4 ms·

The problem is that news organizations didn't just get disrupted by digitization (more specifically the adtech innovation), they got disrupted without replaceme

The problem is that news organizations didn't just get disrupted by digitization (more specifically the adtech innovation), they got disrupted without replacement. In an era of rent-seeking digital business models, where trillion dollar digital oligopolies have become the only viable option to operate in the economy, nobody wants to do the hard work of news collection, processing and dissemination with its rather precarious economics. Adding insult to injury "AI" threatens to squeeze the last drop of blood left. This slow motion disruption (with uncertain and ugly end-states) plagues most other industries that deal heavily with information (finance, insurance etc.), more or less for the same reasons: digital illiteracy of management, short-termism and complacency from protected market silos etc. There is no valid reason why "adtech" is the thing that drives the entire digital universe. One can imagine a combination of "newstech" and "banktech" [1] and many other "industry-techs" that collectively reflect more accurately all the diverse services people need. What would a fit-for-purpose "newstech" platform look like? There are plenty of well-remunerated execs whose job is to figure it out. Free hint: open source software will eat the world. [1] Not everybody in the information spreading business is a digital laggard. Bloomberg built an empire on his early incarnation of "trader-tech" - but this is more an exception confirming the rule.

heresie-dabord 2y ago
> There is no valid reason why "adtech" is the thing that drives the entire digital universe. Every phrase that is conveyed/transmitted must be paid for somehow. If not state-funded, journalism must find funding that scales to cover the production costs. Advertising money is (a) abundant and (b) seeks the broadest possible delivery. The WWW (e.g. browsers, WWWtech) is an optimal match for ad money. For decades before, Advertisers and Journalism maintained one another in a state of equilibrium. Journalism cultivated an audience and was gatekeeper of what was "printable" (tolerable to its paying audience); Advertisers were gatekeepers of marketing gimmicks and brand reputation. These two tensions were complementary. An audience with education and money to spend represented value to journalism; the audience, together with advertising, paid the salaries, business costs, and legal fees of journalism. QED. But then came WWWtech, which gave Advertisers everything the latter ever wanted: access to motivated spenders, day and night, all the time, everywhere. WWW ads are relatively cheap to produce and fast to market; WWWtech provides a deluge of fascinating facts about the market. Journalism was jilted. So it reworked its channels. But good journalism is important to Democracy. People care about their communities, voters do need factual information. There should be astute, principled, critical evaluation of social and economic events, of government policies and corporate activities. Today, the only ways journalism is surviving (hardly) are through i) funding by the state and subscribers, or ii) by consolidating journalistic brands to deliver monetisable content that is unhitched from stabilising principles. State funding has risks but may be the most effective option. Otherwise, we see that Anything Goes, as Cole Porter said. Now the citizens of Democracy itself are struggling to understand why peace, order, good government, and factual information are so hard.
- Terretta 2y ago
  > Every phrase that is conveyed/transmitted must be paid for somehow. If not state-funded, journalism must find funding that scales to cover the production costs. For an earlier equilibrium, see "pamphleteering": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamphleteer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamphleteer Publishing static content is extraordinarily cheap. Even with a dynamic site, such as a wiki, you can serve millions of occasional readers for $20/month. As a 'newspaper' class resource, Wikipedia's all-in hosting for fully read/write content (meaning, visitors can edit, it's not static), is about $0.03 CPM, handling ~6.74B visits a month (80B visits a year) for $2.4M a year or $200,000/month. So that's 8 million visits a month for $20, as a R/W membership wiki instead of a RO static site. To be clear, this is not salaries. "Production costs" depend on whether someone has something to say and feels compelled to say it. The less meaningful the message to the messenger, they more they only say it for the money, and the more money it takes. Adding salaries to wikipedia's number drops from 8 million visits per $20 per month, to 400,000 visits per $20 per month. > State funding has risks but may be the most effective option. It's certainly enough, even de minimus. Even with salaries baked in, costs remain low enough for patronage, public funding, or subscription models instead of advertising models. At most any scale, the cost of saying something to the public is a rounding error.
  - pdonis 2y ago
    > Publishing static content is extraordinarily cheap. The main cost of reliable journalism isn't publishing the content. It's getting reliable content to publish.
    - Terretta 2y ago
      > isn't publishing the content Yes, I showed content costs 20x publishing cost if staffed + crowdsourced as in this example. > getting reliable content This is why I mentioned cost varying inversely with how compelled someone feels to say something. The additional 45M in my example buys you a lot of reporters even with overhead all-in.
      - 2y ago
gspencley 2y ago
While I would agree that there is a hole for certain news and information that isn't being filled (specifically investigative journalism and foreign affairs), I think there is a valid point to be made that, in the age of smart phones and social media, what use is there for the local newspaper and news network when if something happens close to you there is raw footage of it all over social media that shows exactly what happened without editorial. And that footage gets to you much quicker. Before the media companies can publish an article and find a way to spin it for sensationalism, complete with ads. In this regard, I think there is a replacement. And for local news, I would argue that in many instances the replacement is far better since it is quicker to publish and has the potential to be far more objective. EDIT: actually I think that hole is being filled, at least in part, by independent documentary filmmakers. What got disrupted were the mega conglomerates like Fox, CNN, MSNBC etc. And while spin and misinformation will always exist, because news is published by humans, I don't know why we would trust those conglomerates any more than any other random joe.
- dredmorbius 2y ago
  Investigative journalism is something rather more than happening to be in the right place with a camera and mic. Hard-hitting investigative journalism takes a long time, much research, analysis, interviews, FOIA requests, document leaks, etc., etc. It also all but inevitably requires some reasonably well-funded legal defence capacity as well. Publishers are known for their prodigious ink and paper budgets, but also legal retainers.
  - gspencley 2y ago
    Agreed. What's your point? I've watched some brilliantly produced independent documentaries where the filmmakers procured funding, went on the ground and did the hard work. MY point was that you don't need the backing of some biased mega-corp to greenlit these types of things.
    - dredmorbius 2y ago
      Local papers have local focus. Journalism is not solely data-capture. Local journalism is key to fighting corruption and malpractice by firms, government, nonprofits, and individuals. Taxes are higher and more regressive. Voter turnout is lower. And the impacts are regressive, hitting poorer households and communities more than wealthier ones. Local journalism provides insights and accountability. After a local newspaper closure, local facilities increase violations by 1.1% and penalties by 15.2%, indicating that the closures reduce firm monitoring by the press. This effect is not driven by the underlying economic conditions, the underlying local fraud environment, or the underlying firm conditions. Taken together, our findings indicate that local newspapers are an important monitor of firms’ misconduct. "When the local newspaper leaves town: The effects of local newspaper closures on corporate misconduct" <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0304405X2100372X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03044...> "We are becoming a nation of local news haves and have nots" We have known for some time that the decline of local news hurts local communities — lower voter turnout, more corruption, higher taxes, etc. What’s now clear is that the spread of news deserts is happening unequally. It has hurt poorer and older communities most — and is creating a nation of local news haves and have nots. <https://www.poynter.org/commentary/2022/decline-of-local-news-steven-waldman/ https://www.poynter.org/commentary/2022/decline-of-local-new...> Individual producers can undertake some of these functions, but to a far lesser degree than a well-funded journalistic institution with a mission of serving the public. (There are of course so-called "news" organisations which don't take a public-serving mission. That doesn't take away from the fact that there are also those which do.)

