Those guys certainly know more about web advertising than I do, but it seems like a strange business decision to me. My first thought on reading this was, “I can’t imagine having less interest in anything than I have in watching ‘Ask Dr. Helen’ or ‘Hugh News’ on my computer”. Not to pick on those two, per se, but it’s true. So I checked the web stats on Alexa, and appeared to me that Protein Wisdom alone had more views over the past 6 months than pjtv.com, the portal for all of their shows (probably a reasonable facsimile for views of all their shows combined). Yet they’re going to dump PW (and presumably others) in order to focus on PJTV? When you factor in that probably a solid half of the readers of these sites are stealth-reading them from work, and that it’s rather harder to stealth-watch a 20 minute video clip, I have a hard time seeing how this is going to work out for them.Jeff G. retorts:
Maybe I’ll start a free version PJTV. I’m sure I can play all those characters.I must say, I can barely stand to watch any political talking heads TV shows, even on network TV and cable TV. I just have no patience waiting for people to say something that I could read in 1/10 the time. I've clicked over to PJTV a few times, but after less than a minute, I always leave. Why am I looking at these folks? Put it in writing! Yes, I know I do Bloggingheads, but that's an active conversation for me. Do you watch Bloggingheads? At least with Bloggingheads, I can make whatever little embeddable clips I want to use to set up a discussion in writing.
I'm reading more comments chez Protein Wisdom, and SGT Ted mirrors my thinking:
Well, crapo. The reason I use the intertoobs is because I don’t LIKE the talking heads “we’ll tell you what we think is important and you won’t have any way to respond” Bullshit of TV. If I want TV like programs, I’ll turn on the goddam TV. I like the people doing the PJMTV when they are blogging, but I don’t want to watch them go blah blah.Instapundit says:
YEAH, the PJM ad-network model isn’t working. I don’t have much to do with the PJM business side, but online ads just aren’t producing revenue like they were a few years ago, and the blog-network thing was apparently a tough sell. Hence the emphasis on PJTV. How will that work out? Stay tuned.Well, we will, of course, stay tuned to Instapundit for further updates on this and everything else. But do you want to watch him on web TV? I mean, surely you must want to watch him when he's talking to me... or do you? (Hey, that's one of the few times Bloggingheads put me on the left.)
Ace, another PJM blogger who's about to lose his income stream, says:
Damn. I was finally starting to make an amount of money I wasn't utterly embarrassed by, too....This is one of those patches. I usually have 2 or 3 ads running via BlogAds, but haven't even had 1 ad in the last couple of weeks. You can see why BlogAds is a less risky business. It doesn't pay you because you have traffic. It pays you because they sold an ad to run on your blog. How much does it pay? When I sell an ad, it pays me a percentage of the price I set myself (and can adjust up or down as I see fit). (Feel free to buy an ad!)
[T]he model for payment was pretty transparent and intuitive -- paid per impression. One could figure out one's quarterly payment just by eyeballing one's Sitemeter. BlogAds paid okay, but there are always those patches where no one really wants to buy ads, making income kind of unpredictable.
Some of you long-time readers may remember that I rejected my offer from Pajamas Meda back when it started:
Did you get your offer from Pajamas Media yet? Are you going to put on the pajamas -- take a flat fee to commit the top four spots on your sidebar for a whole year? I thought Pajamas implied a bloggy freedom, different from a corporate, mainstream mentality. Are we supposed to marry Pajamas and give up on Henry Copeland's delightful BlogAds, which has been beautifully designed with a feeling for the spirit of blogging? Ah, I don't like pajamas anyway. I want to blog naked. With Henry.Will Henry take them back?
I did some pretty harsh anti-Pajamas blogging back in the day. (Including stuff aimed at Jeff G. Remember when I wrote what my old commenter Icepick said was "that the grossest thing Ann has written on this blog"?) It was a huge ideological issue for me at the time: the freedom and independence of bloggers. Looking back on those old posts, I can see I've lost some of my lively romanticism about blogging. I had a very intense feeling about how subversive this all was. That somehow went hand in hand with the anticipation of waves of money flowing in — and who would channel more of it to me, Henry or Roger?
But these are hard times for everyone. Any business could fail in this environment. So, what does it say about how good that business model was in the first place? My concern was always, which business model is better for us writers, and I thought it was Henry.
ADDED: The Anchoress — a PJM blogger — weighs in... and, as one of several reasons why she doesn't want to do web TV, reveals that "the Lord’s overgenerous endowment in my chestal area makes any notion of camera work unthinkable, particularly in HD where the girls might terrify some." How large do breasts need to be before they make it impossible to appear on television? And can't you just adjust the camera frame? On Bloggingheads, we're all just heads — and maybe a bit of shoulders — unless, of course, you're Arianna Huffington:
UPDATE: I'm still waiting for Dennis the Peasant — PJM's biggest antagonist — to join the conversation, so let's read that other relentless Pajamas antagonist, Steve from Hog on Ice:
This is probably what’s going on: PJM always lost money, so it was paying people out of venture capital. As the capital dissipated, people had to be fired.Go to the link for his curse theory. It includes Obama and the GOP and the G-O-D. He ends with Biblical verse:
PJM’s new hope is PJTV, a pay video site. Where you can pay to watch Glenn and Helen Reynolds. This is not unlike asking people to pay to be punched in the face. It will fail. I can’t understand why anyone would think it could succeed....
I used to see the PJ fiasco as the result of greed, treachery, foolishness, and dishonesty. These days I see it more as the evidence of a curse.
Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child, and thy princes eat in the morning!I keep telling myself to go cook breakfast, and I'm taking this as a sign.
Posts
120 comments:
Bloggers doing home-made TV is like:
Radio stars doing TV
or
TV stars making movies.
You can't take the rules of your medium and make them work in another. That's why Howard Stern has never made it outside of radio and why so few TV actor make it in the movies.
Yes, I will read long, sloppy, goofy stuff on-line.
No, I will not sit and watch a 30-minute TV segment that is:
a) badly lit;
b) in which the performers are unkempt;
c) the set is ugly;
d) dead air has not be edited out;
e) the performers are unidentified;
f) it's 30-minutes long; and
g) the pundits are unprepared and just winging it.
