8 ms·

Macworld lays off most staff

106 points by MattRogish 12y ago

LandonAB 12y ago
That sucks. I realize Macworld still exists but won't be the same. Losing a lot of great writers that I've enjoyed for years.
bhouston 12y ago
What is the catalyts for this? Apple's market share is similar to what is was a few years ago. Is there a decline in ad revenues? What is the reason for this.
- guywithabike 12y ago
  Declining print subscriptions, most likely, and pressures to increase profit margins. They're ceasing print publication, but continuing to operate the website. This is unfortunate, but that's the nature of publishing in this newfangled media landscape. (As they say.)
- muglug 12y ago
  The growth of tech websites has made print-based magazines extremely difficult to operate at profit. While there are far more people using Apple devices, there are also much larger support communities for them as well, so a printed magazine is largely redundant.
- bane 12y ago
  The magazine market is running on fumes. Most of the print media companies haven't been able to replace the kind of revenue they used to see from subscriptions and in-print magazine advertisements in the on-line world.
- benologist 12y ago
  It seems like there's a lot of competition for "apple rumors" in general but I think the worst damage comes from within - the entire tech reporting industry just plagiarizes and cannibalizes other people's work, it doesn't require as much talent or manpower to reword articles.
- tdicola 12y ago
  Print media is dying.
  - lutusp 12y ago
    No, actually, print media are dying, one medium at a time.
- tolmasky 12y ago
  The magazine market seems to be the worst possible use case for print, especially in the tech sector. With newspapers, at least you are only ever 1 day or maybe 1 week (sunday edition) behind the news, and its all general interest so there's probably something your reader hasn't read about in there. On the contrary, look at the core demographic of a tech magazine to begin with: people obsessed enough to buy an entire magazine about one company's products. Add to that that that company's devotees are tech savvy and want the information yesterday, and you have a recipe for disaster for a magazine that comes out a month later with info.
  - spike021 12y ago
    Maybe a solution would be to focus on more in-depth style articles that cover exclusive information. I'm not sure that there's enough creativity around today for a publisher to be comfortable doing it but that'd be a way to produce non-daily content, if that makes sense.
- ddebernardy 12y ago
  There isn't much worth reading on the site, except perhaps the occasional Macalope column and an occasional OSX-related tip. If you're into reading columns and opinion pieces, there are much better blogs and sites, e.g. Daring Fireball, Roughly Drafted, Recode. If you're looking for detailed reviews and specs there are again much better blogs and sites, e.g. Anandtech, Ars Technica. And if you're looking for rumors, there are yet again much better blogs and sites, e.g. AppleInsider, MacRumors. And there's Twitter, and HN, and what not for live coverage of news events. And their site's redesign made it slow as hell on low-end iDevices. In short the site brings little to no value to the table. Or then I'm too young or too old or too dumb to understand what that value is.
- declan 12y ago
  My guess (as someone who worked for a decade+ as a journalist before leaving to create http://recent.io/ http://recent.io/) is increased competition for readers and advertising dollars. What <guywithabike> said is correct, especially the decline of print. Who wants to wait a month or two to find out more about yesterday's watch announcement? How many HN readers are actually paying for a print subscription to MacWorld? Also, even if MacWorld moved entirely online, it's not like its web site is one of the only places to find this info, as the print magazine was in the 1980s. A lot of news organizations that are fierce competitors now simply didn't exist a decade or two ago. Hence today's major layoffs as opposed to reassigning the existing staff to the web. (When I look at the Recent.io knowledge graph, the top of the list of news organizations that cover Apple includes: Fool.com, Cult of Mac, Silicon Alley Insider, BGR, and TUAW.) I wouldn't be surprised to see MacWorld with legacy costs and pay structures that make it less competitive against these upstarts. Some of the ex-MacWorld journalists who are freshly unemployed are looking for jobs, so if you know of anyone who's hiring in this area, I'm sure they'd appreciate the pointer: https://twitter.com/PhilipMichaels/status/509752573763407873 https://twitter.com/PhilipMichaels/status/509752573763407873 https://twitter.com/jsnell/status/509749300683735041 https://twitter.com/jsnell/status/509749300683735041 https://twitter.com/danfrakes/status/509756139831975936 https://twitter.com/danfrakes/status/509756139831975936
  - brotoss 12y ago
    My only print subscription is Bloomberg Businessweek. Seeing the week's cover in my mailbox is a highlight of my Saturday. But I got three years for $20.
- ChuckMcM 12y ago
