- Root economic change.
- What is a job?
- The death of US manufacturing
We need to cover:
4. The death of traditional media (newspapers, etc.)
5. Monetizing manufacturing/media's replacement (in the US at least) - Web 2.0 and higher.
The Tribune Corp filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy on December 8th in Delaware. It reportedly has 13 billion in debt. The Chicago Cubs franchise and Wrigley Field are not included in the filing. Tribune has fallen below the cash flow required under its agreement with its bondholders, but it is not clear how seriously Tribune is thinking about seeking bankruptcy protection. Analysts and bankruptcy experts say that the hiring of advisers, including Lazard and Sidley Austin, one of the company’s longtime law firms, could be a just-in-case move, or a bargaining tactic. Like most newspapers, Tribune’s have suffered double-digit percentage declines in advertising this year, as ads and readers continue to shift to the Internet, and the recession has prompted retailers and other businesses to curtail their ad spending. What makes Tribune’s problems more serious is the heavy debt load it carries as a result of last year’s buyout.
The weak state of newspapers has made some lenders more loath than usual to force bankruptcy, fearing that it could worsen their chance of significant recovery, or at least delay it
Maureen Dowd writes about a newspaper that’s offshoring editorial content and learning to make it work. James McPherson is the editor and publisher of Pasadena Now, a small weekly. A year ago, he fired his entire editorial staff and farmed out coverage to a staff of Indian writers he recruited on Craigslist. He pays them about $7.50 per 1,000 words, compared to the $30,000 to $40,000 he was paying each reporter annually. The Indian writers “report” via telephones, web harvesting and webcams, with support and guidance from McPherson and his wife work for.
Reaction to the idea was brutal at first, but the concept of editorial offshoring is gaining traction. Dowd counts MediaNews Group chairman Dean Singleton among the ranks of executives who have recently talked about massive offshoring to save costs. Singleton says most preproduction MediaNews’s California papers is already outsourced to India, which has cut costs by 65 percent.
If the idea sounds preposterous, think about it. How many people in a standard newsroom never leave the building? Any job that primarily involves computer and phone work is a candidate for offshoring. Between cell phones, webcams, virtual meetings and instant messaging, the need for face-to-face contact is diminishing to the point of irrelevance in many cases. On-site reporters will always have value, but in the future they could become a small corps of feet on the street feeding copy to a virtualized production force that is largely invisible. The compelling cost efficiencies give publishers a lot of incentive to be creative.
Former Los Angeles Times editor James O’Shea comments at some length on recent statements by Tribune Co. CEO Sam Zell about the failure of newspapers to listen to their customers. O’Shea has a problem with that philosophy. “If all we had to do was ask readers what they wanted in a newspaper and then give it to them, wouldn’t someone have done that years ago?” he asks? In fact, they did. “I’ve seen dozens of papers march down that road to no success.”
O’Shea agrees that journalists have done a poor job of demonstrating their value as stewards of the public trust, but he thinks that failure is actually due to their efforts to listen too closely to their customers. The conventional marketing wisdom is that readers want soft, lifestyle stories and the more we give them that pabulum, the more we undermine our value as serious journalists. “To the extent we blur the differences between these once-distinct voices with pandering coverage that resembles advertorial and not editorial we play right into this trap,” he writes.
And if the newspaper industry is dying, apparently no one told Saharra White. The California State University, Northridge journalism major pooled her savings and donations from friends last year to launch Say It Loud!, a newspaper for African-Americans of the San Fernando Valley. “I wanted to start the newspaper because there are black people in the Valley doing some positive things,” she says. Say It Loud! is one of about 200 black community newspapers across the US, according to the Black Newspaper Publishers Association. White says she felt the stunning election of an African-American as President demanded new media to cover the impact of the Obama administration on America’s future. She distributed the paper in print for a year, but now has gone online-only as a matter of economic necessity.
Folks, this train has been a-comin' for about 18 years now...since the early 1990's. I remember the first time i saw the World Wide Web - remember: the Internet is not the WWW - The WWW is part of the Internet. The Internet includes file transfer capability email and chat and other mechanisms for communication. What I saw was simplistic, even crude graphics, and loopy text formatting - but you could click your mouse cursor on some of the words, and BAM! You instantly transported to another document explaining the meaning of that word, and attendant subjects. And you could click and click and click. I was flabbergasted, stupefied (some say that's a permanent condition with me)... How was such a thing possible? And what would it lead to?
Well, we have response times, when it comes to news, measured in seconds - not days or even days. Ad revenue has been declining for a decade now- ask the newspaper guys and they mutter "aw, it's that damned innertubes, or whatever.". Did they "get it" then, and do they "get it" now?
Frankly, I think there are many reasons for the decline and eventual fall of traditional media (newspapers, magazines, radio & TV) - the culture wars, "happy talk" replacing hard news and vice-versa (the public is a harsh mistress), plus the "homogenization" of news to reflect the MacPaper framework of USA Today. However while this may be the case there are certainly other issues we should consider.
