4 ms·

Annual revenue for newspapers is down something like 70% since 2006. I always hear that Facebook and Google are largely to blame but isn’t it more just the inte

Annual revenue for newspapers is down something like 70% since 2006. I always hear that Facebook and Google are largely to blame but isn’t it more just the internet at large?

CM30 7y ago
Yeah, it's more the internet and the social shift that came with it. Newspapers did well when they were basically the only game in town, and a lot of media is in a similar situation. They only did well because they were gatekeepers, and one of a limited few sources in their field. The internet's made it so anyone can open a media outlet, and say what they like to pretty much anyone else, so we're in an endless race to the bottom where outlets are only able to get traffic by offering their content for free, and being competed against by legions of others who don't need to charge at all.
- pulisse 7y ago
  Print news isn't losing out because of competition from online media. The dominant factor in the decline of newspapers is loss of ad revenue: Ad spending that used to go to print ads has almost entirely moved online, and online ad revenue is almost entirely captured by Google and Facebook. If you look at a plot of print news ad revenue vs. Google ad revenue, the two trends mirror each other, with Google ad revenue growing at basically the same rate as newspaper ad revenue declines. (This story[0] has a chart that goes up to 2012 that illustrates the point.) So it's true to say that newspapers used to have a viable business model because they were "the only game in town", but what they were gatekeepers of was not content but ad space. [0] https://www.jgsullivan.com/2012/11/14/google-ad-revenue-vs-print-ad-revenue/ https://www.jgsullivan.com/2012/11/14/google-ad-revenue-vs-p...
  - CM30 7y ago
    Well, in part it's due to competition, few people are exactly buying newspapers any more. There's a whole lot less of a reason to subscribe or buy them from shops any more, so that revenue isn't coming back any time soon. But I guess the ad revenue made up more of their income. That's definitely been hit by Google and Facebook. Still, not sure what can really happen there. At the end of the day, Google and Facebook are better for advertisers than newspapers are. They let you track impressions, clicks, stats, etc better, they let you target users in a more fine grained way, etc. Oh, and users visit them more often too.
hackermailman 7y ago
There's also a problem of copy+paste journalism, where some scammy company simply steals your stories and reprints them almost word for word with no credit. In Canada that scammy company is called the CBC, they are notorious for stealing content of regional and foreign newspapers. So even if you do have an excellent small media outlet all your product will just get stolen by those with more visibility.
- 52-6F-62 7y ago
  I’d love to see some evidence of this being true. I have a very hard time believing it otherwise. Simply reporting on the same events after another outlet has does not make them a scam. The CBC is a valuable public service that produces heaps of quality content.
  - hackermailman 7y ago
    Every single news outlet in Canada complains about the CBC copy pasting their content, if you work at any media it's a running joke that the CBC is going to pirate whatever you do and have it up for free on cbc.ca within minutes of publishing. There's dozens of articles about this just search for copy paste journalism or email any reporter in Canada and ask them. https://nationalpost.com/opinion/tristin-hopper-really-want-to-help-print-journalism-ottawa-stop-cbc-from-undercutting-us https://nationalpost.com/opinion/tristin-hopper-really-want-... https://www.canadalandshow.com/cbc-often-reports-competitors-scoops-without-credit/ https://www.canadalandshow.com/cbc-often-reports-competitors... >If a reporter scores an important scoop or completes a lengthy investigation, within hours that story will be quickly rewritten and posted to CBC.ca for free, and often without attribution (watch for the phrase “CBC has learned” to spot these types of rewrites). Of course this is common practice to rewrite articles, but you're supposed to give credit, and it's especially shady when you have a taxpayer funded budget to feed off private industry with an army of interns to snatch content and post it for free. CBC is supposed to cover stories the national media won't bother with, but instead for a couple of years now they've just been "repurposing content". Edit: AP is also doing a trial with blockchain tagging to try and end copy paste journalism
52-6F-62 7y ago
The internet was a contributing factor, but not it alone. In the 90s the internet became just another publishing platform when newspaper revenues were at a high. They were cash-cow investments for large corporations. It followed a similar pattern to SV companies now—buy up high revenue properties promising ever-increasing returns. As soon as that started to level off investors will obviously darken on the large corps they have shares in. Large corp needs to keep finding ways to find profit in their properties so they started cutting, which put publishers in worse situations for affording and producing content. That started a vicious downward cycle. Couple that with falling advertising prices (in part because of Google and Amazon, but not solely) and it’s a race to the bottom for these corps in managing their properties. One I worked for [the parent corp] had enormous amounts of money from their main ventures but had us at a continually reducing hard-capped headcount in spite of increases in revenues after a lot of hard work. Every year saw mass layoffs for several years in a row in the order of 1/3 to 1/2 of the entire publishing company’s staff at a time including writers, editors, designers, managers, videographers, researchers, sales staff, marketing staff, you name it. [edited for detail: in one instance taking a fully-staffed heritage political and analysis magazine down to a couple of desks in a corner of a floor they once filled with passionate, talented people. With contractual obligations made by former executives for volume of content.] Basically crippling the [publishing] company every year a little more because of fixed numbers they had to serve to shareholders based on previous, naive promises made by long-gone executives. So the internet—not directly. Greed, primarily. (I’ll leave this with an old protest sign I spotted in a book in the City Lights Bookstore in SF—paraphrasing—“free the press from their corporate masters”. If only)

Annual revenue for newspapers is down something like 70% since 2006. I always hear that Facebook and Google are largely to blame but isn’t it more just the internet at large?