  The transition to mixed print/digital or all digital. Not handled well by magazine people. Some are making the transition (The Economist, Popular Mechanics) some are not (MacWorld and pretty much every other IDG title).
- bdcravens 12y ago
  The only time I've ever bought a copy was when I was flying and needed something to read while taking off and landing, and even those days are gone now. Pretty sure I read maybe one page.
- petercooper 12y ago
  Online advertising revenues per reader are through the floor compared to magazines, and everyone's going online now. You can sell a page in a magazine going out to 20-30,000 people for $5,000 or more. Getting $100+ CPM on a Web page doesn't happen.
eli 12y ago
Bigger than Macworld. IDG, the parent company, has seen better days. They killed the print editions of Computerworld and CSO not long ago.
- erickhill 12y ago
  They started with InfoWorld in 2007.
  - eli 12y ago
    I guess my point was this says a lot more about legacy print publishing than about macs.
basseq 12y ago
Sad day. I still have a bunch of old Macworld issues. Though that name seems like such an anachronism. The Apple universe isn't so much "Mac" anymore.
orbitur 12y ago
I think it's worth noting that they let staff cover the event yesterday, and then surprised (some of) them with a layoff today. Classy.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - larrys 12y ago
    "Or waited a while after?" Perhaps they think that there is a money tree that you just shake to pay employee salaries. I think a comment like the parent (or perhaps that attitude) comes from a failure to realize that in the traditional business world business needs to operate at a profit. There is no runway like the startup runway. Business and life isn't fair and it's not about hurt feelings. And you can't let personal emotions and feelings get in the way of sound business decisions. (This comes from someone who has and has seen what happens as a result...) It's entirely possible that the laid off employees were fully aware of the pending demise and failed to take their own action first to their benefit (which for sure they would have done with "2 weeks notice" if they could).
    - caster_cp 12y ago
      While I see your point, I cannot agree with you. Business is not separated from the people that form it. Yes, good businesses are profitable. Yes, if it weren't for the profits, there should be no businesses. But from my point of view, when you hire someone to work for you, you have some moral (if not legal) obligations with that person. You could say that laying them off was "good, financially". Maybe it was even the only thing to do. As I don't know the specifics, I don't blame Macworld for that. Although, it is part of your businesses COSTS dealing correctly with your employees. Making theses costs disappear is not "maximizing profit". That is turning your head on a cost you have to pay in order for your business to work. If you do not do that, you will pay the consequences. Dealing incorrectly with people will hurt you not in a way you can represent in your books, but will definitely hurt you. Good businessmen are wise if they treat their employees well. It need not be for a higher sense of morality (although it should be), as there are at least a couple of good self-interested reasons to do so.
than 12y ago
MacWorld was such a big part of my childhood, and a catalyst for why I'm able to make a living making things on the web today. I hope the talented writers and editors who've been laid off get snapped up quickly.
jacquesm 12y ago
IDG is slowly dying. I don't think they'll see 2025, possibly not even 2020.
yarou 12y ago
I think it speaks volumes to the downward trend of Apple these days.
- doe88 12y ago
  or the print business.
  - ilikemustard 12y ago
    No no no, clearly it's all because of Apple. All other print magazines are thriving!!! /s
  - petercooper 12y ago
    Yes, their/tech magazines' print business. A lot of print publications are doing well and even growing, but print is now basically a luxury world where the best 10% are thriving and the worst 90% are dying.. whereas it used to be more balanced.
- josteink 12y ago
  More like dead trees delivered at your door-step a month after things happened. Apple mags will just be the first to go. The rest will eventually follow.
  - Someone 12y ago
    First? http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_World http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_World: "On July 10, 2013 owner IDG announced that the magazine would cease its 30-year print run. The August 2013 issue was the last printed of PC World magazine, future issues will be digital-only." (Once) famous earlier examples: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr_Dobbs http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr_Dobbs: "In January 2009 Jonathan Erickson, the editor-in-chief, announced the magazine would become a section of InformationWeek called Dr Dobb's Report. and a Web site." http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte_(magazine) http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte_(magazine): "Print publication ceased in 1998 and online publication in 2013"
- 12y ago
marssaxman 12y ago
I did not realize that Macworld still existed.
smackfu 12y ago
