2 ms·

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 i

by 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.

by CM30 7y ago

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.