The problem is that the newspapers were already a cartel, and Google and Facebook broke them up.
There were several large networks:
Associated Press
United Press International
Reuters
Agence France-Presse
etc.
Newspapers generated little unique content. They tended to both act as a distributor for AP/Reuters content, and share their content back into the network.
Another example... The sports, stock and weather pages? Yeah, not always generated by the paper - I worked for the NZ Metservice who had a great business gathering together the feeds and generating the layout, shipping print-ready pages direct.
Along come Google and Facebook who are perfectly capable of de-duping the articles from AP, allowing a winner take all competition among the papers. Add to that the ability to render the data pages themselves from feeds that they can buy and there's a lot less of a reason for the end customer to pay the local news organisation.
That’s not a cartel, cartels by definition have pricing power.
That example is like saying people who collaborate on a github repo have pricing power.
Finally - the main advantage of newspapers was being able to keep reporters paid and independent.
Today, all news is victim of the news cycle effect and if you aren’t buzzfeed you are either the winner of the network effect or dead.
The network effect was recognized as bad for society as a whole, but the internet has made information gathering subservient to ad clicks.
If this version of the information hunter gatherer society, where people must venture onto the net and hope they aren’t going to eat compromised information, is appealing then sure, let’s lay the blame on the medium.
Ok, say you strip away all of the syndicated content. How much unique content is fair to expect from a local newsroom. They aren’t anything like content mills. Some stories take 9+ months to develop. They sometimes inform law enforcement and often change the state of the world in very significant ways. I’ve spent the last year as a technologist in a newsroom and I am in awe of how remarkable an impact a big story can have on the real world. It’s hard work, and I’ve turned down job opportunities for literally double what I’m making because I believe in the cause of journalism so deeply. I see what vile hated that they have to endure every day, and try like hell to keep them safe from a myriad of digital adversaries.
The advertising business model demands attention; it’s the only way to assure value for advertisers. Its been the enemy of media integrity for over a hundred years. In our market-worship society we collectively place little value on honestly, and the numbers back that up. Since 2000, over 270,000 newsroom employees have lost their jobs. Despite all the hubbub, only about 25K coal jobs have disappeared in the same timeframe. It’s as if we have ceded verification of truth to a UI provided by a private corporation that is managed by AI systems, instead of other people. Oops.
Unless society supports people being able to dedicate their lives to uncovering truths and righting abuse, ‘speaking truth to power’ there won’t be people that can devote the energy and resources to do that well enough to have a meaningful impact.
Strip away the wire services and the ads and the articles that pay the bills in traffic for a moment. How do we compensate people to do good work on a story that might change the world for the better, or invest all of their valuable skill towards something that doesn’t lead anywhere of immediate value. There are membership models, tipping, merchandise, but what is the right way to pay for this type of work? For most people it isn’t a gig, and not something they can do on demand in a real time marketplace. For most people they just decide to dedicate themselves to that kind of work and go all in, and the best way to pay talented people according to the market is to pay them decent salaries and give them benefits. Only when a journalist can meet their basic needs for living can they devote their attention to fighting the impossible battles they face in the public sphere.
So how does the organization that provides that security for journalists get compensated outside of advertising or state sponsorship?
If we could craft something more beautiful to give to our grandkids, what would it look and feel like?
The beauty of programmatic advertising is that it enabled the rare publisher to profit. When the pool of advertisers is massive and where they advertise is mostly decoupled from their ad campaign being set up, you don’t get individual companies “pulling their ads” from places. You do, but the publisher still makes money because there are so many advertisers and the cost to be on the market for them is near zero.
The masses panicked and now good news is hidden behind the paywall. That’s okay for me. I’m on the inside and I will use my differential knowledge. While those who can’t afford news will be outcompeted by virtue of their having shittier knowledge.
They will be fat. Their unvaccinated kids will die. Their money will go to fund my roads. They will go on Robinhood and Coinbase and give their wealth to me. Their taxes will go to fund art galleries they will find no time to visit.
And in their ignorance, they’ll do all this while taking stances that will only make them give me more. Beautiful.
About the only price I have to pay for this is that they’ll get angry when they face these facts: that they collectively chose a poorer life than available and that they collectively chose to give to those with more than them.
> The masses panicked and now good news is hidden behind the paywall. That’s okay for me. I’m on the inside and I will use my differential knowledge. While those who can’t afford news will be outcompeted by virtue of their having shittier knowledge.
Except we live in a democracy and thus the masses can vote in a leader who can take away all those benefits you get "on the inside".
I guess you do you and I'll do me and we'll see. For what it's worth, pirate the WSJ business section and trade off it and tell me how it goes. EMH my ass b
There were several large networks:
Associated Press
United Press International
Reuters
Agence France-Presse
etc.
Newspapers generated little unique content. They tended to both act as a distributor for AP/Reuters content, and share their content back into the network.
Another example... The sports, stock and weather pages? Yeah, not always generated by the paper - I worked for the NZ Metservice who had a great business gathering together the feeds and generating the layout, shipping print-ready pages direct.
Along come Google and Facebook who are perfectly capable of de-duping the articles from AP, allowing a winner take all competition among the papers. Add to that the ability to render the data pages themselves from feeds that they can buy and there's a lot less of a reason for the end customer to pay the local news organisation.