They could have shuttered the print magazine and kept the staff on to write for the website. Like all the other tech websites out there. Wonder why they didn't do that.
- eli 12y ago
  They are. But many of them are now freelancers instead of fulltime.
themonk 12y ago
This might be a good case study for dying traditional form of online media. Credit goes to random dance of Google SERP. As per Alexa, search traffic (for macworld.com) is gone down from 50% to 30% of total traffic, in three months. Google decided to do a (un)fair distribution of traffic. Niche content companies should remain lean to survive.
munificent 12y ago
Today is a great time to be a writer. There are virtually no middlemen between you putting together a sentence and millions being able to read it. There are countless communities where you can find people to give you good feedback to hone your craft. Unfortunately, that also means it's a really terrible time to be a writer for a living. Like every job that is (a) creative and (b) can be distributed digitally, almost all of the money is falling out of it.
- jerf 12y ago
  If you're trying this seriously, consider Patreon. I support some obscure stuff, and that obscure stuff is currently trending between "lucrative hobby" to "middle-class job pay". You still have to put in the work in the first place, of course, but I think the situation is slowly swinging around to being able to make a living at it again. But... not everybody is going to be able to make a living at it, and that's just not going to change, ever.
  - TillE 12y ago
    Patreon is a very interesting development, but I think it's crucial to be a personality and not just someone producing good work. People like supporting...well, people. But it's exciting to see a writer like Cara Ellison get enough money to live and work on, or a group like RedLetterMedia get an extra $100k/year to make more and better stuff. People had been talking about direct audience support for years, and Patreon has proven that it can work.
  - munificent 12y ago
    Patreon is on my radar. I'm really excited about the idea of micropatronage, or just patronage in general. I think it's a workable idea but it needs a certain amount of critical mass before it can swing culture enough to be self-sustaining.
- aikah 12y ago
  > almost all of the money is falling out of it. Well no money because nobody's paying for it,and since nobody's paying for it the content is usually average at best. Free information is great,but let's face it,quality news cost money and time. What have we today?in the tech world? content farms (readwrite,thenextweb,techcrunch,mashable...) where writers often know nothing about the subject,or are using social justice warfare to manifacture outrage in order to generate impressions( http://readwrite.com/2014/09/09/apple-no-women-on-stage-diversity-iwatch http://readwrite.com/2014/09/09/apple-no-women-on-stage-dive... ). How can that kind of news scale? readers are not idiots. But most readers ,at the same time,refuse to pay for anything,so the money has to come from somewhere,so we get sponsorised news too... Real journalists or writers have skills,what's missing is a plateform where pro journalists could monetize their skills to corporations directly,to write serious reports on a specific subject for instance,intelligence,sourcing,or just writing for the web(for commercial purposes,i.e. writing for content for a corporate website).
u124556 12y ago
Why? where they in charge of the streaming yesterday?
shenanigoat 12y ago
Hi, I just stopped by to say 'basic income'.
- runn1ng 12y ago
  Hey, I just stopped by to downvote you.
cdnsteve 12y ago
We're at the turning point where great journalists are getting pushed out of their careers because jobs are vanishing under their feet. The content model has completely changed, some argue for the better. In the long term I fear the quality of content written will suffer, article accuracy will be reduced and we'll all be reading each others blogs about medicine [insert other topics here] (without ever having studied it or any previous knowledge on the subject). The Internet of "everyone's an expert" overnight is not something I'm looking forward to. Just look at all the overnight social media professionals. Many of these people don't have an understanding of how the Internet (or email) even works but they'll throw down the hot keywords to make themselves sound important; KPI's, User experience, etc etc. I still feel there's huge opportunity in the learning space for online education. If I was a journalist or writer with specialized knowledge in a certain field, I'd focus my attention to that and bring my friends.
- Touche 12y ago
  Journalists job is not to know about the thing they are covering; usually they have only slightly more knowledge than the layman; their job is to have relationships with people who can give them information the public doesn't easily have. These relationships that lead to information becoming available won't and isn't going away, the people doing the reporting (now called bloggers) just aren't getting paid (much) for it. It's now a hobby. And that's ok. As far as writings from experts; science journals still exist and AFAIK are not hurting or are in danger of being scaled back. Maybe someone with more knowledge can speak on the state of academic journals.