Plus, a silly name like "Pajamas Media" don't help. It's too cute. Insiders know the meaning, but if you're trying to reach a broader audience (not to mention advertisers), people will think its casual, unserious, and sleepy--like pajamas themselves.
I don’t know squat about the business end of blogging, although I do know what it’s like to wake up with stiff pajamas, having once been an adolescent male and all that.
I don't know what it's like to wake up with squat in my pajamas but I assume that’s because I simply don’t remember, having once been an infant and all that.
Anyway, no one ever said it better than Elaine Benis: “I don’t know how you guys walk around with those things.”
When I was a young man, I greatly admired a local artist who worked in found objects, plastics and text. He gave me some career advice: “Make sure you care about what you do because nobody else will.”
That was bad advice, to be sure.
I try to follow it, anyway.
If ya got 'em, flaunt 'em.
Hot damn! Got an Althouse mention and my very own tag. :)
I feelz so speshul.
hehe.
Your defense of bloggingheads is utter crap. If the reason you do it is for your own involvement in the conversation, then why not just use a telephone? You’re doing it so others will be stupid enough to waste time watching whatthey could read much faster. And you push other blogginghead conversation on the blog, too. So obviously you watch them.
I know you’d like us to think you’re really literary and intellectual. But you’re a conversational hack, Althouse. And you haven’t written anything significant in years.
Re
Sorry I am late to this, I was over at Johnny BD's place reading his work. It is as deep as it is lengthy.
Anyway, Arianna needs implants if she is trying to stay abreast of the current trends. And the camera angle needs to be adjusted, as we can still see her face. And please get someone who speaks English to overdub her horrible talking. A fucking mynah bird would be an improvement.
Re: Bloggingheads.
I'm not willing to sit in front of the computer and watch an installment, but I do download the audio versions of conversations I want to hear and listen to them on my MP3 player while I drive or do things around the house.
The video portion of the conversations seems totally uninteresting anyway, as best as I can tell from the audio. "I'm holding up a book" is about as exciting as it gets. Well, until The Anchoress makes an appearance, I suppose.
"Johnny" AKA AJD, a person who has been stalking Althouse on this blog for years now, posting creepily consistent jealousy-based insults, begs the question: what, besides his pathetic and embarrassing little lashes of jealous rage, has he ever written? Nothing, I'd wager. AJD is probably both a failed academic and a failed blogger, and Althouse's large readership and academic position are a constant splash of salt water in his rug-burns and paper cuts of failure.
Haha, Arianna Huffington is like LOOK AT MY TITS, BOB! I JUST HAD THEM PUT IN LAST WEEK.
Steve over at Hog on Ice and Dennis the Peasant must have huge grins on their face right now.
The only streaming video show that I watch with any regularity is Breitbart TV, with Liz and Scott. The advantage of their format is that they take emails and chats, and they take story suggestions from their watchers/listeners. They also post links from devotees, so one does get a sensation of a round-table discussion.
HAHAHAHA!
Can't stand the blogging heads stuff. Too many of the bloggers have faces for radio and voices for blogging.
The Glenn and Helen show over on PJTV is getting better. They tend to ask real questions of their guests and don't let them off with wimpy answers.
I was also a fan of the hotair.com videos with MM and Ham Nation with Mary Katherine Ham. Miss those though newsbusters is fun.
.. and Hog on Ice is now Tools of Renewal.
If the ad model isn't working for outfits like Gawker, why would it work for an organization with a name like Pajamas Media. I remember where that reference comes from - how many other people in the blogosphere do? Maybe a few hundred? Out of millions?
The internet killed this late night cable television star...
Is Jeff Goldstein going the way of Al Goldstein? I do not think so. Is PJM TV the next wave? I rather doubt it. Frankly Drew Carey does a far better job at Reason, doing a more TV Magazine style (which works better for the medium). But I am with you, written blogs save time and allow you to skim quickly to what you are interested in.
I just have no patience waiting for people to say something that I could read in 1/10 the time.
And with that, you have not only summed up the reason I rarely watch any web TV, (especially if a transcript is available), but the main argument in my ongoing war to have voicemail banned.
Do you watch Bloggingheads?
I'll watch to see how a blogger sounds and moves. How else can I judge if their photo is good?
I'm glad Pajamas Media is having problems, I never liked them or any of the other conglomeration sites. Just because I read Instapundit does not mean I like Gay Patriot or Michelle Malkin. And the whole conglomeration thing seems to rob bloggers of their individuality and me of my control. I like going to my favorites list and picking my favorite bloggers, in the order I choose, as the mood strikes me.
Ann,
I read you often and enjoy it, but unless its across a table at a coffee house in Texas, I don't want to watch you talk. Hell, I read blogs as part of avoiding TV.
And I don't care how much breast they should. That's like images of food...no fun at all.
I really enjoy Bloggingheads ... as podcasts. I subscribe, listen regularly and and stockpile for long driving trips (which is why even my son knows who some of the main, regular characters are). I almost never "watch" them anymore, unless there's someone new and I want to get a sense of his or her body language and gestures in connection with their speaking. (Watching someone once is usually enough to do that.)
I would pay a subscription fee for the podcasts. You'd have to pay ME, though, to sit and watch 'em as a captive to a computer screen. No way would I pay to watch talk on the computer. If I had to pay separately to watch pundit shows on TV, I wouldn't do that either.
Like others, I can read massively faster than others can speak (even than I can speak, which is verrrrry fast), and so I'd MUCH rather read bloggers than watch 'em. Listening is different because I can do other things at the same time.
Pajamas Media irritates me. I don't like how the main page looks. It is confusing. I do read MANY of the blogs they are firing. I hope these blogs will survive - they made it before PJM - maybe they can make it again. PJTV is kind of silly - and too time consuming. It seems amateur and reading a blogpost is somehow better, you can skip around, skim, move to the next post, etc.
And no, I don't watch blogginheads.
Glad it's OK for the people on it, but it's tedious on this end.
PJTV sucks from a technical standpoint, because it's kicking off a Java process "behind" the browser. Close the browser window... and you can no longer *stop* or pause the PJTV.
(All I've watched there is Bill Whittle - until I got fed up with that PoS video system.)