Firstly, a similar thing happened around the last so called “dot.com bubble”. Businesses flocked online, spending millions advertising etc... Then the “dot.com bubble” burst leaving many people in serious debt. It could be considered that this current increase in online advertising is just another “dot.com bubble”, only time will tell whether this is the case or not.
Secondly, this increase could be a temporary “blip” so to speak. Many of the traditional media companies have been slow to act on digital media, meaning that some of the newer so called “new media” companies have been able to take up a large market share quickly in the absence of any real competition. It could be argued that once the traditional media companies embrace digital media that we may see this shift in advertising revenue re-balance itself as the traditional media companies will be able to integrate digital media into their traditional medias easier than a digital media company can integrate itself into the tightly controlled and extremely competitive traditional media market. We have already seen some of the traditional media companies trying to buy their way into the successful new media companies for example, News International buying the company that owns the hugely successful MySpace.com website. Again it may be a number of years before we can see whether this theory is correct.
Also, with all the reports describing this decline of traditional media compared to digital media, there have been reports of digital media companies such as Myspace and Google using traditional media methods. “MySpace weighs up spin-off magazine” (The Guardian, 2006). This reports how Myspace is considering a “spin-off print magazine” for the users and fans of Myspace. Although this is less surprising since the takeover of Myspace by News International and the want to integrate it into some of News International print output. Google has also used traditional media recently “Google Ads share the love with newspapers” (NYT, 2008), “Google's radio ads” (NYT, 2006) both of these report on a trial being conducted by Google on it’s advertising output, both of the trials for the different mediums work along similar lines to Google’s “Adwords” technology used on it’s search engine. Long established Internet and search engine company Yahoo is also conducting a similar trial with US local newspapers “Yahoo! to share classified ads with US local newspapers” Yahoo has signed a deal with 150 local US newspapers to provide them with classified advertising and content.
It can also be argued that another one of the reasons why these digital media companies are making deals with local newspapers (like Yahoo) relates back to one of characteristics of digital media described in the chapter “What is digital media?” One of digital media characteristics is that while it can be a mass media, it can also be personalized unlike traditional forms of mass media. While this is true, one of the most popular forms of digital media, the World Wide Web has struggled until recently to be personalized or “local”, yes it is possible and rather clever that you can speak to someone on the other side of the world. A lot of the time though, users of the World Wide Web want local content, hey want to be able to see when the bus is coming, or when the film they want to see at the cinema is on, or what is happening in their town. Digital media’s characteristics that it is in a “constant state of flux” (Lister, 2006) rather than fixed lends itself perfectly to this. Where digital media has failed mainly is actually being able to deliver that local content, this is why they are making deals with the local newspapers etc to enable to finally make the idea a reality. Traditional media companies are also trying to use digital media for the very same thing. “ITV broadband television in the starting blocks” (NYT 2008) reports ITV is “gearing up for the launch of its local broadband TV service, ITV Local” The same report also describes how ITV has also acquired Enable Media, which owns directory service Scoot, another part of ITV local strategy. As we can see there is a clear trend by both traditional and digital media companies towards providing this local content and this can be seen in advertising campaigns such as yell.com made by the company AKQA (AKQA 2005).
This customization feature is the "killer app" of the new media - I think the entire concept of the "newspaper" and the "magazine" is disintegrating. They were the products of physical formats that are increasingly irrelevant. I have found much smarter people on the net than I ever encountered in newspapers and most magazines. (Journals are another issue.) I use Google Reader to set up sophisticated filters to handle information noise and overload. I felt much more information overload in ye olden days of print, which I miss not in the least Yet, there is, of course, another point of view here...
PriceWaterhouseCoopers C-levels say traditional media are not dead yet… because their consumers are not dead yet. Analyst Marcel Fenez (via Press Gazette): “One of the things we need to get into context here is that traditional media isn’t dead yet and won’t be for the next five years. It’s very important to think why. The over-50s are helping to sustain traditional media, and also in many of the emerging markets there is still plenty of room for traditional media. The death of traditional media is exaggerated, at least in a five-year context.”
So media forecasting becomes mortality prediction. On that basis, assuming advances in healthcare continue to extend human lifespans, “traditional” media may even be around for more than five years. Although digital ad spend will grow 11 times faster than print up to 2012, it will still only be 10 percent that in newspapers, Fenez said.
In a way I agree: I used to love reading my Sunday newspaper in bed, munching on donuts, giving the kids the comics and my wife the fashion and social sections, This was a ritual in my life - but nowadays, no wife, kids are grown - no ritual, because it no longer serves any purpose. But consider the following - (there is no cohesion to these thoughts, but here it goes):
1. Internet advertising is not the end all be all. A lot of local businesses, where you live, are picking up on the new media/ social media craze, by hiring new media savvy marketing and IT staff. Its amazing how marketing firms continue to blindly exploit internet advertising to sustain their businesses. This is unsurprising looking at the recession in the advertising industry general, as marketing firms are looking for ways to sustain and increase business.
2. How can we predict the usage and adoption of digital and social media? Think about what they call the “Internet generation- a 20 year old in 1995 (when the Internet became prevalent) would now be 33 years old. Think forward another 10 years. Not only are we looking at an increase in education, maturity, and access around the Internet- but also an influx of Internet savvy youth, who will grow into their jobs, taking an “Internet aware” approach to their work.
