Media Bubble: Intriguing and Troubling
In the wake the Web 2.0/VC dialogue over the weekend, there are a couple posts (Scott Karp, Jack Shafer exploring how blogs are maybe attacking the foundations of the newspaper industry because of bloggers ability to establish themselves and reach out to millions of potential readers at little cost. Karp focuses on how the proliferation of choice is making life more difficult for the user and the media because it's difficult to capture the users' attention and, as a result, a tough to build a viable business that will attract advertising. The solution to leveraging the “attention economy”, Karp says, is creating a “personal killer app” (editor's note: a personalized portal such as My Yahoo?) that will be perfectly tailored to each user. Shafer adopts a more Luddite approach and wants newspapers to get better by making cartoons bigger again, writing editorials signed by the authors, getting great writers to write columns, and improve the newpaper's look and feel - a strategy he believes is more effective than bolting on a couple blogs and adding an online comment section. So where does the Web 2.0/VC talk fit over the weekend fit into the media world? As a newspaper journalist, the Web 2.0 is a fascinating issue and one that warrants coverage because it could be an important financing trend. But I have absorbed tons of insightful, provocative, intelligent information over the weekend on this trend on the blogosphere. Now I'm wondering if still makes sense - and there's still time - to write about it in the newspaper. If most people who would be interested in the Web 2.0/VCs issue have already read about it online, why bother do it in print? I'm probably giving the blogosphere too much credit for being a widely consumed, mainstream medium but hopefully you get the point. Over the past few months, I've used my blog as a testing tool for story ideas and column before deciding whether a particular topic makes sense for the newspaper. The more popular blogs become, the more I think this technique may not work anymore. As for how newspapers should respond, let's just say that's another discussion for another day - probably when I'm doing something other than writing for a newspaper.