106 points by MattRogish 12y ago

That sucks. I realize Macworld still exists but won't be the same. Losing a lot of great writers that I've enjoyed for years.

bhouston 12y ago

What is the catalyts for this? Apple's market share is similar to what is was a few years ago. Is there a decline in ad revenues? What is the reason for this.

guywithabike 12y ago
Declining print subscriptions, most likely, and pressures to increase profit margins. They're ceasing print publication, but continuing to operate the website. This is unfortunate, but that's the nature of publishing in this newfangled media landscape. (As they say.)
muglug 12y ago
The growth of tech websites has made print-based magazines extremely difficult to operate at profit. While there are far more people using Apple devices, there are also much larger support communities for them as well, so a printed magazine is largely redundant.
bane 12y ago
The magazine market is running on fumes. Most of the print media companies haven't been able to replace the kind of revenue they used to see from subscriptions and in-print magazine advertisements in the on-line world.
benologist 12y ago
It seems like there's a lot of competition for "apple rumors" in general but I think the worst damage comes from within - the entire tech reporting industry just plagiarizes and cannibalizes other people's work, it doesn't require as much talent or manpower to reword articles.
tdicola 12y ago
Print media is dying.
- lutusp 12y ago
  No, actually, print media are dying, one medium at a time.
tolmasky 12y ago
The magazine market seems to be the worst possible use case for print, especially in the tech sector. With newspapers, at least you are only ever 1 day or maybe 1 week (sunday edition) behind the news, and its all general interest so there's probably something your reader hasn't read about in there. On the contrary, look at the core demographic of a tech magazine to begin with: people obsessed enough to buy an entire magazine about one company's products. Add to that that that company's devotees are tech savvy and want the information yesterday, and you have a recipe for disaster for a magazine that comes out a month later with info.
- spike021 12y ago
  Maybe a solution would be to focus on more in-depth style articles that cover exclusive information. I'm not sure that there's enough creativity around today for a publisher to be comfortable doing it but that'd be a way to produce non-daily content, if that makes sense.
ddebernardy 12y ago
There isn't much worth reading on the site, except perhaps the occasional Macalope column and an occasional OSX-related tip. If you're into reading columns and opinion pieces, there are much better blogs and sites, e.g. Daring Fireball, Roughly Drafted, Recode. If you're looking for detailed reviews and specs there are again much better blogs and sites, e.g. Anandtech, Ars Technica. And if you're looking for rumors, there are yet again much better blogs and sites, e.g. AppleInsider, MacRumors. And there's Twitter, and HN, and what not for live coverage of news events. And their site's redesign made it slow as hell on low-end iDevices. In short the site brings little to no value to the table. Or then I'm too young or too old or too dumb to understand what that value is.
declan 12y ago
My guess (as someone who worked for a decade+ as a journalist before leaving to create http://recent.io/ http://recent.io/) is increased competition for readers and advertising dollars. What <guywithabike> said is correct, especially the decline of print. Who wants to wait a month or two to find out more about yesterday's watch announcement? How many HN readers are actually paying for a print subscription to MacWorld? Also, even if MacWorld moved entirely online, it's not like its web site is one of the only places to find this info, as the print magazine was in the 1980s. A lot of news organizations that are fierce competitors now simply didn't exist a decade or two ago. Hence today's major layoffs as opposed to reassigning the existing staff to the web. (When I look at the Recent.io knowledge graph, the top of the list of news organizations that cover Apple includes: Fool.com, Cult of Mac, Silicon Alley Insider, BGR, and TUAW.) I wouldn't be surprised to see MacWorld with legacy costs and pay structures that make it less competitive against these upstarts. Some of the ex-MacWorld journalists who are freshly unemployed are looking for jobs, so if you know of anyone who's hiring in this area, I'm sure they'd appreciate the pointer: https://twitter.com/PhilipMichaels/status/509752573763407873 https://twitter.com/PhilipMichaels/status/509752573763407873 https://twitter.com/jsnell/status/509749300683735041 https://twitter.com/jsnell/status/509749300683735041 https://twitter.com/danfrakes/status/509756139831975936 https://twitter.com/danfrakes/status/509756139831975936
- brotoss 12y ago
  My only print subscription is Bloomberg Businessweek. Seeing the week's cover in my mailbox is a highlight of my Saturday. But I got three years for $20.
ChuckMcM 12y ago
The transition to mixed print/digital or all digital. Not handled well by magazine people. Some are making the transition (The Economist, Popular Mechanics) some are not (MacWorld and pretty much every other IDG title).
bdcravens 12y ago
The only time I've ever bought a copy was when I was flying and needed something to read while taking off and landing, and even those days are gone now. Pretty sure I read maybe one page.
petercooper 12y ago
Online advertising revenues per reader are through the floor compared to magazines, and everyone's going online now. You can sell a page in a magazine going out to 20-30,000 people for $5,000 or more. Getting $100+ CPM on a Web page doesn't happen.

