10 Newspaper Myths Deconstructed

You sound like you're drunk or really really angry. – You never use wikipedia? You don't like it, don't trust it? Don't understand it? Fair enough. Millions do like it, understand it, use it, and millions love it. I do, and it certainly taught a lot of people to check whatever they read twice. It actually makes people critical about what is written and that's a good thing. Stalinist Russia had encyclopedias. Nazi Germany had encyclopedias. China has its encyclopedia... Think about that. Not that the Britannica has a strong bias, but it is still written by humans. And humans do fail.

When it comes to reality and facts, sharing perspective certainly helps. Yes, one cannot take a single wikipedia sentence for granted. But hell, I don't take a single newspaper line for granted anymore. If it's critical information (political info is always critical info) – I crosscheck. One place that I use to crosscheck is wikipedia – where I particularily enjoy the discussions about difficult themes... But that's maybe just me and another couple of million people. Journalists don't need wikipedia, they don't need no conversation with the stupid reader. They have the Britannica on CD or in the editorial library – that gives them quick solid 100% true answers... And they have the editor in chief and the advertisers that tell them what to write...

 

and because of that simple fact, you are an idiot, period.

 

I thought I was coming to this thread to read about newspaper myths, i.e. actual print editions and the industry, not about web sites and how you believe they could be better. We have a core product we're still trying to sell.

 

You are right, I have been too busy explaining wikipedia to wikipedia-phobics, while there are way more interesting points to talk about: Newspapers have to transform from print focussed enterprises to universal media enterprises. What medium you publish in is not so important, as long as you use it cleverly. The most clever approach is to use paper and screen in a reciprocal way, synergetically, and this is what the future of news is really all about. Print has a tremendous advantage compared to radio and TV. The quality, precision and magic of paper cannot be assimilated by the screen. And vice versa: Print can in no way compete with interactive media when it comes to its core function: The dialogue, the dynamic, the openness.

 

None of this, of course, solves the real dilemma, and the only one that matters - how do we make money off the Internet? Because to this point, it hasn't been working (the answer, and no one wants to face it - charge money for local news subscriptions).

 

Newspapers are wasting tons of money by closing their archives. Opening the archives would lead to a strong search engine performance, if not: search engine dominance of current newspapers (dominance is currently held by wikipedia...).

Now put ads on every page in the archive...

But some old people prefer to charge 60 dudes for accessing their archives and giving away ad revenue to Google and Yahoo instead of taking ad sales in their own hand. Online and offline the primary money resource is the same: Ads. And actually, it's easier to open additional money streams online.

 

Actually, money is being made off the Internet. Not to newspaper proportions - yet - and that is more the key.

 

Maybe some papers aren't doing it right. My paper makes a pile of money off its archives.

 

Actually, some newspapers here have entirely free archives and if it drove advertising revenue, we'd all have copied it, but it hasn't and some of those papers that started with free access later converted to paid archives.

http://www.ibiblio.org/slanews/internet/archives.html

People who make blanket statements about the U.S. newspaper industry deserve no respect. Each market is different, not all archives are of equal value to the consumer and in this country, one-size-fits-all solutions seldom work.

The fact is that there enough newspaper archives in this country that are free (or free after you register), and if they were raking in advertising money, we'd all follow suit. But that isn't how it works here.

This is a decision that needs to be made on a paper-by-paper basis. If you are The New York Times, it would be stupid to stop charging. Yet within the same company, the Times' 90,000-circulation paper in Santa Rosa, Calif., has completely free archives and the similar-size Times paper in Sarasota, Fla., has paid archives. This is a well-managed company that realizes blanket rules are stupid, decisions are made according to each newspaper's situation. You are badly misinformed if you believe there is only one answer to this question.

 

The legal ramifications of going wiki would be monstrous.

I'm not even totally sure how protected publications are that post those comments under articles. If a paper is hosting the comments, whether originated by their staff or not, does that open them up to litigation?

 

If you have something intelligent to add, and it would certainly surprise me if you did, why don't you come out and say it rather than screwing with the quote function?