Sadly, the collapse of "Pajamas Media" will be heralded as a failure of the "Army of Davids", not the correct failure of management. In fact, it's the opposite of the concept of an "Army of Davids". Ironic, no?
Dear Prof.: Why, oh why, should we listen to you, you who voted for Barack I. Wasn't that sufficient proof of your foolishness, your thought process? Dear God, how much more can we take?
What's next? Are you to be anointed political media advisor to Barack I, enscounced with S. Powers?
On Bloggingheads, we're all just heads — and maybe a bit of shoulders — unless, of course, you're Arianna Huffington
I love the expression on Bob Wright's face next to Arianna Huffington. It's like that wolf whistle "va-va-va-voom" expression from 1950s movie musicals. Was that screen capture intentional?
Bloggingheads episodes are only watchable routinely and in their entirety for either of two reasons: if the interplay of the personalities is entertaining enough to make you want to keep abreast of the evolution of that relationship, or the agenda is tight and topical. Each facet can make-up for the other to some extent, but the first is much more important to "branding" the blogginghead or heads.
Content aside, I enjoy the playful taunting of Bob Wright and Mickey Kaus like I would an old comedy team.
Althouse is good on both scores with most other b-heads, but us commenters are biased, aren't we?
The motto of blogging should be "Bloggers do it for themselves." 90% of blogging is the manifestation of the blogger's ego -- I do not see why others would be motivated to pay for others' fun.
On the other hand, if enough people are interested in reading your thoughts that your blog consumes a significant amount of server resources and bandwidth, then your blog should be at least self-sustaining via page-view ads.
And Original George is 100% right on the money.
The blogs are fine. Just the ad idea didn't work out.
Fine = several of my regular reads are Pajamas Media, though I could not say which offhand.
A regular day job probably makes you a better blogger anyway.
You don't suck up to the same target audience as the MSM, also having trouble with the business model.
No, I don't watch PJTV. Sometimes I watch Drew Carey do one of his reason things.
And sorry, professor, I admire you but I don't watch blogging heads, either. It's all so boring to me.
I don't really "watch" pundit shows on TV, either. What I do is listen to them ... while I'm doing something else. It's telling that I can't remember the last time I consumed a show like that in the room where I'd be likely to "sit" and watch TV. Strictly a "room where I'm there to do other things" sort of thing.
I think you nailed the problems with PJTV (and other blog/TV efforts) early in your post:
1) I can read all "the good bits" of a 20 minute TV segment in about 2 minutes.
2) I do a fair amount of my reading at work, where watching a clip is out of the question.
3) Even when reading at home, I'm often sharing the room with my wife or others, which *still* makes me not want to watch the video clip.
I mean, what's so compelling about the *visuals* in these videos? You are basically just listening anyway; the image is mostly just talking heads. If I'm just listening to words, it's *much* more effect to read them. And it allows the blogger to put a little more thought and polish into the words.
I've only clicked on PJTV videos a couple of times, when both the topic and the blogger were really favorites of mine. Even then, I've never made it more than about 2-3 minutes into a broadcast before giving up. It's unimaginable to me that they will get anywhere close to the same audience with TV clips as they do with the written word.
They are picking the wrong one of their two horses.
Brief to vlogs or stuff on YouTube is different. Brief to short is the key.
I've long been bothered by the "New Media" triumphalists (Jay Rosen is a good example of one, among many others). I like it when the press's feet are held to the fire, but I've never danced in glee watching the companies lose money and people lose their jobs.
I'm not sure what the blogger/new media people thought would happen to *them*. It's a business model based on everyday people offering their opinions for free.
Assuming there are some, it'd be interesting to see the demographic, psychometric and trends analyses PJM used in determining that the future was more in Pajamas TV than the blogger network. One would have to think there's some rationale ... and that it somehow involves some sort of ripe-potential target audience (which is not made up of people such as, for example, me--but then, perhaps I'm the past, not the future). Just curious.
I never watch PJTV. It takes too long to even sign up, and why do we have to sign up anyway? The free one was boring. I also never watch Bloggingheads--or maybe once or twice, only because it provides the time stamp that you can go to for the bon mot.
I have a real affection for Instapundit, but he seems a day or two behind these days, no? I would prefer he concentrate on linky fun and skip the TV show, but that's IMHO and it's his life I guess.
I don't watch any bloggers when they do video, except Althouse when she does a Personal Vlog to her commenters.
I have never watched a bloggingheads. I have no interest. I don't know who 90% of them are. I never knew their was a blog called Hogs on Ice.
I read two or three other political bloggers and that's it. If this blog was all political I probably wouldn't read it because there is only so much of the political discourse I can take.
Huffington looks like she has nice tits.
She is attractive but that voice is no annoying.
Nice vent, Althouse.
No, I don't watch the blogging heads. I read blogs
for the concise. The world is full of longwindedness.
Jeff G. has been pinned down by personal issues that have made it hard for him to blog very much. Sad that now he apparently won't blog at all.
I like Jeff G. Unlike many bloggers (not our hostess), he's not always predicable. Most on PJM are completely predictable, and Roger Simon has gotten plain boring.
Maybe Jeff can become a commenter here.
I just have no patience waiting for people to say something that I could read in 1/10 the time.
Same. That's why I don't watch TV. That's why I almost never watch online videos. If there's no reason for the content to exist in a visual medium, there's no reason for me to watch it. And really, something has to be visually exceptional and really make use of that medium to be worth watching. My eyes can be busy doing a lot of things--why waste their use?
Ariana, if you want any throws, you have to show them to us. Mardi Gras is almost here!
I'm with MayBee. Blogger triumphalism has been painful to watch these past few years.
What did people really expect? Here are these big-media companies, with their massive resources, established relationships and -- yes, slag them if you want -- their highly skilled writers/reporters. And even they can't make online content work. How exactly is anyone else supposed to make it work, either?
What this news represents -- this move by PJM, I mean -- is the ongoing failure of sustainable online advertising. And the more important macro view of that is: This is another bad omen for the future of content production as an actual profession.
Everybody keeps talking about "well, business-models-this" and "shoehorning-old-strategies-that." But somebody please explain: [i]How is this going to work?[/i] In the long run, how are we going to wind up with anything but a world full of amateurs communicating with each other?
