Journalism and Law Suits

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Comment by Michael Hickins on January 21, 2009 at 10:41am

I think I agree. Even in situations where the parent media company spins off a digital child, they tend to strangle the infant when the going gets tough. Maybe Wired is an exception to this.
The idea is that disruptive technologies are a way to attract people or companies that aren't customers yet--because current customers would be satisfied with only incremental improvements to the original product. That would describe the NYT site perfectly, right? It's the paper plus some other good stuff added from time to time (blogs, comments, etc.) that is good enough for the likes of (yikes!) me, but not at all enticing to a younger generation.
So I guess the question is, what is the THING (some on-demand, factual yet opinionated information stream) that people who don't read newspapers would want... and that us old fogeys would recognize (a posteriori) as a replacement for newspapers.
I think the tendency is to think this will come from the entertainment side of the world, but that's only because that's the direction that bad TV news has taken.
No, and I agree with you, it will still come out of something other than traditional press. Perhaps the THING will be an unintended consequence of something dystopic at its origin (like Big Brother gone soft, or many, competing Big Brothers fighting for our attention with their opposing view-points).
Maybe we should post this discussion to a wider venue? I'm not half as smart as some of the people in this community...

Comment by Mac Slocum on January 21, 2009 at 10:37am

I'm not sure how you feel, but all this "woe is me" nonsense from the newspaper industry is getting a bit thick. I'm now convinced that Clay Christensen's innovation work is at play in the digital transition, and the companies that will eventually emerge as major firms in the content world will form outsi

Comment by Michael Hickins on January 21, 2009 at 9:34am

I'm sure a lot of people caught the story in the Observer about magazines cutting back on their Web presence as part of their belt-tightening exercise. It's human nature-people cling to what they know and understand best, what they are most comfortable with; but it's still infuriating to see executives continue to mismanage their businesses to the detriment of our industry--and lots of precious jobs.

Comment by Reading 2.0 on January 21, 2009 at 8:55am

(Note -- the previous comment was from Mac Slocum. Signed in under a different account, sorry!)

Comment by Reading 2.0 on January 21, 2009 at 8:53am

Agreed. People within the newspaper industry mistakenly combine the duties of the fourth estate with the structure of the business. The fourth estate *is* important and I have faith it will persist if not in newspaper form, then something else. But the lumbering inefficiencies of newspaper businesses are no longer viable, and that's why it's all falling apart.