eli 12y ago

Bigger than Macworld. IDG, the parent company, has seen better days. They killed the print editions of Computerworld and CSO not long ago.

erickhill 12y ago
They started with InfoWorld in 2007.
- eli 12y ago
  I guess my point was this says a lot more about legacy print publishing than about macs.

basseq 12y ago

Sad day. I still have a bunch of old Macworld issues. Though that name seems like such an anachronism. The Apple universe isn't so much "Mac" anymore.

orbitur 12y ago

I think it's worth noting that they let staff cover the event yesterday, and then surprised (some of) them with a layoff today. Classy.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- larrys 12y ago
  "Or waited a while after?" Perhaps they think that there is a money tree that you just shake to pay employee salaries. I think a comment like the parent (or perhaps that attitude) comes from a failure to realize that in the traditional business world business needs to operate at a profit. There is no runway like the startup runway. Business and life isn't fair and it's not about hurt feelings. And you can't let personal emotions and feelings get in the way of sound business decisions. (This comes from someone who has and has seen what happens as a result...) It's entirely possible that the laid off employees were fully aware of the pending demise and failed to take their own action first to their benefit (which for sure they would have done with "2 weeks notice" if they could).
  - caster_cp 12y ago
    While I see your point, I cannot agree with you. Business is not separated from the people that form it. Yes, good businesses are profitable. Yes, if it weren't for the profits, there should be no businesses. But from my point of view, when you hire someone to work for you, you have some moral (if not legal) obligations with that person. You could say that laying them off was "good, financially". Maybe it was even the only thing to do. As I don't know the specifics, I don't blame Macworld for that. Although, it is part of your businesses COSTS dealing correctly with your employees. Making theses costs disappear is not "maximizing profit". That is turning your head on a cost you have to pay in order for your business to work. If you do not do that, you will pay the consequences. Dealing incorrectly with people will hurt you not in a way you can represent in your books, but will definitely hurt you. Good businessmen are wise if they treat their employees well. It need not be for a higher sense of morality (although it should be), as there are at least a couple of good self-interested reasons to do so.

than 12y ago

MacWorld was such a big part of my childhood, and a catalyst for why I'm able to make a living making things on the web today. I hope the talented writers and editors who've been laid off get snapped up quickly.

jacquesm 12y ago

IDG is slowly dying. I don't think they'll see 2025, possibly not even 2020.

yarou 12y ago

I think it speaks volumes to the downward trend of Apple these days.

doe88 12y ago
or the print business.
- ilikemustard 12y ago
  No no no, clearly it's all because of Apple. All other print magazines are thriving!!! /s
- petercooper 12y ago
  Yes, their/tech magazines' print business. A lot of print publications are doing well and even growing, but print is now basically a luxury world where the best 10% are thriving and the worst 90% are dying.. whereas it used to be more balanced.
josteink 12y ago
More like dead trees delivered at your door-step a month after things happened. Apple mags will just be the first to go. The rest will eventually follow.
- Someone 12y ago
  First? http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_World http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_World: "On July 10, 2013 owner IDG announced that the magazine would cease its 30-year print run. The August 2013 issue was the last printed of PC World magazine, future issues will be digital-only." (Once) famous earlier examples: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr_Dobbs http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr_Dobbs: "In January 2009 Jonathan Erickson, the editor-in-chief, announced the magazine would become a section of InformationWeek called Dr Dobb's Report. and a Web site." http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte_(magazine) http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte_(magazine): "Print publication ceased in 1998 and online publication in 2013"
12y ago

marssaxman 12y ago

I did not realize that Macworld still existed.

