4 ms·

I don't think this scales to any large fraction of the content that is being created right now, though. It does work for some, but I doubt this will become the

I don't think this scales to any large fraction of the content that is being created right now, though. It does work for some, but I doubt this will become the way things are done on a large scale.

lsc 16y ago
Reputation is the primary means whereby creators of nearly all the content I consume on a daily basis are remunerated. Blog posts? Tech books? I doubt very much that there are many people who do either for the money directly earned through ad or book sales. Now, I agree that this model doesn't work for, say, big-budget action movies and for many (maybe, as you say, most[1]) other media types. But, these people working for "free" have always been a big part of the press; I don't think that writing has ever paid particularly well, except for a few at the very top. Edit: There is a corporate equivalent to this that dominates the trade magazine industry. Corporations write something very much like a press release advertising their new product, and send it off to a writer for the magazine, who publishes it, perhaps with a few changes, as if it were a story. Hell, speaking of high-budget action flicks, BMW did something similar a while back; they released a series of short action films[2] that featured their vehicles. Being something of a fan of action films myself, I rather enjoyed them, even though they were obviously commercials. [1] Thinking more on what "more media" is, I'm starting to come around to your position. Now, I certainly spend /more time/ consuming media like blog posts or technical books where the author was primarily remunerated in terms of an increased reputation compared to media produced for the money. However, even if you say I spend 100 hours reading tech books or blog posts for every 1 hour I spend watching big-budget action flicks, that one hour of action movie probably took more human hours to produce than the 100 hours of tech book or blog post. Of course, if you measure the the cost of production divided by the number of people watching it, then it's possible that the flashy action movie was actually cheaper to produce than the tech book, I mean, per human hour spent watching the thing. [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hire http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hire
- MikeCapone 16y ago
  Indeed, your first footnote is more in line with what I was thinking of. If everybody blocks ads on the things that are expensive to produce (The Atlantic's website, NYT/WSJ/WaPo/CNN/etc, pro-videos, whatever), I doubt that they can just switch to a "reputation" type of model. Fine for small blogs who don't make much money from ads anyway, but won't work for pro-site with big teams and big expenses.
  - lsc 16y ago
    >If everybody blocks ads on the things that are expensive to produce (The Atlantic's website, NYT/WSJ/WaPo/CNN/etc, pro-videos, whatever), I doubt that they can just switch to a "reputation" type of model. Eh, I think that what value the newspaper houses will have going forward mostly has to do with their reputation, and how they can give legitimacy to a story or author, and how they keep the worst of the dregs out so that us consumers don't need to see them. As for video news content, last time I was in the cafe with CNN that I frequent, the story (a missing white girl puff piece) was cut with shots of a video camera focusing on a computer monitor that was reloading twitter. I guess I'm not really a video news kind of guy, but I'm not really seeing how an enthusiast could do worse than that. Maybe I haven't spent enough time watching TV news to see the good stuff, but as far as I can tell, it's a wasteland. Now, video entertainment? the commercial publishing houses still have that sewed up tight.
    - MikeCapone 16y ago
      > Eh, I think that what value the newspaper houses will have going forward mostly has to do with their reputation, and how they can give legitimacy to a story or author, and how they keep the worst of the dregs out so that us consumers don't need to see them. I'm not sure I follow you. How is reputation supposed to pay the bills? If the newspaper/site can't sell ads anymore, how do they make money? > As for video news content, last time I was in the cafe with CNN that I frequent, the story (a missing white girl puff piece) was cut with shots of a video camera focusing on a computer monitor that was reloading twitter. I guess I'm not really a video news kind of guy, but I'm not really seeing how an enthusiast could do worse than that. Maybe I haven't spent enough time watching TV news to see the good stuff, but as far as I can tell, it's a wasteland. Sure there's tons of crap, but that goes for everything. 90%+ of anything is crap, including books, etc, but what about the good part? How do they make money on reputation? That's what I still don't understand. If you are a consultant with a blog, that makes sense, it drives other business. But if your main business is content creation, how does it help if nobody can sell ads and very few can make a living with high subscription fees.

