Very few people are willing to pay for opinion, as everyone’s got an opinion. The platform is now available to share opinion and information very cheaply. Large outlets do have a valid complaint in the loss of fact-gathering, fact-checking, shoe-leather journalism, and accountability for politicians and the reporting of public affairs and current events. It’s a vicious circle for them:
‘Boosting circulation revenue will help stem losses from print advertising, since it has become clear that digital advertising will not be enough. For every $16 lost in print advertising last year, newspapers made only around $1 from digital ads. The bulk of the $37.3 billion spent on digital advertising in 2012 went to five firms: Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Microsoft and AOL.’
Those five are the new curators of information at the moment, because they have partially designed how that information is stored and retrieved, and are competing intensely amongst each other.
With the new technology, a few aggregators have been quite successful, but even finding good links can take time. For everyone else, do what you do best and link to the rest. Readers don’t come easy. Outlets like the New Yorker still offer long-form journalism, but it, too, costs money and time.
Remember The Maine! The good old days…by malik2moon
Related On This Site: Jack Shafer At Slate: ‘Nonprofit Journalism Comes At A Cost’..
From The Seattle Post-Intelligencer Via Sound Politics: Why Did The PI Die? From Slate: Jack Shafer On The Pulitzer Prize-Who Cares? Who Reads The Newspapers?
The Newseum Opens On The Mall: More From The Weekly Standard
A Free Lunch?-Megan McArdle At The Daily Beast: ‘How To Get Ahead On Facebook Without Really Trying’
Malcolm Gladwell argues here that apart from the information/journalism divide, the technology still ultimately costs something as well…”Free” is a utopian vision, and I suspect Gladwell knows this pretty well: From The New Yorker: Malcolm Gladwell’s “Priced To Sell”