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Reader Voices: Who Pays for Content? | 22 comments (22 topical) | Post A Comment
Rise of the writer (part 2)[ Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#3)
by markatty on Mon Jun 25, 2007 at 02:25:40 PM PDT

Today we see lots of "repeaters" of information, because people are willing to offer their opinions for free, but few are willing to spend hours sifting through records for hours to find that one gotcha fact. As a result opinions are up and well-researched factually accurate information appears to be down, but is this really a problem.

The information consumers are more interested in useful information than information that is accurate to the nth degree. (Do most people really care whether the new Gateway desktop has a 140 or a 160 gigabyte drive? Editors do but their reader don't see the distinction as important, unless they are about to buy 200 of them.) People are voting with their clicks for useful over accurate.

At the same time if you supply bad information on a subject that they do care about, the blogosphere will quickly point that out and reputation declines as will your number of clicks and hence your potential ad revenues. For solo/small groups of writers maintaining your reputation is vital, since unlike the Washington Post their is no institutional reputation to fall back on. As a result successful online writers are likely to be even more successful, because one major screw-up can cost them their revenue stream.

As advertisers shift budgets online bloggers/writers/reporters will be better compensated and can afford to spend more time developing and researching stories. One big hit is more valuable than a lot of little stories, but in a 24 hour news cycle lots of little hits are the cash cows for news aggregating blogs. People will read these blogs as long as they save them time and give them useful information. As long as enough people read them, advertisers will find them.

We will also see the rise of the investigative mob as people take the wiki approach with dozens of people contributing information to the story. Interestingly, these mob investigation stories will only become big, at least in the digits decade, when mainstream media pick them up.

The news world is changing, but good writers have a chance to be stars with all of the success, problems and remuneration of the stars of entertainment.

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Who actually pays for content[ Parent | Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#4)
by claborne on Tue Jun 26, 2007 at 11:36:08 AM PDT

There is a lot concern about people like Google and others not paying for content. People need to first realize that you can't just apply the old operating model of content producers to books and magazines and follow the money. You need to first adapt your perspective to what we have today, web 2.0, where there are producers and value adders all along the chain. Much of what we have is co-collaboration. Google isn't getting this for free. They do pay for it through people to design UI and systems that field a massive infrastructure to gather and assimilate the content in a way that I want. Google adds value or they wouldn't exist in the new model. Look at the system and I think that you will find that people that are not adding perceived value will die away.

In strict terms, I think that many content producers are in fact compensated in many ways, sometimes via advertising revenue from the traffic that flows in. Does InfoWorld (even this BLOG) receive any add revenue. InfoWorld creates value, is rewarded via advert dollars and pays you. In the end, I pay for content. I buy the products that have inflated price tags that cover advertising dollars in your on-line magazine. It's not the end of the world, it's change, it's "wikinomics" at work and it will continue to evolve. http://cyberthought.com

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MSM should go to a mirror and utter this phrase - [ Parent | Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#5)
by Anonymous User on Tue Jun 26, 2007 at 11:38:30 AM PDT

Printed MSM very well could utter one of the most memorable quotes ever to grace their pages. Walt Kelly said it rightly through his comic strip POGO "We Have Met The Enemy and He Is Us".

Much of the MSM "news articles" ARE injected with personal opinions, comments and even snide remarks by the reporter. I cannot remember the last time I read an article in a "newspaper" that was a clean news article.

I propose that the MSM newspapers and even most magazines are in decline and facing oblivion precisely because they allow their reporters to express personal opinion and add paranthetical comments to "news" articles without disclosing the content as such.

The net result of this is that it becomes too tedious to read through the alledged news article removing the injected opinion and comments to get to the facts; consequently, people choose not to waste their money and time.

patientdave

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Not sure that is a correct representation[ Parent | Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#7)
by mklange on Tue Jun 26, 2007 at 01:22:56 PM PDT

Today we see lots of "repeaters" of information, because people are willing to offer their opinions for free, but few are willing to spend hours sifting through records for hours to find that one gotcha fact. As a result opinions are up and well-researched factually accurate information appears to be down, but is this really a problem.

The problem you describe often more fully applies to the mainstream media than to the internet world. For example, during 2004, while the rest of the mainstream media outlets were content to repeat the "Rathergate" stories as fact, with little or no fact checking of their own, bloggers and others in the internet world were digging deeply into the "documented evidence" and finding significant problems and errors with this. This gave rise to the "pajamas media" group that shared and critiqued results of various analyses.

The same holds true for the fraudulent Reuters photographs during 2006, in which a Palestinian stringer photo-shopped smoke across Beirut to make the situation appear more dire than it was. Mainstream media just ran the story -- bloggers and internet readers caught the facts. Ditto for the alleged Israeli targeting of an ambulance. The MSM was delighted to demonize Israel with the story despite it not even coming close to passing the "smell" test.

The lack of fact checking seems to be prevalent in the MSM as long as the story matches their template.

[ Parent | Reply to This ]



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