I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing, in and of itself. What will be will be. But it does mean a very different world ahead.
I've watched a handful of bloggingheads videos (sorry, Althouse, none of yours), and I usually end up thinking "meh. I could have wasted my time in better ways".
The collapse of PJM doesn't mean that the entire new media model is wrong. It just means that it isn't going to work as a business.
PJTV is shit. Truly awful shit. Instead of using tried and true Flash video (ala You Tube), they have some idiotic Java based system. On top of that, the site has a piss poor design that is confusing and hard on the eyes.
PJTV also makes the fatal mistake of believing that a significant number of people want to watch uncharismatic talking heads mumble their way through their points.
People dont read anymore.
I can see why they would figure the bloggs not to be a growth proposition.
There are only going to be so many bloggers and so many people who read bloggs.
Face it, look at the MSM, the NYT, all the papers cutting back.
Look, even Althouse refuse to join them.. so.
Did PJM ask for a bailout?
I sent several PJM bloggers - including JeffG, Ace, and Insty - an open letter suggesting how they could have both helped defeat BHO and done real reporting, the kind of reporting the MSM refuses to do. It was ignored.
One would think that doing the kind of reporting the MSM refuses to do would have gotten all of them a whole lot of page views, but I guess they're either too dumb or too much of partisan hacks to be interested.
Cry me a river.
I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing, in and of itself. What will be will be. But it does mean a very different world ahead.
Exactly.
I'll add this- and I have a fondness for Instapundit- but this seems especially interesting in light of his cheerleading ideas like people canceling their cable subscriptions so they can get "free" internet content.
How much moolah is your site generating, LonewackoDotcom?
Dear Prof.: Why, oh why, should we listen to you, you who voted for Barack I.
You voted for BHO?
Why am I here?
Additional thoughts here.
Maybe this will encourage people to seek out and read sites that are actually trying to do something besides put on a show.
OnLine bloggers doing TV takes too much time to watch and I'm not always in a place where I can use sound freely. Mostly uninteresting as a way to get information or ideas and for sure not entertaining.
There are only going to be so many bloggers and so many people who read bloggs.
Bingo. The real issue is declining readership. To be more succinct, a declining number of readers ...and I don't mean people who can [merely] read, but rather people who are able to follow rational (and ironic, and intellectual, and contextual, and argumentative) written discourse.
Serious readers, educationally equipped to handle logical discourse ...are declining in numbers. Aging. Tuning out. Dieing off.
And. Ahh. The spectre of that old saw "the dumbing down of America" spreads its wings to the world.
...and I think SteveH (HOI, or Tools of Renewal) may actually have it right in the article Ann tongue-in-cheek's. In some ways.
...if I'm right, of course. There is that. But you'd have to quit focusing on the symptom, and ponder the cause.
Messy things, causes. (pun intended, as always)
One point missing in all this "army of David's" bullshit is that talent and skill do matter. Simply wanting to be a reporter and spewing a bunch of facts, even if they are a genuine scoop, doesn't make you a reporter. Pointing a camera at yourself speaking doesn't make you a TV reporter or even interesting.
Bingo. The real issue is declining readership.
This is incorrect. The real issue is that advertising does not generate online the revenues that it does in print or on the air.
This is why the newspaper industry, for instance, is struggling. Most newspapers have higher readerships than ever. The web brings them many more readers than they ever had in print. But advertising, the main income source for newspapers, doesn't work on the web. This is the Great Truth that has been revealed this decade, and it is now doing its number on the content industry.
The Internet has basically revealed the truth in advertising, so to speak: People don't pay attention to ads. And now the whole structure is crumbling. Television is next. Talk to people in the local TV business, and they'll tell you they're getting as nervous as the newspaper folks have been.
Throw in other fundamental problems like the inability to control distribution of one's content -- because many web users feel like everything is ripe for copying, pasting, pirating and otherwise -- and the Internet has basically destroyed the realm that we can broadly describe as "the content industry." Nobody will be immune. The music industry has already been fatally wounded. Hollywood won't be far behind.
And anybody who sits around gleefully enjoying the schadenfreude of all this, or feeling a tingle up their legs about some "army of Davids" age, hasn't truly thought through the consequences. People so take for granted what we've had -- ubiquitous news coverage, quality films, a shared music culture, etc. -- that I don't think they're capable of envisioning it being gone. But it's on the verge of disappearing. We've destroyed a big piece of ourselves with the Internet, or at least with the way we've gone about the Internet.
The question was asked: "Why am I here?" For me the answer is simply, AA is occasionally funny, trite, pertinent, intelligent, often witty, and cute as a bug's ear on a corn stalk.
What other reasons does one need, eh? Plus my wife doesn't know so that adds an air of mystery as long as she doesn't catch me; she's a good shot at 75-yards with an M-4 on burst mode.
Reader_Iam wrote: Like others, I can read massively faster than others can speak (even than I can speak, which is verrrrry fast)....
I can vouch for this: She speaks very quickly.
Althouse wrote: Including stuff aimed at Jeff G. Remember when I wrote what my old commenter Icepick said was "that the grossest thing Ann has written on this blog"?
I'm not dead yet! I'm just incognito....
An addendum to my above post:
I think the wisest move newspapers could make right now would be to temporarily "go dark" -- literally just shut for a week or two, and let the world see what it's like without them.
The public (along with other "news" sources such as TV and radio) would quickly discover how dependent they are on what newspapers do, in ways they don't even realize. I suspect we'd quickly see people scrambling to shore up an industry whose demise many people right now are idiotically celebrating.
I'm with reader_iam on the podcasts. I load about a weeks worth of various podcasts into my mp3 player and listen to them in the car instead of the radio.
I have no time or interest in sitting in front of my computer to watch an hour long video.
The "Army of Davids" has always been and always will be this.
The problem with the affected bloggers is probably something to do with personality types. If you give some people a problem they'll try to come up with a plan to solve it, list some things to do if the plan doesn't go as expected, and then try to follow the plan through to the end.
Those affected bloggers aren't like that. All they want to do is moan about the problem and encourage others to join in. And, they weren't able to get enough others to moan with them.
