Lerer pointed to the familiar rays of light in all the business-model gloom—the fact that “there are more readers of news than ever before,” and the fact that “that number is growing every year”—and noted the undeniably happy development that, now, journalists can reach audiences around the world. “There are going to be plenty of people—I think probably more people than now—practicing journalism” in the future, he noted. And “that will make for a huge amount of content online.”
“We’ve only just begun to explore new models for news delivery,” Lerer said. “While no one knows what the future will look like”—again, the caveat—“I’m confident that in a few years, tops, the news landscape will look fundamentally different from what it looks like today.”
And that’s a good thing, he said, a future to be embraced rather than chafed against. As long as the public puts a premium on quality information—which it will continue to do, he said, just as it has in the past—“then journalism will continue to survive.” And thrive. “Journalism isn’t in jeopardy,” Lerer said. “It’s just in another transition to a new and better place.”
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What a load of bull. The problem with newspapers is that they have adapted to internet to darn well; putting their content on the internet for free, practically from the beginning. The commentator says that newspapers should develop a better business model, but that's been obvious to everyone for a long time. The trick is to develop such a business while still doing what we expect newspapers to do, deliver the news, and expensive undertaking, as opposed to delivering opinion, which is cheap as dirt.
Posted by Jon Miners on Fri 24 Apr 2009 at 02:09 PM
Still not even a hint of solving the dollars-vs-dimes revenue dilemma.
Every newspaper on the planet has to grow its audience by a factor of ten, and there are not enough readers on the planet to make that happen.
Posted by tom mangan on Fri 24 Apr 2009 at 02:24 PM
Really, this is nonsense. The problem for newspapers is financial, not technological - they're not making enough money to cover their debts (some of which can be laid at the feet of bad corp. managers, to be sure), and that's even more true online that it is in print.
This is not a technology problem, it's an AD REVENUE problem. And embracing "disruptive technologies," fun as that might be, does not get you one more dime of revenues. Advertisers are spending their money elsewhere (if spending it at all).
Even some of the biggest pure online play news sites DO NOT MAKE A PROFIT -- they are supported by VC money, or have been bought by media giants who still haven't figured out how to profit even with HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL online media properties. Come back with that "disruptive technology" idea after MySpace, Twitter, Facebook or YouTube start reporting regular annual profits.
All the talk of newspapers being too backwards for new technology may make everyone feel smart and superior, but the reality is that ALL traditional ad-supported, previously-free media, is now in danger of going extinct (with the exception of Google, who has pwned everyone). Doesn't matter how savvy newspapers are online, the money's not there. Just ask your local TV station.
Posted by David Klein on Fri 24 Apr 2009 at 02:51 PM
I'm with David Klein on this. Why such a reverential article, quoting each and every pronouncement as if it came from a financial oracle -- when the oracle himself comes from HuffPost, which doesn't talk about its own finances, except when a new round of venture capital funding is announced. If and when HuffPost makes its financials public and shows that it is profitable (or even less unprofitable than it was last quarter and the corresponding quarter a year ago), then Mr. Lerer has standing to lecture on media economics. Until then, it's 1998 all over again, and Mr. Lerer is just some guy from Petopia.com.
Posted by John Mecklin on Fri 24 Apr 2009 at 05:32 PM
Why is this idea that newspapers are failing now because they did not adapt to the internet getting so much play? I'd like to see more nuanced reporting about that idea, because I think it's clearly false.
The Jayson Blair scandal happened in 2003. But already the New York Times was suffering from an integrity crisis. It is worth remembering that in response to that scandal the New York Times rewrote their anonymity policy, then proceeded to, and still do, violate their own policy again and again. It's also worth remember that the NYT has buried stories, like the one about warrantless wiretapping, that the public absolutely had to know.
No integrity == no customers, internet or no internet. Why is this so hard to grasp?
I stopped reading that paper regularly in the late 1990s after reading one too many articles that were patently bogus. Even then I questioned, as I still do now, why I would pay money for a newspaper that was clearly parroting party propaganda, burying critical stories, uncritically plagiarizing material from the web, and in general of very uneven quality. The NYT has never given me a reason to change my mind about that assessment, and I am unsurprised that they are suffering now. Their problems are at least a decade in the making, and have little to do with the internet.
The New York Times publishes absurd op-eds from Thomas Friedman. The Washington Post publishes poorly-researched and misleading global warming denial stories by George Will. Why is it so hard to grasp that consumers, at least consumers like me, are not willing to pay money for garbage like that? It doesn't matter whether it's published on paper or on the internet -- it's not worthy of my money.
So please stop buying into the Internet Killed the Print Media Star narrative and dig a little more into what, exactly, has happened to newspapers. Please!
Posted by Anthony on Sat 25 Apr 2009 at 11:50 AM