Why the iPad is Destroying the Future of Journalism | Hacker News Reader

Why the iPad is Destroying the Future of Journalism

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27 pointsmattrepl17 comments

I think link-bait attention grabbing titles are part of the decline of journalism. Rather, I think they're a symptom of the disease.

The disease is the desire to profit from attention instead of value. The symptoms are inflammatory bullshit, poorly researched tripe, and the desire to create at much controversy as possible, instead of attempting to simply present facts and perhaps even intelligent analysis.

Yellow journalism isn't going anywhere, and publishers seem to be discovering that advertising (the primary way to get money when attention grabbing, instead of value-adding) doesn't cover their expenses. It makes it even harder to pay good journalists, especially when they're not necessarily writing those "DID SHIT JUST HIT THE FAN?" articles (tl;dr "No, not really").

In aggregate, the people willing to pay—actually pay—for news are the people who want news. Not bullshit.

Maybe there isn't hope for news in the long-term, but I see at least some in the possibility of an honest exchange of money for a service that I want (and we need)—journalism. I'd rather pay to see Cirque de Soleil if I'm in the mood for a show.

I think the term Journalism is misapplied here. Journalism (the collecting, editing and presenting of news) is going to be fine.

Traditional publishing is being shaken up but thats been heralded for some time. The iPad is just another nail in a coffin that's 90% done.

I have picked my nit for the day, now I need more coffee.

If you read carefully, you can see that I am not saying that journalism or publishing are dead. I am saying that the attempt to grasp at the model of the past is dead.

I don't agree that the iPad is a nail in the coffin. IMO, its impact on the future of journalism and publishing is vastly overestimated.

Why does the title not reflect that? Marketing copy?

No, a much more practical reason. I'm not so good at coming up with titles. =)

It's indirect. If publishers have difficulty reaching their audience, so do journalists.

Yes. It has been pointed our many times that, Publishing which involves averagely written news item targeting mass market is gone past the traditional model. That is where aggregators and social media platform triumps now.

However , the model of high-end journalism is already happening. Good research and analysis would always be in short supply and small focused teams who do that are already making gains. There is no reason why big companies cannot replicate this.

Definitely some interesting thoughts here, but the author is overreaching.

> Google/Yahoo news isn't the new model - they've been surpassed by Facebook already.

Including Yahoo here lends the sentence credibility because of how they have been failing at everything they try to do for years, but this is just projecting trends into the future with little justification. Facebook or Twitter have not yet proven that they can harvest all their data to produce a search engine that can rival Google. Without that they simply don't have the form factor to dominate news.

> The good news for media is that when they embraces the new model, I think they will make far more money than they ever have in the past due to the combination of broader distribution and better targeting leading to larger ad revenues.

This is incumbent on the aggregator having the right combination of UX acumen and generous profit sharing with publishers. But even if that pans out, "broader distribution" also means more competition for ever-thinner attention, and also the data available on the Internet may reveal that old advertising budgets were unjustified. If they aren't making more money, then publishers are not going to cede control to an aggregator, they'll go down with the ship if they have to.

Also, I don't think branded channels are going anywhere. People crave a certain amount of diversity. If Facebook comes to dominate news, however unlikely, there will be rebellion and many trendsetters will use something different, even if inferior, just for differences sake.

I read the first half of the article and couldn't find a point; I gave up. What is this article about??!?

I am sorry it takes a while to develop, but if you give it a chance you might find something interesting.

As Pascal said, I didn't have time to write a shorter one.

I was sure I heard that same quote before, but attributed to Mark Twain instead of Blaise Pascal. I looked it up on Google and, while there is some controversy, it seems as if Blaise was the first to say this.

http://www.famousquotes.com/show/1045873/

I know this is unrelated to the original post, but it's just another example of what we can learn from these little insightful comments on Hacker News even if it is not what they intended to teach. I know that whenever I say this quote again, I will make sure to properly attribute it.

I believe it was Pascal in his famous correspondence with de Fermat on probability.

This reads more like "why the iPad will catch on as an eBook reader, but not for other types of reading". When I read books I want to be immersed... when I read magazines or newspapers, I actually like the ability to have a wikipedia tab open to look up stuff, and the ability to dive deep on certain topics -- while still maintaining context of the original story.

1. Why is the ipad considered an eReader, when it is just a little computer? I thought eReader meant using electrically-modifiable ink, not light-based retina-burners.

2. As a second point, my android device is a little baby computer, with a kinda lame phone application. It's not a 'smart' phone. It's the progression of ubiquitous computing.

3. I don't have fucking apps on my android device. I have applications, or programs. Just because it is on my baby computer (not smartphone), it doesn't mean it is not just a another program.

Nit-pick done.

To think I read the whole lot of this poorly written speculation, only to finish with "when they embraces the new model"

Should this article be titled "How the iPad is Destroying the Future of Journalism?"

This article is nonsense link-bait. Just because someone paid $500 for an iPad doesn't mean they're going to pay 500% mark-up on digital magazines that cost the publisher effectively nothing. People aren't stupid.

The iPad isn't destroying the future of journalism, publisher's are. They're shooting themselves in the foot.

This is a much better article: http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20101229/just-because-i-s...

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