3. Print Will Never Die: The Internet in harmony with print. Arianna Huffington, with the HUFFINGTON POST uses this great analogy: “The shifting dynamic between the forces of print and online reminds me of Sarah Connor and the T-101 in The Terminator. At first, the visitor from the future (digital) seemed intent on killing Sarah (print). But as the relationship progressed, the Terminator became Sarah and her son’s one hope for salvation. Today, you can almost hear digital media (which for some reason has a thick Austrian accent) saying o print: “Come vit me if you vant to live!”
In a way, the trad media and new media sort of feed off each other, the way I decribed the relationship between the nonmoney economy and the money economy. Not the death of the trad media (my friend Laura calls it the "drive-by media"), but a transformation into something else - the point of this whole rant.
The Great Television Switch Off
The television switch off is real. In the United States, 2.5 million viewers switched off in the spring on 2008 compared to the same time in 2006. Statistically this is only a small percentage of the overall viewing audience, but among those still watching television, the amount of television they watch each day is declining.
The decline in television viewing is stronger among younger statistical groups. In Europe, a 2005 study from the European Interactive Advertising Association found almost half of 15- to 24-year-olds are watching less TV in favor of browsing the web. A study reported in The Guardian in 2007 headlined with “Young networkers turn off TV and log on to the web.” The television switch off in the United States among younger people has seen the average age of a TV viewer increase to 50. Why? What does it mean?
We can think about whether television is going to die in two ways. First, by looking backwards, at the history of the mass media, and second, by looking forward, and trying to understand some of the impulses behind what is going on, behind media proliferation.
The simple historical fact is that mass communication technologies are never replaced by newer technologies. They co-exist, while continuing to evolve. We still have the newspaper, the telephone, the radio, and the movies, despite the fact that each of these was at the time of introduction viewed as the beginning of the end for the other. The only mass communication medium in history to have been replaced by another is the telegraph, a service which began in 1851 with the founding of the New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company and spanned 150 years, ending finally on January 27, 2006, when Western Union discontinued the service. Western Union report that telegrams sent had fallen to 20,000 per year, due to competition from other communication technologies, including -- and probably mainly -- email. Arguably, of course, the telegram was not a mass communication technology." Thus, the Five Year plan of Marcel Fenez.
I have some sadness for the putative death of television. Anyone in Generation X or older would have grown up with the medium, and spent countless hours on the couch watching it, and yet today, people worldwide are switching off. As younger viewers happily switch to their computers, forgoing the experience of a television set altogether, newer, more consumer friendly devices will deliver Internet content to the broader population, often via the television screen, and the switch off of television networks will accelerate. By the time my (by now 17 year old) daughter has children of her own, broadcast television will be a thing of the past, replaced instead by an always on society with the Internet as a nearly unlimited smorgasbord of choice.
Just to clarify one point in this post that some seem to be confusing, and perhaps I wasn’t clear enough. I am not suggesting that the experience of sitting around a large screen TV watching sport or other content is going to fall. It never will, but content delivery via broadcast television (ie television networks, or collectively the television media) will fall. There will always be a place for a television set in many lounge rooms, but that set in the future will be a conduit for digitally delivered, on-demand or custom mixed content, delivered over the Internet, from many different providers.
The "sine que non" here is-
a) New media technologies have altered the flow and increase the volume of social communication by decreasing costs and distance sensitivity of moving information; increasing the speed and volume of communication. The exchange of information have become instantaneous and global.
b) New media technologies have changed the way journalists 9and everybody else) work through the abundance of easily accessible information over the net as well as giving portability for journalist to produce news, e.g., notebook, PDAs, etc. Together with advances in long-distance traveling have make it possible to down-size and de-skill newsroom by increasing reliance on pooled information fed into eth information net by PR firms and news agencies.
c) The transformation of ‘broadcasting’ to ‘narrowcasting’ to audience. The customization of the flow of news, etc is the important change and control factor here.
b) New media technologies have changed the way journalists 9and everybody else) work through the abundance of easily accessible information over the net as well as giving portability for journalist to produce news, e.g., notebook, PDAs, etc. Together with advances in long-distance traveling have make it possible to down-size and de-skill newsroom by increasing reliance on pooled information fed into eth information net by PR firms and news agencies.
c) The transformation of ‘broadcasting’ to ‘narrowcasting’ to audience. The customization of the flow of news, etc is the important change and control factor here.
And one final point - no communication technology is easier to use, or more portable, than a book. Paper is the most successful communications innovation of the last 2000 years, the one that has lasted the longest and had the most profound effect on civilization. One can easily make the case that without the technology that is paper, there would be no civilization. Yet most of the time, we don’t even think of paper as a technology. And so we don’t ask the questions we routinely ask about other technologies: How does it work? What are its strengths and weaknesses? Is it easy and enjoyable to use?
Confused yet? GOOD - that's the point! All this stuff is onter-related, as i hope to wind up in my conclusion this weekend. Now, let's see how this all relates to generating capital, and how that capital is used ------------->
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