Panic button

Via Bill Doskoch, a very depressing read from Dan Gillmor, one of the Media Minders on my blogroll. (Scroll down and look right, kids!) He argues that it isn't bloggers bringing down the mainstream media -- as much as the pajamahadeen would like to believe they are. Nay, it is on the business end of the Internet where the trouble lies.

Marketing isn't disappearing overall. It's just moving to different venues, and bodes badly for the way we've supported journalism over the past century or so.

Newspapers, in particular, rely in significant part on classified advertising, a lucrative business with absurdly high profit margins.

But in recent years web services such as eBay, Monster.com, craigslist and others have carved away a nontrivial portion of that business. They offer customers, both buyers and sellers, a much better deal: greater convenience, larger selection, unlimited "space" for the advertisement on the web page and lower prices, sometimes outright free.

The competitors for classified advertising are nimble, well-funded and innovative. The only one of those attributes newspapers can match, for the moment, is the ability to invest.

To their great advantage, the online competitors can operate far more leanly and cheaply for their customers - in part because doing journalism would be an absurd distraction from their businesses, not a foundation of what they do.

Cut us off at the revenue end, and we will no longer be able to produce the original journalism the parasitic bloggers feed off. There simply won't be the resources to fund it.

But the blogosphere doesn't see how its host is in fact being killed off. Instead it jumps around and calls journos names, or attacks MSM coverage. Which is fine because, goodness knows, we watchdogs need a watchdog.

But snarling and growling at us isn't going to stop off from doing our jobs. Taking away the kibble that feeds us will.

And then, everybody loses. Everybody.

Comments

[Bill-Muskoka]

Antonia,

You are definitely onto reality. Likewise, the corporate profit mongers do themselves in time and time again.

Then there are those who view their profits as part of their public trust and run their businesses soundly financially, ethically, and humanitarian wise.

When ethics and morality (that has nothing to do with sex BTW, but rather upholding balanced standards) get thrown out it becomes a death match between those willing to play the game. History shows they are seldom the end game victor.

Anyway, there are my thoughts on the matter!

[Joseph Krengel]

Surely you're not suggesting that the declining prevalence of newspapers and traditional journalism can be attributed to the changing economic models of the newsmedia?

While there can be no dispute that what Gillmor suggests is true on the surface, it would be silly to ignore the politicization of news and (to use an awfully clumsy terminology) present social value system which regards truth as subjective as factors in the decline of the journalism trade.

[Greg]

"the parasitic bloggers"

I like to think of myself as more of a bottom feeder. ;)

[Stephen Downes]

"Cut us off at the revenue end, and we will no longer be able to produce the original journalism the parasitic bloggers feed off."

Oh piffle. Bloggers depend on many things to create content - mainstream news is only a part of it, and not even the largest part (except for the cadre of self-referential political blogs).

[Elvid]

Don't think that there's much MSM can do about the prevalence of low-cost alternative classifieds.
Been a problem for a long time with the "Buy and Sell" sort of publication taking a lot of the classified business.
Well, the MSM in the States certainly has its knife out for Crag's List. Lots of stories especially of the "free rooms for sex" ads which was hyped last month.

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=%22Craig%27s+List%22

[Jay Currie]

Things change. If the net proves one thing it is that no one has a right to revenue.

By and large the objection to MSM from both the right and the left wings of the blogosphere is that it is filled with technophobic, biased, lazy boomers waiting out their days until they can take early retirement.

Is this a true account? I doubt it. But as you often point out from the left it takes hecklers to ask the SecDef hard questions. The PPG goes on like spoilt brats when the PM refuses to play by their rules (and why are there over 1000 people covering the Hill?) Election coverage has become not much more than a cross between Gaff-Watch and the Preakness with a measure of Fashion File thrown in. The CBC can't decide if it should produce quality or simply pander.

And so on.

Plus, when your competition is free, lets you put up colour pics of the merchandise for sale and allows people to get in touch with you by email, don't you think its time for the MSM to reconsider its classified advertising rates? Count the ads on a classified page at the Star and multiply by the line rate...Not too tough to beat those prices.

[sooey]

i dunno. i think blogging is mostly just a reaction to the msm's editorializing of the news. it's all good. er, except the msm's editorializing of the news.

[Bill-Muskoka]

A REAl price war is happening!

I never thought I would see this again, but we are having a genuine price war here in the Muskoka between, at least, two retailers.

The prices have been changing downward by 0.002 cents by the minute. One changes their sign and the other immediately follows!

Is anyone else seeing this amazing free-market happening?

It started at 96.7 and at last glance was down to 95.5 all in a few minutes. Its a Friday as well. Maybe the buy only what you need plan is having a real impact?

[Marian]

I agree with Sooey. Too much opinion in the MSM. Blogging is competition for opinion and spin. It doesn't do 'news' all that well.