The problem with the "Army of Davids" meme and PJM is that what is needed is a pack, not a herd.
I have about as much patience with Bloggingheads as I do with MSNBC.
Pajamas TV is like the Republican party... EPIC FAIL.
Dennis the Peasant is handling the situation with all the class & dignity it deserves.
I think the wisest move newspapers could make right now would be to temporarily "go dark" -- literally just shut for a week or two, and let the world see what it's like without them.
I think that is brilliant.
While I want papers to do better, they absolutely serve a function. Political blogs couldn't exist without traditional media. I have a subscription to the LA Times because I read them online and I feel its only fair to help keep them in business. At the same time, I enjoy reading critiques when they do a bad job.
The internet- perhaps starting with Napster- created a culture where people wanted to get things for free and sat around gleefully watching other people lose money.
Eventually, someone has to get paid or they won't produce. ITunes proved that people are willing to pay. I hope Pajamas Media finds a way, they just need to determine what value they are adding.
Ah, yes. The good old days, when conservative trolls attacked our beloved bloghostess. "Berkeley House Whore" anyone?
MayBee says "I've long been bothered by the "New Media" triumphalists (Jay Rosen is a good example of one, among many others."
That isn't me, and that is not what my work is about. MayBee's description is bullshit. MayBee's standards are low. I have never written that new media will without doubt "triumph," and I have never minimized the problems if old media dies. MayBee is spewing a canard. And like most who practice that art, MayBee won't attach a name to the charges for an obvious reason: MayBee lacks guts, in addition to proof.
Outis (a.k.a. ....):
Dennis the Peasant is handling the situation with all the class & dignity it deserves.
Yeah, Dennis' response is perfect. I don't normally like huge "toldja-so's," but in this case it's so appropriate. More power to him.
Also:
I can vouch for this: She speaks very quickly.
And here I went to all that effort to try and slow down during our talks.
It's full-steam ahead for YOU, buster, next time.
; )
XXOO
Now, where'd I put my g-d cellphone?!
Maybe MayBee meant Jeff Jarvis?
Maybe? MayBee?
Ditto what most everyone else said - I won't watch the free stuff like bloggingheads, why would I pay for something nearly identical?
What, really, do newspapers offer these days that it so important? It used to be that you could get an in-depth analysis of something, more information, etc., from print than TV. That's not the case anymore. Most newspapers have abandoned that form of reporting.
I stopped taking our local paper 15 years ago - I miss the crossword puzzles, but nothing else.
As far as I can tell, the only problem with the demise of the newspaper will be figuring out where to publish legal notices.
You actually write a blog Jay? You can't even write a paragraph. This is why blogging is by and large a joke.
Who's paying Joe Not Really A Plumber's way home?
As far as I can tell, the only problem with the demise of the newspaper will be figuring out where to publish legal notices.
Then you're one of the people I described in my above post, who so take for granted what newspapers contribute, they aren't even conscious of it. It's the old fish-unaware-of-the-water syndrome.
What, really, do newspapers offer these days that it so important?
They "offer" the fundamental reporting, assembling and prioritizing of information about goings-on in the world. Seriously -- where do you think this stuff comes from? Where do you think it's generated from? From the relative handful of people who work for broadcast outlets? From bloggers? From some mysterious force that just sort of plops it down for you to soak up by osmosis?
Newspaper organizations are the fundamental foundation of the news as we know it. You may not "take" your local paper anymore, but you are still HIGHLY dependent on newspapers for what you know about the world. Even if you don't realize it.
What I find very humorous is that many bloggers started out carping about TV just being talking heads. Guess what they're trying to become?
Getting your face on video is only about face time. There is no other real reason.
Registering --
They "offer" the fundamental reporting, assembling and prioritizing of information about goings-on in the world.
Problem is, they offer it with a huge slant, not as simply information.
Problem is, they offer it with a huge slant, not as simply information.
You're way too much of a political junkie if your immediate instinct is to think of the word "BIAS!" when you hear the word "newspaper." The vast majority of news is not about politics.
At any rate, let's concede for the sake of argument that bias is an intrinsic problem with the current news supply. That still doesn't refute my basic point -- or even have anything to do with it, really -- which is that newspapers are the foundation of what we know about goings-on in the world.
You could give every newspaper in the country a conservative slant, and they would face the same issues I've described in this thread: struggling against the problems wrought by the Internet. The essential problem here isn't "slant" or anything else. It's the generation of revenue in the face of advertising's decline.
well, I watch bloggingheads when ann is on, 'cause she's so dang cute-
and, gee whiz, jbd, tell us how you really feel-
PJTV sucks from a technical standpoint, because it's kicking off a Java process "behind" the browser. Close the browser window... and you can no longer *stop* or pause the PJTV.
Oh, that's what that is.
I like Jeff G. Unlike many bloggers (not our hostess), he's not always predicable. Most on PJM are completely predictable, and Roger Simon has gotten plain boring.
I think Jeff G and our hostess have a certain predictability, it's just that it's not partisan. They also both seem to be pretty easily bored and take steps to keep things interesting.
I think they can also genuinely play devil's advocate, which the hacks can't do.
Oh, yeah, video-wise: Althouse is one of the few who is both good to look at and listen to. I'm not just saying "she's pretty and has a nice voice"--but she's animated, expressive and lively.
What I've seen and heard of PJTV is a lot of nasal droning and looking stiff.
Even then I don't watch all Althouse's stuff for all the reasons others have mentioned. But if I do, I know I'm not going to have my senses punished.
Registering says newspapers are the foundation of what we know about goings-on in the world.
I wouldn't disagree, but I'd submit that knowing falsehoods (whether from lies, bias or incompetence) is worse than ignorance.
If it weren't for the news media, we wouldn't walk around believing we knew what was going on.
The right wing bloggers wouldn't be whining or anything, would they? Nah, That would never happen.
I can understand not being in favor of the PJM model or not wanting to give up your way of blogging. That's perfectly reasonable. But why all the sturm und drang over this? Why is this such a big, emotional deal? A little bit of schadenfreude is OK, but the anti-PJM position is about as silly as the idea that PJM was going to make buckets of money. I expect that there will be more experiments into how to make money off of blogging, etc. Many won't pay off; perhaps something will.
