Are you gonna embargo the catchy headlines too?
I’ve been following the “dead” newspaper business (rumors greatly exaggerated and all) for a while now. I find it fascinating how an industry so seemingly tailor-made for the web can be so backward in its web strategies.
For generations now, news on paper has been about as close to free as possible, in spite of its burdensome medium. Largely subsidized by ads, it’s the eyeballs that count, ‘page views’ so to speak—the higher the readership, the higher the revenues. And all this in spite of the high marginal costs associated with publishing and distribution.
This is why its so disappointing to read this poor analysis from the Freakonomics blog of this poor idea from the Peter Scheer of the San Fransisco Chronical. Refreshingly, some astute freakonomics readers make some good points about why this shouldn’t happen in the comments, but as usual, the best analysis of why this just wouldn’t happen comes from Techdirt.
The bottom line is that even if, by some miracle, all of these competeting outfits summoned up the will to band together, the hole left by these players packing up and leaving the live space would be backfilled in a timespan measured in days, if not hours.
Sure, quality counts for something, but breaking news is defined by headlines. If you want deeper coverage, you’re always better off turning to the slower, more methodical sources. Most newspaper articles, particularly the time-sensitive, are nothing more than a summary anyhow—a jumping off point. On the web, it’s a whole lot easier to take a leap or two and dig a little deeper. In fact, that just happens to be one of the world wide web’s fundamental building blocks—that age old “a href” tag. If only someone would tell this to Peter Scheer and his buddies…