heresie-dabord 2y ago

> There is no valid reason why "adtech" is the thing that drives the entire digital universe. Every phrase that is conveyed/transmitted must be paid for somehow. If not state-funded, journalism must find funding that scales to cover the production costs. Advertising money is (a) abundant and (b) seeks the broadest possible delivery. The WWW (e.g. browsers, WWWtech) is an optimal match for ad money. For decades before, Advertisers and Journalism maintained one another in a state of equilibrium. Journalism cultivated an audience and was gatekeeper of what was "printable" (tolerable to its paying audience); Advertisers were gatekeepers of marketing gimmicks and brand reputation. These two tensions were complementary. An audience with education and money to spend represented value to journalism; the audience, together with advertising, paid the salaries, business costs, and legal fees of journalism. QED. But then came WWWtech, which gave Advertisers everything the latter ever wanted: access to motivated spenders, day and night, all the time, everywhere. WWW ads are relatively cheap to produce and fast to market; WWWtech provides a deluge of fascinating facts about the market. Journalism was jilted. So it reworked its channels. But good journalism is important to Democracy. People care about their communities, voters do need factual information. There should be astute, principled, critical evaluation of social and economic events, of government policies and corporate activities. Today, the only ways journalism is surviving (hardly) are through i) funding by the state and subscribers, or ii) by consolidating journalistic brands to deliver monetisable content that is unhitched from stabilising principles. State funding has risks but may be the most effective option. Otherwise, we see that Anything Goes, as Cole Porter said. Now the citizens of Democracy itself are struggling to understand why peace, order, good government, and factual information are so hard.

