4 ms·

There are two major effects going on that are hurting publishers. 1. Consumers don't need companies to move content around for them so much anymore. When compa

by netsp 17y ago

There are two major effects going on that are hurting publishers. 1. Consumers don't need companies to move content around for them so much anymore. When companies were in charge of this job you could control them with things like copyright laws. Now you can't. 2. Advertising is being turned upside down. A lot of advertising is/was probably really over inflated anyway, companies paying a lot for ads that don't do much for them. The move online exposed publishers to more competition & easier scrutiny. The online move may have made ads less valuable too. It's complicated and opaque. Advertising always has been that way. When a business model is built on advertising, you have two points of failure: People stop reading, advertisers stop advertising. Either one kills the whole thing. Since these two things happening at the same time but aren't really related, a lot of people are going to understand things wrong. Lately a lot of journalists that are normally smart when covering politics or wars are covering 'The Fate of Publishing.' They are misreading a lot of things. Their interest was sparked when cheques started bouncing and their articles are an insight into the kind of mistakes smart people with a vested interest are going to make.

bootload 17y ago
"... When a business model is built on advertising, you have two points of failure: People stop reading, advertisers stop advertising. Either one kills the whole thing. ..." Excellent point.
netsp 17y ago
To illustrate the last point, a lot of journalists love the explanation that what is happening now is a result of the change in ownership that happened 15-25 years ago away from families. They wanted to increase margins by reducing costs (journalists, etc.). The lower quality has finally caught up with these. For example: It was a time of “greed is good” in American capitalism, and newspapers were still profitable in those decades. The old family owners were bought out by chains that sought returns of 10 to 15 percent a year, far more than the former owners had ever expected. The new owners’ first priority was to keep the share prices up, so they had to keep the profits high, so they started cutting costs–and the biggest cost in running a newspaper is the journalists. There are few newspapers in the United States that employ even half as many journalists as they had 15 years ago. Yet news-gathering was and remains a highly labour-intensive business. In effect, the new owners and managers gutted the content in order to maintain their high profit margins. Now, most of them are out on golf courses, and the newspapers they ran are on the rocks. The normally insightful Gwynne Dyer: http://www.straight.com/node/246627 http://www.straight.com/node/246627 I have heard variations of this reasoning a few time in the last month or so.

by netsp 17y ago

bootload 17y ago

"... When a business model is built on advertising, you have two points of failure: People stop reading, advertisers stop advertising. Either one kills the whole thing. ..." Excellent point.

netsp 17y ago

To illustrate the last point, a lot of journalists love the explanation that what is happening now is a result of the change in ownership that happened 15-25 years ago away from families. They wanted to increase margins by reducing costs (journalists, etc.). The lower quality has finally caught up with these. For example: It was a time of “greed is good” in American capitalism, and newspapers were still profitable in those decades. The old family owners were bought out by chains that sought returns of 10 to 15 percent a year, far more than the former owners had ever expected. The new owners’ first priority was to keep the share prices up, so they had to keep the profits high, so they started cutting costs–and the biggest cost in running a newspaper is the journalists. There are few newspapers in the United States that employ even half as many journalists as they had 15 years ago. Yet news-gathering was and remains a highly labour-intensive business. In effect, the new owners and managers gutted the content in order to maintain their high profit margins. Now, most of them are out on golf courses, and the newspapers they ran are on the rocks. The normally insightful Gwynne Dyer: http://www.straight.com/node/246627 http://www.straight.com/node/246627 I have heard variations of this reasoning a few time in the last month or so.