CM30 7y ago

Yeah, it's more the internet and the social shift that came with it. Newspapers did well when they were basically the only game in town, and a lot of media is in a similar situation. They only did well because they were gatekeepers, and one of a limited few sources in their field. The internet's made it so anyone can open a media outlet, and say what they like to pretty much anyone else, so we're in an endless race to the bottom where outlets are only able to get traffic by offering their content for free, and being competed against by legions of others who don't need to charge at all.

pulisse 7y ago
Print news isn't losing out because of competition from online media. The dominant factor in the decline of newspapers is loss of ad revenue: Ad spending that used to go to print ads has almost entirely moved online, and online ad revenue is almost entirely captured by Google and Facebook. If you look at a plot of print news ad revenue vs. Google ad revenue, the two trends mirror each other, with Google ad revenue growing at basically the same rate as newspaper ad revenue declines. (This story[0] has a chart that goes up to 2012 that illustrates the point.) So it's true to say that newspapers used to have a viable business model because they were "the only game in town", but what they were gatekeepers of was not content but ad space. [0] https://www.jgsullivan.com/2012/11/14/google-ad-revenue-vs-print-ad-revenue/ https://www.jgsullivan.com/2012/11/14/google-ad-revenue-vs-p...
- CM30 7y ago
  Well, in part it's due to competition, few people are exactly buying newspapers any more. There's a whole lot less of a reason to subscribe or buy them from shops any more, so that revenue isn't coming back any time soon. But I guess the ad revenue made up more of their income. That's definitely been hit by Google and Facebook. Still, not sure what can really happen there. At the end of the day, Google and Facebook are better for advertisers than newspapers are. They let you track impressions, clicks, stats, etc better, they let you target users in a more fine grained way, etc. Oh, and users visit them more often too.

hackermailman 7y ago

There's also a problem of copy+paste journalism, where some scammy company simply steals your stories and reprints them almost word for word with no credit. In Canada that scammy company is called the CBC, they are notorious for stealing content of regional and foreign newspapers. So even if you do have an excellent small media outlet all your product will just get stolen by those with more visibility.

52-6F-62 7y ago
I’d love to see some evidence of this being true. I have a very hard time believing it otherwise. Simply reporting on the same events after another outlet has does not make them a scam. The CBC is a valuable public service that produces heaps of quality content.
- hackermailman 7y ago
  Every single news outlet in Canada complains about the CBC copy pasting their content, if you work at any media it's a running joke that the CBC is going to pirate whatever you do and have it up for free on cbc.ca within minutes of publishing. There's dozens of articles about this just search for copy paste journalism or email any reporter in Canada and ask them. https://nationalpost.com/opinion/tristin-hopper-really-want-to-help-print-journalism-ottawa-stop-cbc-from-undercutting-us https://nationalpost.com/opinion/tristin-hopper-really-want-... https://www.canadalandshow.com/cbc-often-reports-competitors-scoops-without-credit/ https://www.canadalandshow.com/cbc-often-reports-competitors... >If a reporter scores an important scoop or completes a lengthy investigation, within hours that story will be quickly rewritten and posted to CBC.ca for free, and often without attribution (watch for the phrase “CBC has learned” to spot these types of rewrites). Of course this is common practice to rewrite articles, but you're supposed to give credit, and it's especially shady when you have a taxpayer funded budget to feed off private industry with an army of interns to snatch content and post it for free. CBC is supposed to cover stories the national media won't bother with, but instead for a couple of years now they've just been "repurposing content". Edit: AP is also doing a trial with blockchain tagging to try and end copy paste journalism

52-6F-62 7y ago

The internet was a contributing factor, but not it alone. In the 90s the internet became just another publishing platform when newspaper revenues were at a high. They were cash-cow investments for large corporations. It followed a similar pattern to SV companies now—buy up high revenue properties promising ever-increasing returns. As soon as that started to level off investors will obviously darken on the large corps they have shares in. Large corp needs to keep finding ways to find profit in their properties so they started cutting, which put publishers in worse situations for affording and producing content. That started a vicious downward cycle. Couple that with falling advertising prices (in part because of Google and Amazon, but not solely) and it’s a race to the bottom for these corps in managing their properties. One I worked for [the parent corp] had enormous amounts of money from their main ventures but had us at a continually reducing hard-capped headcount in spite of increases in revenues after a lot of hard work. Every year saw mass layoffs for several years in a row in the order of 1/3 to 1/2 of the entire publishing company’s staff at a time including writers, editors, designers, managers, videographers, researchers, sales staff, marketing staff, you name it. [edited for detail: in one instance taking a fully-staffed heritage political and analysis magazine down to a couple of desks in a corner of a floor they once filled with passionate, talented people. With contractual obligations made by former executives for volume of content.] Basically crippling the [publishing] company every year a little more because of fixed numbers they had to serve to shareholders based on previous, naive promises made by long-gone executives. So the internet—not directly. Greed, primarily. (I’ll leave this with an old protest sign I spotted in a book in the City Lights Bookstore in SF—paraphrasing—“free the press from their corporate masters”. If only)