Online Journalism Blog’s Paul Bradshaw has written a primer on how the internet has irrevocably changed the way news does business, and why any newspaper that hopes to survive needs to understand—and take advantage of—the new economics of journalism.
Among all of the 12 factors Bradshaw enumerates (ranging from the atomisation of news content to the rise of PR firms), the common theme is the diminishing power of print media in the face of emergent online entities. Where a newspaper once held a monopoly over classified ads, now stands Craigslist; where a newspaper once dominated arts criticism, now users turn to Last.fm, message boards, and Amazon book reviews. The content print media held as its exclusive domain has been usurped by a variety of sources that offer similar (if not equivalent) content with greater accessibility—and most dauntingly, for free.
Print media has also, Bradshaw notes, lost a great deal during the online advertising revolution. Advanced traffic metrics are able to determine exactly how many people are reading what, when, and where they came from—all adding up to advertisers expecting far more from newspapers than ever before. And increasingly often, brands are able to exert their influence upon the shopping public far better on their own (via viral media or social networks) than they ever could with a full page print ad. Newspapers have lost much of both their bargaining power and their relevance when it comes to advertising.
Online Journalism Blog: “How the web changed the economics of news – in all media”
[via Bruce Sterling]
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