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Helluva a piece from a J-school student

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by Simon_Cowbell, Feb 17, 2009.

  1. Fishman's piece is articulated well, but is it possible that newspapers have screwed themselves over too much because it's just too late to say to online readers, "Hey, I know we've been handing our product to you for free for a decade, but now it's time to start paying up"?

    I mean, when/if that happens, online-only readers with the mindset "Why would I pay for paper when it's free online?" are going to go elsewhere for their news instead of paying up. And print subscribers probably enjoy a hard copy paper in their hands, which is probably why they still subscribe, so unless you cut out paper altogether (presumably to save money) and hope print readers crossover to the web, nothing changes. If anything, it could easily get worse, no?

    Seems like a gamble, but maybe it's worth taking because the ship is sinking swiftly at this point.
     
  2. No, but it's not that difficult to go after the prominent ones. If Jim Joe Bob's blog wants to post a Times story, whatever. How many people are actually going to be able to find it?

    RE: E-mail -- See the first sentence of my previous post.
     
  3. Simon_Cowbell

    Simon_Cowbell Active Member

    If there are 10 guys about to attack one guy with a gun with only six bullets, they're still gonna think twice about attacking that guy.
     
  4. NoOneLikesUs

    NoOneLikesUs Active Member

    Mere child's play to any dedicated hacker. Hell, they would probably make a Firefox extension for getting around the anti-copy and paste feature in a week.
     
  5. BB Bobcat

    BB Bobcat Active Member

    What do you guys think of the music analogy?

    Seems to me a few years back when everyone was passing around free mp3s it was supposed to be the death of the music industry.
     
  6. Well, if you read Rolling Stone at all, you'd know it's still in a death spiral.

    Also, I echo the "Who cares if Jim Joe Bob's Rockin' Yankees Blog" decides to copy and paste. Go after it on a case by case basis, I guess, but the main thing is choking off the Huffington Posts and Daily Kozes of the world that just mooch off our content (not to mention Google and Yahoo!). The biggies won't be able to do it, and that's who you're trying to kill, not Joe's Blog with 27 readers a day.

    I was at a newspaper where we had to send a cease-and-desist lawyer letter to a fan site that was allowing readers to copy and paste our stories because "That rag doesn't deserve to get linked." I can promise you that our stuff was never copied and pasted again.

    Don't listen to the doomsaying posters and reader commenters on the Huffington Post and elsewhere that scream about how newspapers could never charge for content because, "We'll all go elsewhere!" or "The NYT sucks balls anyway! Huffington Post rules, MSM drools!" They're scared shitless is what it comes down to. And fuck them.
     
  7. Gomer

    Gomer Active Member

    Wasn't AP partnering with a service that searches for sites using copyrighted stories illegally so they could go after them?

    Ah, here it is: http://blogs.zdnet.com/micro-markets/?p=1472
     
  8. schiezainc

    schiezainc Well-Known Member

    I like the analogy to the music industry.

    Ten years ago, Napster was thought of as the death of sales for artists. Nowadays, it's all about iTunes.

    Sure, the sales aren't what they used to be (For reasons I won't get into here but mainly the overpriced cost of a CD) but they're a hell of a lot better than they would have been without all of the RIAA's lawsuits.

    Ten years from now, sure main papers won't be around. But the ones that are will have adapted to the changes in the business world. And right now, the change that needs to happen is described vividly in the above-linked piece.
     
  9. Notepad

    Notepad Member

    Paying for content is a hell of a drug.
     
  10. And I remember when those lawsuits were going on, RS treated the RIAA like the devil incarnate, with an average of one story an issue about some poor junior high girl who was just trying to download one Backstreet Boys song and ended up in a Siberian secret prison cell. Much like the rhetoric I hear now coming from places like Huffington Post, Daily Koz, TPM, etc., etc. All I read in those places is about how irrelevant the "MSM" is, and how the cat's out of the bag.

    OK, assholes. Take this then.
     
  11. Fredrick

    Fredrick Well-Known Member

    Make them pay.
    Or every place of business should go free.
    Car dealer: Want to buy this Honda?
    Me: Just give it to me for free.
    Why?: I work at a place that gives its product away for free, why don't you as well?
    Car dealer: Get the fuck out of my office you bum.
     
  12. GBNF

    GBNF Well-Known Member

    Fantastic article. Kid has a very good grasp of articulation. He'll go places.
     
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