Why is this such a big, emotional deal?
Maybe it's as simple as the 'winger at protein wisdom not having gotten enough sleep last night. You know them bloggers, and it's twice as bad when their side is out of power.
I think Hog on Ice was talking about the decline in conservatism as evidence by the decline of PJM. OW yes, it's not that big of a deal. I tend to agree with him, but maybe everyone over the age of 40 tends to them in alarmist "we're doomed" terms. It surprised me when I saw Dinner with Andrew again that they were worried about it, too, 30 years ago, a time we thought was pre-decline!
Decline in politicians, yes. The Founders would despise both parties. Country? Maybe...but I won't be around, I hope, for the New Dark Ages.
Dennis is in the mix. He reposted an anti-Raj from 2005.
BTW I blog commando a LOT. Maybe we can do it together some time. In fact it could be happening right now without my knowledge. Although if I knew I'd gladly give my assent.
PJM was too right wing, not mainstream partisan, and doesn't do anything better than Fox News. So what's the point?
No, I read Jay Rosen as someone who thinks old media does not "get" new media, and who also believes new media to be superior in many ways.
If I misunderstand his take on things- well, it is he that is the professional communicator. Not me.
I must say I am shocked at his vitriol. And him- a Journalism Professor.
Robert Wright and Arianna Huffington?
Ugh. I think I died a little inside just *imagining* having to listen to those two yammer on for twenty minutes.
Recent Jay Rosen Topics:
Audience Atomization Overcome: Why the Internet Weakens the Authority of the Press
---Jan 12, 2009
If Bloggers Had No Ethics Blogging Would Have Failed, But it Didn't. So Let's Get a Clue.
"Those in journalism who want to bring ethics to blogging ought to start with why people trust (some) bloggers, not with an ethics template made for a prior platform operating as a closed system in a one-to-many world."
---Sept 18, 2008
Migration Point for the Press Tribe
"Like reluctant migrants everywhere, the people in the news tribe have to decide what to take with them. When to leave. Where to land. They have to figure out what is essential to their way of life. They have to ask if what they know is portable."
(This is a revised version of the talk I gave to the Personal Democracy Forum, June 23, 2008. Originally published at TechPresident, same day. I have been using the “migration” image for a while, but felt it needed fuller expression. Hence…)
We are early in the rise of semi-pro journalism, but well into the decline of an older way of life within the tribe of professional journalists. I call them a tribe because they share a culture and a sense of destiny, and because they think they own the press— that it’s theirs somehow because they dominate the practice.
---
I'm not sure why Jay feels so attacked, here.
You're way too much of a political junkie if your immediate instinct is to think of the word "BIAS!" when you hear the word "newspaper." The vast majority of news is not about politics.
News papers are failing because they've destroyed their own credibility by being so blatantly politically biased to the point of making shit up, which makes any other thing they print suspect, whether its about politics or not. It shows in what they choose to report and also in what they ignore. There ARE other sources that refute the "mainstream" and make them look unprofessional. If they were honest about their biases, like the old days; Press-Democrat, etc, they'd probably be doing better.
Blake: If it weren't for the news media, we wouldn't walk around believing we knew what was going on.
This is a fair (and clever!) response.
But let's get down to brass tacks. Let's wipe away every news outlet off the face of the earth, right this instant, and start from scratch. How do build a journalism industry that can actually be an industry?
Or no, forget the word "industry." Let's be even more simple than that: How do we merely ensure a dissemination of information about the world that [A] is accurate; [B] is reliable (and "reliability" includes the basic assurance that somebody is always out there trying to secure key info; and, this is the really hard one, [C] has accountability?
I haven't yet seen any model for "citizen journalism" -- i.e., the world's people communicating one-on-one with each other -- that nails all three of these. If somebody's got one, it will be our savior in the wake of professional journalism's demise.
The press doesn't deserve their authority; they've squandered it by playing domestic political games, instead of fact-finding and reporting.
Finally, definition of the word triumphalist, as I understand it:
proud in one's belief or culture, and having a feeling of superiority
That's how I read Jay Rosen's point of view as a blogger.
Perhaps he sees himself differently, but I did not attack him in any unwarranted way.
SGT Ted: "News papers are failing because (a bunch of stuff that doesn't have anything to do with the actual reason newspapers are financially struggling)."
You can choose to stubbornly ignore the facts I've already laid out, including that newspapers' audiences are actually larger than ever. Clearly you feel glee in convincing yourself that this is cosmic retribution for all that bias you saw in those political stories that time.
But the burden is on you to explain why newspapers weren't struggling for life before the Internet, despite having smaller readerships. What was that all about? How did they pull that trick off?
Today they have bigger audiences than ever, which means a whole lot of people aren't turned away by the bias that bothers you. So why are they having financial problems?
MayBee, I'm not sure why Rosen (if that was really him) is so upset about your characterization. I would definitely put him in the "new media triumphalism" camp; I didn't flinch at all when I saw his name in your initial post.
Granted, I don't read him daily, so maybe I've missed some important mitigator. But my general impression has always been that he's gleeful at positioning himself on the front lines of the new-media thing.
Well here is another guy who is going to lose some ad revenue. Although it does help to explain his appetite.
Ad sales and classified ad sales have been declining markedly for a long time now. And pricing, at least for the former, has become more cutthroat.
Demographics are also an issue. It's not just the number of eyes, it's the age of those eyes.
For example.
Age of the eyes on the Internet?
Are you arguing about newspapers as "stacks of paper with ink on them"? Because that's not what they are anymore (and haven't been for several years now).
Placeholder impugns his own literacy by suggesting Goldstein is a "winger".
RTCWBS says I haven't yet seen any model for "citizen journalism" -- i.e., the world's people communicating one-on-one with each other -- that nails all three of these. If somebody's got one, it will be our savior in the wake of professional journalism's demise.
One of the points Glenn Reynolds has made is that the old model could work--if only the press were interested in pursuing it. Instead, rather than focus on hard news (facts, that is) which is both costly to obtain and really requires a degree of infrastructure that can't easily be duplicated by some guy in his pajamas, the press has opted to compete on opinions.