Terretta 2y ago
> Every phrase that is conveyed/transmitted must be paid for somehow. If not state-funded, journalism must find funding that scales to cover the production costs. For an earlier equilibrium, see "pamphleteering": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamphleteer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamphleteer Publishing static content is extraordinarily cheap. Even with a dynamic site, such as a wiki, you can serve millions of occasional readers for $20/month. As a 'newspaper' class resource, Wikipedia's all-in hosting for fully read/write content (meaning, visitors can edit, it's not static), is about $0.03 CPM, handling ~6.74B visits a month (80B visits a year) for $2.4M a year or $200,000/month. So that's 8 million visits a month for $20, as a R/W membership wiki instead of a RO static site. To be clear, this is not salaries. "Production costs" depend on whether someone has something to say and feels compelled to say it. The less meaningful the message to the messenger, they more they only say it for the money, and the more money it takes. Adding salaries to wikipedia's number drops from 8 million visits per $20 per month, to 400,000 visits per $20 per month. > State funding has risks but may be the most effective option. It's certainly enough, even de minimus. Even with salaries baked in, costs remain low enough for patronage, public funding, or subscription models instead of advertising models. At most any scale, the cost of saying something to the public is a rounding error.
- pdonis 2y ago
  > Publishing static content is extraordinarily cheap. The main cost of reliable journalism isn't publishing the content. It's getting reliable content to publish.
  - Terretta 2y ago
    > isn't publishing the content Yes, I showed content costs 20x publishing cost if staffed + crowdsourced as in this example. > getting reliable content This is why I mentioned cost varying inversely with how compelled someone feels to say something. The additional 45M in my example buys you a lot of reporters even with overhead all-in.
    - 2y ago

gspencley 2y ago

While I would agree that there is a hole for certain news and information that isn't being filled (specifically investigative journalism and foreign affairs), I think there is a valid point to be made that, in the age of smart phones and social media, what use is there for the local newspaper and news network when if something happens close to you there is raw footage of it all over social media that shows exactly what happened without editorial. And that footage gets to you much quicker. Before the media companies can publish an article and find a way to spin it for sensationalism, complete with ads. In this regard, I think there is a replacement. And for local news, I would argue that in many instances the replacement is far better since it is quicker to publish and has the potential to be far more objective. EDIT: actually I think that hole is being filled, at least in part, by independent documentary filmmakers. What got disrupted were the mega conglomerates like Fox, CNN, MSNBC etc. And while spin and misinformation will always exist, because news is published by humans, I don't know why we would trust those conglomerates any more than any other random joe.

dredmorbius 2y ago
Investigative journalism is something rather more than happening to be in the right place with a camera and mic. Hard-hitting investigative journalism takes a long time, much research, analysis, interviews, FOIA requests, document leaks, etc., etc. It also all but inevitably requires some reasonably well-funded legal defence capacity as well. Publishers are known for their prodigious ink and paper budgets, but also legal retainers.
- gspencley 2y ago
  Agreed. What's your point? I've watched some brilliantly produced independent documentaries where the filmmakers procured funding, went on the ground and did the hard work. MY point was that you don't need the backing of some biased mega-corp to greenlit these types of things.
  - dredmorbius 2y ago
    Local papers have local focus. Journalism is not solely data-capture. Local journalism is key to fighting corruption and malpractice by firms, government, nonprofits, and individuals. Taxes are higher and more regressive. Voter turnout is lower. And the impacts are regressive, hitting poorer households and communities more than wealthier ones. Local journalism provides insights and accountability. After a local newspaper closure, local facilities increase violations by 1.1% and penalties by 15.2%, indicating that the closures reduce firm monitoring by the press. This effect is not driven by the underlying economic conditions, the underlying local fraud environment, or the underlying firm conditions. Taken together, our findings indicate that local newspapers are an important monitor of firms’ misconduct. "When the local newspaper leaves town: The effects of local newspaper closures on corporate misconduct" <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0304405X2100372X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03044...> "We are becoming a nation of local news haves and have nots" We have known for some time that the decline of local news hurts local communities — lower voter turnout, more corruption, higher taxes, etc. What’s now clear is that the spread of news deserts is happening unequally. It has hurt poorer and older communities most — and is creating a nation of local news haves and have nots. <https://www.poynter.org/commentary/2022/decline-of-local-news-steven-waldman/ https://www.poynter.org/commentary/2022/decline-of-local-new...> Individual producers can undertake some of these functions, but to a far lesser degree than a well-funded journalistic institution with a mission of serving the public. (There are of course so-called "news" organisations which don't take a public-serving mission. That doesn't take away from the fact that there are also those which do.)