peer deep into the eyes of NPR, they know all. actually, they might - they’re tasked with creating programming that engages people and works well on budgets much smaller than most in today’s media world.
there is also a small argument for crappy programming on major networks. there is no skin in the game anymore.
That’s precisely the problem: the sheer volume of words has overwhelmed a business model that was once based on scarcity and limited choice.
andrew does a great job of breaking down the business predicament surrounding digital journalism. the greater publishing industry of yesterday didn’t understand the value of their content in relation to the new technology driving advertising’s evolution. so, set that aside for a minute.
his piece goes on to imply that tomorrow will look just like we think it will look. sites like gawker essentially playing “red rover” with revenue and profit until something shakes out and sticks. the issue i have with all of this is that everyone, both traditional publishing & mr. denton, are showing their hand. the majority of the revenue might sit within a common denominator of audience but what happens when we reach the point of scraping the bottom of a big barrel for 1/80th of a cent? i don’t even want to imagine what kind of stuff you’ll be reading then.
denton is right, the delivery mechanism (“blog posts”) are a commodity - the money is made in building empires based on attention. oh man, wait a minute, attention? that - to me - is the golden ticket. it’s the end game and is best captured not by vague click-through traps, rapid-fire posts within a 24hr period but by the stuff that sticks to the wall long after you’ve walked away from it.
the stuff that gets you to read the entire article, entice a desire to share publicly and even offer my own point of view on. think about where you find stuff like that and who is producing it (more so, who is capable). at the end of the day, you have to eat the food that is going to satisfy you the most and focusing on delivery mechanisms might keep you afloat for now, but what happens when someone does it better?
sustainability in our society’s intellectual culture isn’t built on the traps we set but instead the meals we make. i’m convinced the day will come when people turn and walk back towards whence they came - the thirst not for “scarcity” or “limited choice” but a thirst for quality and concise editorial.
This seemingly nothing little slide actually reveals huge truths about the newspaper industry. Which is that subscription numbers—while they’re the backbone of what newspapers can sell against!—bring in basically negligible income. It also shows the number one mistake of newspapers. If editorial costs are a mere 14% of revenue, then the hugest mistake of the last 5 years has been the brutal hollowing out of editorial staff, which results in less content to sell and, indirectly, in less good content to sell against.
When people talk about serendipity, they’re not always talking about discovering some thing that’s totally brand-new. In fact, I’d hazard that they’re USUALLY talking about randomly unearthing some thing that’s comforting and familiar.
this is why TBS has been so successful.
I do like it when people intelligently pick apart an argument that gets passed around the echo chamber. Over at his blog Whimsley, Tom Slee was kind enough to do just that to Clay Shirkey’s “Collapse of Complex Business Models” essay. The money quote comes towards the end, “Complexity is not going away. It’s just moving to a different spot in the production chain, and as it moves so does the balance of power.”
Also, interestingly, the essay kills an argument I’ve made myself: Pointing out that the “Charlie bit me” video no longer tops the YouTube all-time most watched list. That spot is now held by none other than Lady Gaga. “The most watched video made in the last five years shows Lady Gaga and a group of hired models dancing on an elaborate set in a video that embodies complex production methods, that is part of the Vevo channel (a joint venture between Google and major record labels) and that features product placements by Nemiroff Vodka, Parrot by Starck, Carerra sunglasses, and HP Envy.” So there’s that.
The Lady Gaga example isn’t meaningful unless it’s part of a larger trend. The larger trend at the moment is towards simplicity, as Shirky points out. But nothing is ever as clear cut as pundits would have us believe. Articles that acknowledge the complexity of the real world are uninteresting, droll and unconvincing. So Shirky’s article on simplicity must make it all seem so simple. Which it is not. But overall I think he’s generally correct.
trying to figure out where i fall on this.
pleaseshowmehowtolive:kissdistinctlyamerican:jasencomstock:savingpaper:
Kevin Drum on “one of the great under-told media success stories of the past decade,” the growth of NPR in contrast to the decline of other traditional media outlets:
NPR’s listenership has nearly doubled since 1999, even as newspaper circulation dropped off a cliff. Its programming now reaches 26.4 million listeners weekly — far more than USA Today’s 2.3 million daily circ or Fox News’ 2.8 million prime-time audience. When newspapers were closing bureaus, NPR was opening them, and now runs 38 around the world, better than CNN. It has 860 member stations — “boots on the ground in every town” that no newspaper or TV network can claim.
NPR FTW. i’m a huge public radio advocate. i was raised on it but there was a distinct switch from listening on circumstance (it being the channel on in my mom’s car) to seeking it out on my dial. score one for staying the course and producing solid, engaging, valuable and in-depth programming. see what happens when you’re not chasing ads?
Most user-generated content is created as communication in small groups, but since we’re so unused to communications media and broadcast media being mixed together, we think that everyone is now broadcasting. This is a mistake. If we listened in on other people’s phone calls, we’d know to expect small talk, inside jokes, and the like, but people’s phone calls aren’t out in the open. One of the driving forces behind much user-generated content is that conversation is no longer limited to social cul-de-sacs like the phone.
Clay Shirky (via azspot)
This is actually something we’ve always acknowledged at Vimeo. We even had an awkwardly-worded tag line for a while, “not everyone should see everything,” that was meant to convey the closed nature of some interactions on the site. I like how Clay has expressed the ideas here.(via dalasverdugo)
exactly.
man, that’s it.
I re-read this every few months and it always cheers me up. Perhaps social media isn’t to blame for a lack of productivity—it’s just doing an effective job of soaking up our increasing number of idle hours. Those idle hours are probably a symptom of broader economic missteps in the face of globalization and its inherent upsets.
(I still like that 4chan hyperbole though.)
this discussion has been seeping into my head for the past few weeks. all the tech we’re creating to lower thresholds and open the fire hoses a little wider to our brains is actually and obviously hurting us. sure, you know the facts faster but you haven’t had time to actually think about them before you’re bowled over with the next. arguments about television aside, there is a situation that is in the present where we must become editors for ourselves. information, however delivered, isn’t all useful. finding and digging for the exceptionally valuable can only be a human function, not a computerized one.
everything “real-time” might not be worth your time.
i’m really less into this debacle b/c of the actual tech & product but more about how arrington’s only chess piece is his blog and everyone who reads it that doesn’t take every single pixel with a grain of very big salt. begging people to tell their readers about drama surrounding a product? weak charlie, weak.
i’m not going to buy whatever pad this is b/c the price is too much but if i did, i’d do it in spite. mikey is going to come up on the losing end of a business deal he either handled horribly from the beginning or couldn’t withdraw himself out of quick enough.
this is a great case study surrounding law, business, contracts, perception, media and hedging your equity on your mistakes.
