Hacker News Reader

Comment by mechanical_fish | Hacker News Reader

I agree with Ebert's points, but I would put it differently: People who persist in reading newspapers are being trained not to think. There are fewer and fewer such people, because newspapers have long since abandoned the thinking person's market.

Fortunately, this isn't the early 1990s anymore. If I want to read (e.g.) Roger Ebert I don't need to force my local paper to carry him.

View on HN

People still have a lot of respect for newspapers. For example, why are we allowed to talk about conspiracy theories on Hacker News when Roger Ebert writes about them in the paper, but not when they're on someone's blog?

because newspapers have long since abandoned the thinking person's market.

Are you referring to even the WSJ and The New York Times and the Financial Times? Or are you just thinking of the USA Today and local paper varieties?

I think he refers to The Economist.

What is supposed to replace newspapers?

Twitter! </Arrington>

Websites, of course. The real question is "What is supposed to replace advertising" because web advertising doesn't work very well. My guess: Rich non-media people like George Soros will bankroll news organizations. This already happens with some small political magazines.

Isn't that how it worked before the modern advertising industry?

No, before the modern advertising industry it was very cheap to start a newspaper so they were mostly owned by small businesses. The advertising model made it more expensive to run a newspaper which is why the news industry got taken over by wealthy families and then later corporations.

Wow, that is very surprising. Any links to read about this?

Manufacturing Consent (the book), specifically the section in the beginning about the ownership filter.

If you do "Look inside this book" and then "excerpt," it explains it in the first few pages of the book.

http://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Consent-Political-Econom...

Interesting. References? I want to read more.

Or maybe someone will come up with a way to target advertising to consumers in a way that doesn't suck, so you can make a living from a website with reasonable traffic. Adwords doesn't meet this criterion.

http://notesfromearth.com/2008/11/27/worst-google-ad-ever/

Keep in mind though, gossip sites like perezhilton make close to $1,000,000 per month.

Keep in mind that pornography is a 97 billion dollar international business. [1]. A dollar is a dollar is a dollar, yes? And yet, one reader of Commentary magazine is worth a million listeners of Howard Stern.

[1] http://www.editmymovies.com/pornography_statistics.html

I could spend an hour on that stat page.

I think the same type of people that only read newspapers won't migrate to anything better on the internet.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com