smackfu 12y ago

They could have shuttered the print magazine and kept the staff on to write for the website. Like all the other tech websites out there. Wonder why they didn't do that.

eli 12y ago
They are. But many of them are now freelancers instead of fulltime.

themonk 12y ago

This might be a good case study for dying traditional form of online media. Credit goes to random dance of Google SERP. As per Alexa, search traffic (for macworld.com) is gone down from 50% to 30% of total traffic, in three months. Google decided to do a (un)fair distribution of traffic. Niche content companies should remain lean to survive.

munificent 12y ago

Today is a great time to be a writer. There are virtually no middlemen between you putting together a sentence and millions being able to read it. There are countless communities where you can find people to give you good feedback to hone your craft. Unfortunately, that also means it's a really terrible time to be a writer for a living. Like every job that is (a) creative and (b) can be distributed digitally, almost all of the money is falling out of it.

jerf 12y ago
If you're trying this seriously, consider Patreon. I support some obscure stuff, and that obscure stuff is currently trending between "lucrative hobby" to "middle-class job pay". You still have to put in the work in the first place, of course, but I think the situation is slowly swinging around to being able to make a living at it again. But... not everybody is going to be able to make a living at it, and that's just not going to change, ever.
- TillE 12y ago
  Patreon is a very interesting development, but I think it's crucial to be a personality and not just someone producing good work. People like supporting...well, people. But it's exciting to see a writer like Cara Ellison get enough money to live and work on, or a group like RedLetterMedia get an extra $100k/year to make more and better stuff. People had been talking about direct audience support for years, and Patreon has proven that it can work.
- munificent 12y ago
  Patreon is on my radar. I'm really excited about the idea of micropatronage, or just patronage in general. I think it's a workable idea but it needs a certain amount of critical mass before it can swing culture enough to be self-sustaining.
aikah 12y ago
> almost all of the money is falling out of it. Well no money because nobody's paying for it,and since nobody's paying for it the content is usually average at best. Free information is great,but let's face it,quality news cost money and time. What have we today?in the tech world? content farms (readwrite,thenextweb,techcrunch,mashable...) where writers often know nothing about the subject,or are using social justice warfare to manifacture outrage in order to generate impressions( http://readwrite.com/2014/09/09/apple-no-women-on-stage-diversity-iwatch http://readwrite.com/2014/09/09/apple-no-women-on-stage-dive... ). How can that kind of news scale? readers are not idiots. But most readers ,at the same time,refuse to pay for anything,so the money has to come from somewhere,so we get sponsorised news too... Real journalists or writers have skills,what's missing is a plateform where pro journalists could monetize their skills to corporations directly,to write serious reports on a specific subject for instance,intelligence,sourcing,or just writing for the web(for commercial purposes,i.e. writing for content for a corporate website).

u124556 12y ago

Why? where they in charge of the streaming yesterday?

shenanigoat 12y ago

Hi, I just stopped by to say 'basic income'.

runn1ng 12y ago
Hey, I just stopped by to downvote you.

cdnsteve 12y ago

We're at the turning point where great journalists are getting pushed out of their careers because jobs are vanishing under their feet. The content model has completely changed, some argue for the better. In the long term I fear the quality of content written will suffer, article accuracy will be reduced and we'll all be reading each others blogs about medicine [insert other topics here] (without ever having studied it or any previous knowledge on the subject). The Internet of "everyone's an expert" overnight is not something I'm looking forward to. Just look at all the overnight social media professionals. Many of these people don't have an understanding of how the Internet (or email) even works but they'll throw down the hot keywords to make themselves sound important; KPI's, User experience, etc etc. I still feel there's huge opportunity in the learning space for online education. If I was a journalist or writer with specialized knowledge in a certain field, I'd focus my attention to that and bring my friends.

Touche 12y ago
Journalists job is not to know about the thing they are covering; usually they have only slightly more knowledge than the layman; their job is to have relationships with people who can give them information the public doesn't easily have. These relationships that lead to information becoming available won't and isn't going away, the people doing the reporting (now called bloggers) just aren't getting paid (much) for it. It's now a hobby. And that's ok. As far as writings from experts; science journals still exist and AFAIK are not hurting or are in danger of being scaled back. Maybe someone with more knowledge can speak on the state of academic journals.