Comments on: The Pay-to-Play Newspaper World Unfolds http://www.markevanstech.com/2009/05/18/the-pay-to-play-newspaper-world-unfolds/ Thoughts on Startups, Entrepreneurs and the Web Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:25:18 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Trevor http://www.markevanstech.com/2009/05/18/the-pay-to-play-newspaper-world-unfolds/comment-page-1/#comment-180882 Trevor Tue, 19 May 2009 15:01:29 +0000 http://www.markevanstech.com/?p=4749#comment-180882 Retarded. All paid content can accomplish is to frustrate and scatter readers and accelerate the re-organization and re-evaluation of news. Is this the best idea the dailies can come up with? Note that I didn't say death or disappearance of newspapers. They are too useful to die. But they are not as important as they make themselves out to be. This is typical of institutions (and empires, frankly) in decline. Retrenchment. Protectionism. Newspapers today are making the same arguments that Louis XIV and trades under the guild system made 'apres moi, les deluge'. It was not so then and not so now. Lets face it, the newspaper population needs to be culled, the value of content reconsidered, and dailies need to start thinking about 'how' they present information rather than 'what' they write. Online content is God damn ugly. <rant>if I see another tech-related Toronto Star article that DOESN'T EVEN HAVE A HYPERLINK I'm going to stop going there, period.</rant> Question for you Mark, do a quick Twitter scan and tell me how many of the links you see drive people back to newspapers. I'd say my number is about 10% or less. Most of mine land on Mashable or Techcrunch or Hulu or YouTube. Forbes and Financial Post are exceptions, but they are not general news outlets. I'd argue that the AP and Twitter drives most news stories now. Dailies are already irrelevant to most people under 30. IMO, raising the drawbridge and lowering the portcullis will only isolate papers and accelerate their irrelevance. Retarded. All paid content can accomplish is to frustrate and scatter readers and accelerate the re-organization and re-evaluation of news. Is this the best idea the dailies can come up with?

Note that I didn't say death or disappearance of newspapers. They are too useful to die. But they are not as important as they make themselves out to be. This is typical of institutions (and empires, frankly) in decline. Retrenchment. Protectionism. Newspapers today are making the same arguments that Louis XIV and trades under the guild system made 'apres moi, les deluge'. It was not so then and not so now.

Lets face it, the newspaper population needs to be culled, the value of content reconsidered, and dailies need to start thinking about 'how' they present information rather than 'what' they write. Online content is God damn ugly.

<rant>if I see another tech-related Toronto Star article that DOESN'T EVEN HAVE A HYPERLINK I'm going to stop going there, period.</rant>

Question for you Mark, do a quick Twitter scan and tell me how many of the links you see drive people back to newspapers. I'd say my number is about 10% or less. Most of mine land on Mashable or Techcrunch or Hulu or YouTube. Forbes and Financial Post are exceptions, but they are not general news outlets. I'd argue that the AP and Twitter drives most news stories now.

Dailies are already irrelevant to most people under 30. IMO, raising the drawbridge and lowering the portcullis will only isolate papers and accelerate their irrelevance.

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