At Media Companies, a Nation of Serfs

I was thinking about this some more today. And I think the "value" of work on the web isn't the work itself, but the number of people it attracts to the site.
In the Internet era - it is the sizzle that is being sold and not the steak.

 

outside of folks here and a few others who don't post here, who wants to buy steak? steak is being sold; demand for it isn't high right now.

 

Tangentialy, the price of beef is actually pretty high right now. Cotton is at a 150-year high. Most commodities are up. I love how we don't have an inflation problem, but almost everything is getting way more expensive. I guess that's what happens when the government controls the supply of money as well as the inflation statistics.

 

SoCal, all governments everywhere have controlled their money supply throughout history. All history. That and armed force monopoly are the two most elemental purposes of governments.

 

The numbers & your wallet might show different results because the number most often cited is the core rate of inflation.

The core rate excludes food and energy because they're seen as being to volatile on a month to month basis and thus not indicative of true inflationary trends.

 

Absolutely right.

Except when they are.

 

No dispute. I'm just posting information, not giving opinion.

I remember working on the commodities exchange floor when I was 21 or so and first learned this. It's always seemed odd to me. What do we rely on more than food and energy? And, they both have ripple effects throughout the entire economy.

The Times has an article on inflation today:

 

I understand what you are saying, but my point wasn't that the government controls the monetary apparatus. Rather, it was that they also control the statistics.

Just like the official unemployment rate doesn't fully reflect how many people want a job and can't get one, the official inflation rate doesn't accurately affect how much a dollar buys.

 

Understand that. Just wanted to reiterate the point.

 

Why the Huffington Post, which claims to be a news site, would ever, under any circumstances, be lumped in with Twitter and Facebook, is very strange.

 

Backtracking from inflation talk, the above is a good point. One all of us should keep in mind.

In the most basic sense, we're in the information supply business. Only almost all of us work with a middleman -- papers, magazines, websites, media companies.

Media companies are partially in an information supply business, and mostly in the business of supplying sales leads, i.e. an audience for advertisers.

If you look at our industry over the last decade, the second business -- which is far more lucrative -- is struggling and the first business is proving to have little value.

The way to make money in light of those facts is probably consolidation. Have a few big players -- or one monopoly -- that can essentially guarantee a particular audience to advertisers, while at the same time being the only supplier of information.

All of this is why I think ESPN is in fantastic shape going forward. Their cable business model and DNA will serve them well in the new media era.

 

This take on the AOL-HuffPo deal fails to take into account the FanHouse sale but is otherwise excellent:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-arianna-huffington-20110216,0,7620661,full.story