I don't think this scales to any large fraction of the content that is being created right now, though. It does work for some, but I doubt this will become the way things are done on a large scale.

lsc 16y ago

Reputation is the primary means whereby creators of nearly all the content I consume on a daily basis are remunerated. Blog posts? Tech books? I doubt very much that there are many people who do either for the money directly earned through ad or book sales. Now, I agree that this model doesn't work for, say, big-budget action movies and for many (maybe, as you say, most[1]) other media types. But, these people working for "free" have always been a big part of the press; I don't think that writing has ever paid particularly well, except for a few at the very top. Edit: There is a corporate equivalent to this that dominates the trade magazine industry. Corporations write something very much like a press release advertising their new product, and send it off to a writer for the magazine, who publishes it, perhaps with a few changes, as if it were a story. Hell, speaking of high-budget action flicks, BMW did something similar a while back; they released a series of short action films[2] that featured their vehicles. Being something of a fan of action films myself, I rather enjoyed them, even though they were obviously commercials. [1] Thinking more on what "more media" is, I'm starting to come around to your position. Now, I certainly spend /more time/ consuming media like blog posts or technical books where the author was primarily remunerated in terms of an increased reputation compared to media produced for the money. However, even if you say I spend 100 hours reading tech books or blog posts for every 1 hour I spend watching big-budget action flicks, that one hour of action movie probably took more human hours to produce than the 100 hours of tech book or blog post. Of course, if you measure the the cost of production divided by the number of people watching it, then it's possible that the flashy action movie was actually cheaper to produce than the tech book, I mean, per human hour spent watching the thing. [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hire http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hire

MikeCapone 16y ago
Indeed, your first footnote is more in line with what I was thinking of. If everybody blocks ads on the things that are expensive to produce (The Atlantic's website, NYT/WSJ/WaPo/CNN/etc, pro-videos, whatever), I doubt that they can just switch to a "reputation" type of model. Fine for small blogs who don't make much money from ads anyway, but won't work for pro-site with big teams and big expenses.
- lsc 16y ago
  >If everybody blocks ads on the things that are expensive to produce (The Atlantic's website, NYT/WSJ/WaPo/CNN/etc, pro-videos, whatever), I doubt that they can just switch to a "reputation" type of model. Eh, I think that what value the newspaper houses will have going forward mostly has to do with their reputation, and how they can give legitimacy to a story or author, and how they keep the worst of the dregs out so that us consumers don't need to see them. As for video news content, last time I was in the cafe with CNN that I frequent, the story (a missing white girl puff piece) was cut with shots of a video camera focusing on a computer monitor that was reloading twitter. I guess I'm not really a video news kind of guy, but I'm not really seeing how an enthusiast could do worse than that. Maybe I haven't spent enough time watching TV news to see the good stuff, but as far as I can tell, it's a wasteland. Now, video entertainment? the commercial publishing houses still have that sewed up tight.
  - MikeCapone 16y ago
    > Eh, I think that what value the newspaper houses will have going forward mostly has to do with their reputation, and how they can give legitimacy to a story or author, and how they keep the worst of the dregs out so that us consumers don't need to see them. I'm not sure I follow you. How is reputation supposed to pay the bills? If the newspaper/site can't sell ads anymore, how do they make money? > As for video news content, last time I was in the cafe with CNN that I frequent, the story (a missing white girl puff piece) was cut with shots of a video camera focusing on a computer monitor that was reloading twitter. I guess I'm not really a video news kind of guy, but I'm not really seeing how an enthusiast could do worse than that. Maybe I haven't spent enough time watching TV news to see the good stuff, but as far as I can tell, it's a wasteland. Sure there's tons of crap, but that goes for everything. 90%+ of anything is crap, including books, etc, but what about the good part? How do they make money on reputation? That's what I still don't understand. If you are a consultant with a blog, that makes sense, it drives other business. But if your main business is content creation, how does it help if nobody can sell ads and very few can make a living with high subscription fees.