They still control the mindspace, though. That is to say, if you weighted all the stories presented in the media (just by sheer number of mentions), you'd get the idea that the Iraq war was the most important thing that had happened in the past 30 years, at least while we were losing. And you'd find that this volume had a big impact on what people thought was important.
The thing that concerns me about newspapers, is that I have never read a story in a paper about a subject I knew anything about, where the story wasn't wrong or misleading in some fundamental way.
As a child, I and a buddy rescued some dogs, e.g., and the story was reported (inaccurately) in the paper. I grew up with some celebrities' kids; all those celebrity stories that appeared in the L.A. Times were wrong.I, personally, have been interviewed by a very nice, very smart fellow, who got bunches wrong. Not just newspapers, either. ( I wrote a bit about my experience with the memory hole in TV news. )
We're not even talking politics here. Just basic facts. This is stuff where the person reporting shouldn't even have an axe to grind.
I don't need to imagine what happens when they do. The view of the world that people get is a funhouse mirror of reality--it actively prevents them from seeing the truth even if that truth is right in front of them.
Do I see an answer? Possibly. Semi-pro journalists. The best stuff I read is by people who know what they're talking about. (Big surprise.) And to an extent, we have that. There are some great milbloggers, e.g., and tech bloggers, and law bloggers--and even political bloggers (i.e., people who report on the actual sausage making).
Maybe the flaw of the old media was that it was trying to be all things to all people.
That generally leads to mediocrity.
Maybe the flaw of the old media was that it was trying to be all things to all people.
But that's because there's a market for that.
Semi-pro journalists is one thing, but semi-pro editors is another. Most human beings don't have any desire to go poking around the world (or the Internet) for authoritative reporting on a gazillion different subjects.
They want someone else to do that for them: They want someone else to round up all the information and distill it into a form they can quickly and easily digest. They want someone else to make some priority calls -- this development is more important than that one, this event is worthy of your attention, here's what you need to know to get by today.
Somebody still needs to perform that role. If we wipe every newspaper off the planet right this second, and build that role from scratch, we're going to wind up with... a newspaper. The fundamental thing won't change. And neither will the fundamental problem: how to make an actual viable business out of it.
On your other point: People like to talk about the stuff that journalists get wrong. Here's the even more amazing thing to me: that they get so much stuff right. Human beings are error-prone creatures, especially when they're involved in what amounts to a real-life version of the telephone game (or Chinese whispers, if that's still PC). That journalists are as accurate as they are, day after day -- with corrective mechanisms in place for the stuff they get wrong -- is a pretty laudable feat, in my eyes.
But that's because there's a market for that.
There was once, yes. But perhaps what we're seeing here is the same thing we're seeing elsewhere: monolithic too-big-to-fail-type organizations are too susceptible to groupthink not to fail.
As for editors, I think they will have work for a long time coming. But perhaps not the sort of work they've been doing for decades now, which is to decide what the story will be before sending out reporters to collect the facts that support that story.
On your other point: People like to talk about the stuff that journalists get wrong. Here's the even more amazing thing to me: that they get so much stuff right.
I might be amazed by that, but for different reasons than you are.
There was once, yes.
No, there's still a market for it. I could rattle off about 200 names merely in my personal sphere who I am confident have no desire to spend their days hunting down this so-and-so's "mili blog," that so-and-so's "tech blog," this so-and-so's "poli blog," etc. Starting with my mom, dad, sisters, best friend, the dudes I was hanging out with at the bar last night, and on down the list.
These people want someone else to put in the elbow grease and TELL them what's news, what's important, what they need to know. They're not information junkies like those of us in this thread. They don't have the time, skills or wherewithal to spend their days source-hunting, juggling information, deciding who's trustworthy, deciding what matters.
Right now, these folks are enjoying a kind of golden age: They don't have to pay for a paper anymore, and can head to the web to read, say, the Chicago Tribune for free. Or they can hit a Google News, or a Drudge, to see work from the Chicago Tribune et al. collated in one spot. Or they can browse blogs and see a filtered version of the stuff.
In other words, right now they get to freeload, in a sense. But if the news industry dies, they're screwed. This stuff won't be right at their fingertips in this way anymore.
And so then we're back to the square one I've already described. The market for this collation of information exists -- it's my mom, dad, sister, etc. -- but how can it be served, given what we've now learned about revenues on the web?
I suspect that either some genius will finally figure out how to make ad revenue work online, or we'll head back to a pay-for-content model. Because there IS a demand for the product. It's just that the supply and distribution have been thrown out of whack by the growing pains that have come with the web.
I think you misunderstand my drift.
I'm not saying there isn't a market of lazy people (heh) but that they're more demanding than ever.
You can go to Google or a multitude of other sites and build your own newspaper. That's one reason the newspaper itself is obsolete.
I don't see this changing. The paper format--even if virtualized--is obsolete: Back in the old days, people would say, "Well Royko is good, and I'd like to read Champlin, and this paper has good investigative stories, while that one has a good crossword puzzle. Etc."
There's nothing in this new model that keeps people from producing good work and being compensated for it.
All that's gone is the monopoly of the few and the tyranny of the physical format.
I'm sorry if that's upsetting but the demand for quality information isn't going to go away, and it isn't going to exist in a vacuum.
It shouldn't be a news flash to the news industry that technology would upset the old paradigm. They've only been telling this story about other industries for 60 years, and their own for about 30.
Which again, underscores my point about the dangers of the delusion that you actually know what's going on.
MayBee: You don't understand what my work is about and you have no warrant for what you wrote. You tossed off an insult and then pretended not to know what it meant. I said nothing about an "attack," that part you just made up.
I didn't perceive what you said as an attack; I perceived it as stupid, an ignorant characterization that deserved to be corrected. It would be like saying, "I get so tired of listening to hard core conservative law professors like Althouse..." and having no clue that she supported Obama.
I do hope the distinction between "attack" and "just being stupid" is clear. You do not know whereof you speak, but yet you speak. That's stupid.
Jay Rosen, you may not be a new media triumphalist, but you do seem to be kind of a dick. Are you as confrontational and obnoxious with your J-school students?
Lighten up and stop being so self-important.
