At The Washington Post, Jeff Bezos has the paper thinking global domination
cjr.org
cjr.org
The origin of many of the hires could be traced to a phrase Bezos had used several times during his visit to the Post in September, when he said that the newsroom needed to "take advantage of the gifts the internet gives us."
...explaining that he was comfortable simultaneously running a secretive company and owning a newspaper, because he believed that "powerful minds can contain powerful inconsistencies."
"All businesses need to be young forever. If your customer base ages with you, you’re Woolworth’s"
This guys is full of gems. I'm not sure if that insight will be enough to save the Washington Post. It doesn't seem like any number of gadgets and no reasonable amount of money will be enough to save the newspaper industry. Jeff Bezos is one of the few people who could do it, but it's not clear whether he's fully committed to the challenge. I'll miss newspapers, but I bet they'll be replaced by something cooler.
Do you think that the sharing would significantly impact the overall number of subscribers? Obviously you're of the opinion that the price point could be raised to compensate, but I'm not even sure the overall number would drop a significant percent.
Add in the fact that there's an extraordinary amount of pressure on journalists to produce unrealistic product goals and you've got a recipe for a mass exodus, paving the way for a decline in the industry.
Next, consider that you've really never paid for news. You've always paid for the advertisements in the newspaper. That's the business model journalism is built on. So people don't want to pay for something they've historically not paid for.
So what you're seeing now are a bunch of experiments in journalism business models. After a while, you'll find several that really work. In fact, I think there are several that show promise now. The only problem is you need someone with the financial ability, vision and appreciation for the work to back the industry, and I think Bezos has those things.
The bottom line is that there is always going to be a demand for newspapers and news in general. In fact, people have been predicting the demise of the newspaper since TV was invented. But the bottom line is that newspapers just fill too many roles for them to ever become obsolete. Also, I need lining for my bird cage, so I'm gonna go grab a paper now.
Still, particular newspapers have already gone extinct by the hundrends, and the trend is not showing any signs of reversing.
>They are one of the only permanent records of history. Digital publications disappear like yesterday's rainclouds.
Sure, but it's not like people, the average consumer etc, appreciates that fact or gives a damn about "permanently recording history". Most of them don't even print their digital photos, maybe 5-10 of the best ones, whereas they used to have albums with 100s of family photos back in the day. (And most don't even backup their digital photos).
That newspapers served as "permanent records of history" was a byproduct of them being available, dominant and profitable. Not something people specifically bought them and subsidized them for.
>There will always -- always -- be demand for physical products, because as humans we are very tactile.
Well, tablets are quite tactile too. And people have quit CDs and vinyl for mp3s and digital downloads/piracy.
Sure, there's still vinyl pressed. But it's small quantities and is consumed without any wider cultural context in the society, just by a tiny niche of music fans. And pressing vinyl is a $1000 affair -- so you can afford to press 300 copies for stores etc, where running a newspaper is extremely costly, and a print edition even more so. So the difficulty of continuing one is not the same as continuing the other (vinyl) niche tradition.
>The bottom line is that there is always going to be a demand for newspapers and news in general. In fact, people have been predicting the demise of the newspaper since TV was invented.
That's a common logical error. The belief that if people have been making the same prediction that didn't pan out, it will never pan out.
Not to mention: who said it didn't pan out? When radio/TV was invented, newspapers might not have vanished, but they lost a lot of their cachet as THE source of news and information.
The loss in readers was ofset by an increase in education and thus an increase in a middle class wanting to read newspapers. But that was a historical accident. The spread of the internet didn't see any such simultaneous increase of middle class or literacy (probably because they had already hit a ceiling during the seventies).
And TV, back in the day, had limited chanels and was live only. So not much of competition for the newspaper. Nowadays we have 200+ channel options, 24-hour news channels, Tivo and its ilk, and video on demand from the internet. Plus, written news on demand from the internet.
Plus, the numbers (of declining readership) are very different (and much worse) in the internet age vs the tv age.
But the simple fact is that newspapers provide a valuable service and product. There just needs to be a change in business model, and there are lots of places trying new ones out. In many places, they're succeeding. Some have even reversed the downward spiral and moved back into profitable territory.
This is meant as an honest question as I remember microfiche and microfilm as the primary methods for preserving newspaper content. I assumed they were largely replaced with digital subscription based archives like lexus-nexus. And a digital archive can probably archive already digital information at least as easily as non-digital.
I know that libraries often keep physical newspapers like 5 or so years back but even after 5 years due to the quality of paper, ink, air, and occasional use. They are getting brittle and unable to be handled. News papers in their normal form were never intended to be permanent, hence why they were (are?) stored on microfilm or other archival methods.
According to the totalitarian's guide (aka "1984"), malleability of the past is a feature, not a bug.
First off, the news isn't tactile. The paper itself is tactile but so is a tablet. Paper tactility is not more appealing except to people that are uncomfortable with tech. Short blurbs followed by flipping through 16 pages of mostly ads to find rest of article is a level of unfriendliness that is hard to match in online news, though some sites try their best.
On archival and permanence, you're confusing the content with the medium. Try to find a permanent article from the NY times. While you may be able to find the print form, more likely you will find it in a digital medium. It has been decades since print form was the system of permanent record. Articles were being digitized in the 70s.
Online content isn't the same as online journalism. Even so there is an attempt to archive even the most obscure of online content (archive.org and waybackmachine). I doubt you can find an archive of a small town print newsletter. But you can on web publications unless they make efforts to block it.
You're right about this, but it's hardly news. Capital-J journalism, rather like fashion and other sexy New York industries, hasn't been a "real career" (e.g. one that will pay the bills) for decades. But it makes a splendid passtime for the children of inherited wealth.
Are you from the middle class or lower and want a byline? No problem---come to New York and live here without getting paid for a half-decade until we give you a real job (still with laughably small salary).
So, I started reading an article there. It made a claim but gave no data or references. So, the article failed standard high school term paper writing standards. So the 'content' was not solid information but something else. Tilt.
So, apparently The Washington Post is still the same old 'journalism' I've screamed about for years. So, for me, done.
If the 'new' Washington Post is just more of the same of old 'journalism', then I see no great reason Bezos should work to spread it around the US or the world instead of just inside the DC beltway.
So, for me, Bezos wasted his money. Sorry, Jeff.