The Result Of Pissing Off Most Of The Market.
US newspaper owners, their advertising revenue evaporating, their circulation declining and their readership going online to get news for free, are fighting mad.
The enemy? Websites that use their stories without paying for them.
“We are mad as hell, and we are not going to take it any more,” said the chairman of the Associated Press, a cooperative of over 1,400 US newspapers, borrowing a line from the anchorman character in the 1976 movie “Network.”
They are missing the point.
If newspapers really want to survive they should:
1) Quit pandering to the bottom half of consumers. Center-of-the-road and right-wing newspapers are thriving.
2) Report the news accurately – this would cause a decline in the blogosphere as we wouldn’t have as much material to poke holes through and make fun of. Realize that the resulting links you get are actually valuable to your Internet site.
3) Create a new model – newsprint is dead. Immediate gratification wins over “12 hours late’ news. Plus, it’s not green – and the failing newspapers’ audience represents the bulk of green activists guaranteeing a further decline.
I decided long ago that I won’t pay for a product that insults my views, and skews the truth to promote a hidden agenda.
April 8th, 2009 at 10:47 am
The artical mentioned the slowness of the courts. I can see that – it would be a year or two before anything was clarified by the courts one way or the other. Probably too late for a lot of papers by then. Too bad so sad.
April 8th, 2009 at 11:18 am
Oh … I see … the newspapers will invent something like the music industry’s DRM (digital rights management) to prevent pirating their left-wing junk?
… that should work well. Just look how successful DRM was for the recording industry!
” …Sony BMG Plans to Drop DRM
The last major label will throw in the towel on digital rights management and prepare to fight Apple for valuable download revenues …”
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jan2008/tc2008013_398775.htm