"Registering To Comment With Blogger Sucks" can hold his breath and stomp his feet all he wants, but the MSM dead tree media continues to swirl around the loo on the verge of going kerplunk. They've done it to themselves in several ways. You can blame it on the internet but big paper media was very slow to recognize what was happening, to embrace the new technology, to communicate in it, and that's not even getting to their utter failure to do what they should've done: take the lead in it. Tacking hard left politically doesn't help either. A business enterprise which goes out of its way to insult and alienate half of its potential customer base deserves to fail.
And don't worry. They can be replaced much easier than you believe.
Ann wrote: "What does it say about how good that business model was in the first place?"
I don't know that anyone has the right business model for blogging. One small thing that interests me about this one: the Pajamas Media bloggers don't seem to know if the money they were getting had begun to flow from revenue, or represented declining dollars from the investors. That matters to what kind of expectations they could have had for its continuity.
RegisteringTCWBS said:
the Internet has basically destroyed the realm that we can broadly describe as "the content industry." Nobody will be immune. The music industry has already been fatally wounded. Hollywood won't be far behind.
But even if the so-called music industry does go down, did you happen to notice that bands are still touring, making money, and all that? In fact, those who sell their music over iTunes, CD Baby, and so on are getting to keep more of their own money--money which, under the Big Music model, would have gone into the pockets of talentless corporate hacks instead? If journalists can figure out this model--and I bet they will someday; I wonder if there could be a site that has done for writing what MySpace has done for indie bands?--they won't need the talentless boss-man either.
Most human beings don't have any desire to go poking around the world (or the Internet) for authoritative reporting on a gazillion different subjects.
They want someone else to do that for them: They want someone else to round up all the information and distill it into a form they can quickly and easily digest. They want someone else to make some priority calls -- this development is more important than that one, this event is worthy of your attention, here's what you need to know to get by today.
It appears that Registering is saying that there are a lot of sheep out there; duly noted. But there are plenty of us who not only aren't sheep but would bite the hand of the wannabe shepherd who tried to lead us astray.
The first "real" job I had was at a newspaper and I loved it. Sure, I was simply a lowly typesetter and layout stiff... but WOW. What fun!
I graduated to writing weddings and obits.
Then I got a few "man on the street" interviews. And that's where it all began to fall apart for me. I wasn't interviewing the "right" people (those that expressed the views the editor wanted expressed) so I tried harder to pick the "right" people out... but you know what? They weren't really out there.
This was in the 70s before the internet was taking anything away from newspapers and I became disgusted with them.
The big money makers for these small local rags were the supermarkets and their weekly full-page ads.
The grocery stores didn't care what political persuasion the newspaper was pushing that week. They didn't care about bias.
But the readers did. That's why, when alternative media became available, people jumped on it.
The supermarkets are now mailing me their ads, I don't have to buy the newspaper to get coupons. Is it me or the supermarkets that have damaged the newspapers?
Maybe Rosen is trying to generate page hits on his work by attacking MayBee.
Must...resist....
Jay Rosen-
I'm sorry I have misunderstood your body of work. It is obviously very dear to you.
As for this:
"I get so tired of listening to hard core conservative law professors like Althouse..." and having no clue that she supported Obama.
Althouse does frequently get similar comments- right here at this blog- yet I've never seen her respond with anything but grace, humor, and/or a restating of her opinion. She is an outstanding communicator.
Theo said:
In the past, newspaper reporters tended to be bright kids from all sorts of backgrounds, with a well-developed sense of real life and everyday practicalities. For the past 30+ years, almost all reporters have come from J-Schools.
That's a good point, Theo, and it speaks to the mantra that I've been spouting on my own blog and others for the past few weeks: It's time to grow the productive class in this country. Just as most of the really good teachers are the ones who are masters of their particular discipline as opposed to people who got an education degree, it seems like the best journalists are the ones who know a subject or two really well, as opposed to those who only studied journalism.
It's time for the creative people to take over again. The uncreative class has had its time at the helm, and things haven't turned out too well.
Yes, PJTV failed. I'm glad that they at least tried. I never fault anybody for trying. I'd rather fail at 50% of everything that I try, than to not try at all.
No schadenfreude here. Got over it/them eons ago. If I wanted looks/hits/eyeballs, guess I'd be on Myspsacefacebooknextgreateeng.com. (course .... I could always write better/try harder).
Money from blogging? Sounds like work. One of the great things about blogging is I can actually look myself in the mirror. Unlike every gangrenous pustule, who draws a check at CNN, AP, MSNBC, ABC, NYT's, etc [that some in their delusion call (paid) journalists].
And yes, we will need better implements, much [and fewer tools (MSM)]. To retake the White House. There is a war going on. The largest ever waged. And it is being fought by the insects who inhabit CNN's Atlanta headquartes (among others).
America is sailing aways peeps. Keep your eyes on the big picture. If ya blink ....
But let's get down to brass tacks. Let's wipe away every news outlet off the face of the earth, right this instant, and start from scratch. How do build a journalism industry that can actually be an industry?
You charge money for it on the internet. This can only happen once the unprofitable print media dies, but it's going to happen.
The problem with PJTV is that it is exactly like Cable TV. No matter what the subject they have the same people opining on it.
They have A LAWYER, or A DOCTOR, or AN ECONOMIST. No matter what the subject they always go to the same people.
The internet abounds with experts in various fields. Find people who actually know something about the subject rather then just having an opinion on it and I might pay to listen or watch.
Lawyers specialize, doctors specialize but in TV land one size fits all. I don't really care about the sets or how they look but I'd like to have someone who knows what they are talking about rather then just someone who has an opinion. Having a degree and an opinion doesn't make you an expert. You can find that on CNN or FoxNews at no charge.
The only PJTV that I find interesting is the Polliwood segments because they actually do know something about Hollywood.
Thank you for pointing out what's wrong with Web TV (and TV in general IMO): Watching is so... much... slower than reading. It's an annoyingly inefficient way of getting information. From its popularity I can only conclude that many people ENJOY wasting time. I am not one of them.
Good point about stealth readers, too. I don't think these web TV boosters can have any idea what a vast proportion of the audience for blogs and news sites does its internet surfing at work, where watching videos, obviously, is out of the question.
Post a Comment