Althouse: "Sealing an online product off from the core online experience seems to me to be a medium at war with itself and a business not fully aware of the actual product it is creating."

January 21, 2010

"Sealing an online product off from the core online experience seems to me to be a medium at war with itself and a business not fully aware of the actual product it is creating."

"[The New York Times is] having a hell of a time monetizing [the web] because it is too vast, too borderless, too fluid to carve out property on it. It's like trying to make a profit in a communist state.... [Bloggers have] feel optimistic... because we've tried to take advantage of this new dimension, by being a totally open source portal, a hub, a node of conversation and argument. This brings in readers and advertizers. Are the advertizers enough to finance a news organization? Not yet, and maybe never.... The NYT may be smart in doing what it's doing... but it may lead to even greater traffic for blogs that can merely cite or summarize NYT pieces and have small excerpts as fair use as well..."

So writes Andrew Sullivan, who seems to be overcorrecting his tendency toward British spelling.

15 comments:

Automatic_Wing said...: All that just to say he has no idea how it'll all turn out. What a gasbag.; 1/21/10, 5:28 PM
Anonymous said...: The NY Times sells a commodity: liberal opinion.

It's available almost anywhere for free.

The reason they cannot monetize it is that it's not valuable.

You'd think Ivy Leage educated people could figure out the law of supply and demand.; 1/21/10, 5:37 PM
Fen said...: Why do you still associate with Pravda?; 1/21/10, 5:39 PM
Anonymous said...: Air America declared Chapter 7 bankruptcy today for the same reason.

You can turn on 500 channels of liberal pundits spewing the same talking points ... so the law of supply and demand dictates that the value of that commodity is going to fall in the face of a glut of supply.

If the NY Times would return itself to the business of reporting news that you can't get anywhere else, then perhaps it might find an audience.

As long as it merely regurgitates stuff I can read on DNC.org and reprints basically all the same articles you get for free reading The Advocate I mean what's the point, really, of spending money buying that when it's already free?; 1/21/10, 5:43 PM
Unknown said...: Spit it out, Andy. You don't have to sound like a doctoral dissertation.

In fact, more people would probably take you seriously.

Florida said...

Air America declared Chapter 7 bankruptcy today for the same reason.

Get the feeling there's more afoot the last few days than we realize?; 1/21/10, 6:13 PM
Kev said...: (the other kev)

That was almost . . . Greenwaldesque in its excess verbiage.; 1/21/10, 6:15 PM
Anonymous said...: Sealing an online product off from the core online experience

Queen Mary Jane Milky Loads makes the new NYT's business model sound like an HIV-prevention strategy.; 1/21/10, 6:42 PM
Anonymous said...: It's really a wonder the NYT lasted as long as it did. Especially with Pinch peeing from the roof.

Let'em go Lady Althouse, alone into the night.; 1/21/10, 6:50 PM
chiron said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 1/21/10, 7:03 PM
lucid said...: The Times and newspapers generally have already been supplanted. The old media flourished in an era of information scarcity where they were major distribution sources. But no one really needs them anymore, at least not in their former form. In a sense, all newspapers are now versions of the associated press, whose articles appear diversely and are written to be useable in many different settings. Many of the newspapers there now won't survive and those that do will be very changed from what they are now. They will be supplanted by "amateurs" and news will become more and ore of a commodity, undifferentiated by source, but with credibility maintained by the ease of comparsion to information from other sources. News is now so fungible that a marquee like the NYTimes will soon mean virtually nothing.

Sell your stock, if you have any.; 1/21/10, 7:15 PM
Eric said...: It's really a wonder the NYT lasted as long as it did. Especially with Pinch peeing from the roof.

I will never understand why Carlos Slim pumped a bunch of money into the Times. What was he thinking?; 1/21/10, 7:18 PM
Henry said...: Someone tell me. Does The Atlantic make a profit?

I will repeat what I said earlier. The movement of the New York Times toward a pay-model is long overdue.

I know that when Sullivan says "online experience" he's thinking about linking being the experience. The net is a big associative mind. It is collaborative. It is small pieces loosely joined. It is parasitic.

Methinks that the Times regards the big associative mind as warmly as an Oak Tree regards fungus. The fungus may be a single organism whose network extends far beyond the view of the Oak Tree. But it's still a fungus.

The value of the New York Times is almost entirely self-generated.; 1/21/10, 7:19 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: So writes Andrew Sullivan, who seems to be overcorrecting his tendency toward British spelling.

here is what Sully had to work with..

This is my playes last scene, here heavens appoint
My pilgrimages last mile; and my race
Idly, yet quickly runne, hath this last pace,
My spans last inch, my minutes latest point,
And gluttonous death, will instantly unjoynt
My body, and soule, and I shall sleepe a space,
But my'ever-walking part shall see that face,
Whose feare already shakes my every joynt.; 1/21/10, 7:30 PM
Anonymous said...: The old media flourished in an era of information scarcity where they were major distribution sources.

Yep ... this wins the thread.

Newspapers were never about journalism. They were about controlling the flow of information.

Newspapers owned the very expensive printing presses and distribution networks.

Nobody needs a printing press any longer.

News was always a commodity. Getting it to people was the hard thing to do.

The internet routes around gatekeepers.

And, as a former newspaper publisher, I have to say I'm giddy knowing that the death of these vehicles couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of liberal scumbags.; 1/21/10, 7:36 PM
G Joubert said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 1/21/10, 8:13 PM