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Yep. All ad money went to zuck, brin, and page.

• Applejinx 5y ago
  Upvoting this grayed-out comment. Like it or not, overly generalized/personalized or not, this is still an important truth about how journalism is sustained under capitalism. Extremely large quantities of money have been removed from the business models of traditional, worker-employing journalism and redirected to Google, Facebook etc. to the point where I don't understand how any of the traditional old school businesses remain functioning at all. Hell, Craigslist struggles, and Craigslist was an early wave of the internet hurting what newspapers do. "Yep. All ad money went to zuck, brin, and page" is glib, but does not deserve this degree of downvoting. In important ways, it's the truth.
  • luckylion 5y ago
    Not sure about Craigslist. How is anyone expected not to struggle when they seem to have done little in terms of improvements in 25 years? I checked whether it's still alive and it had a few listings in Berlin, one of which may or may not be offering to sell a baby, so at least it's kind of a weird lawless place, but I'm not sure that's enough to run a business on (might be good enough for a few reddit threads exploring creepy stuff though). I'm sure that ad spending has shifted online, but traditional media companies have been losing audience before Google launched News and Facebook started to dominate. There's plenty to blame, and the web as a whole probably played a part, but I'm not sure it's the primary driver. Before there were online alternatives, there was TV or just not getting "the news" at all. Relying on not having competition feels like a bad idea with regards to being a sustainable business.