changing information. Wrong answer! Here's the correct answer: Newspapers used to have a monopoly on advertising.
by pravda 7y ago
> Newspapers used to be the gateway of fast changing information.
Wrong answer!
Here's the correct answer: Newspapers used to have a monopoly on advertising. They could extract enormous sums of money from advertisers due to this.
Most towns had a single newspaper, because the nature of the newspaper business generally led to a natural monopoly. Big cities had maybe had two or three newspapers.
Newspaper owners lost their monopoly. No more overpriced classifieds!
No more money gushing in!
- davidw 7y agoSeems like part of it - especially things like classified ads - but... on the other hand, it seems they did ok for a while even with local TV and radio competing for local ad dollars.
- jacques_chester 7y agoAdvertising and classifieds are typically separate departments in most newspapers. Advertising has competed with radio, TV, direct mail -- you name it -- for decades on decades. What matters is that classifieds got gutted. That was the true river of gold. Newspapers got a cut of thousands upon thousands of transactions every single week, whether or not those transactions even occurred. Every potential hiring, every name change, every car for sale, every house on the market, pretty much all of commerce from petty to grand: the newspaper gets its cut. The income:cost ratio is fantastically high, especially since the cost of printing is subsidised (though not typically fully covered) by the cover price.
- baroffoos 7y agoNow instead of 2 newspapers having a monopoly over one city we now have 2 companies who have a monopoly over most of the planet.
- s_y_n_t_a_x 7y agoIt's more like a few advertising networks where thousands of journalism sites host ads where all advertisers bid on fairly. The tech monopolies is a separate topic.