Said Eli Noam, tele-information professor (and author of "Who Owns the World’s Media?"), quoted in "Bezos and Washington Post show honeymoon is over for tech mogul media owners" (The Guardian).
January 29, 2023
"I think Bezos came in thinking he understood technology in a way that old-fashioned newspaper people don’t."
"He discovered that technology doesn’t really work to overcome the structural problems of the print industry. Or if it does, it works for everybody else, too.... This generation of tech billionaires has probably reduced its appetite for print publications, and there’s a growing scepticism of their ability to turn the business around in the face of fundamental trends."
Said Eli Noam, tele-information professor (and author of "Who Owns the World’s Media?"), quoted in "Bezos and Washington Post show honeymoon is over for tech mogul media owners" (The Guardian).
Said Eli Noam, tele-information professor (and author of "Who Owns the World’s Media?"), quoted in "Bezos and Washington Post show honeymoon is over for tech mogul media owners" (The Guardian).
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I always figured that he could monetize the favors he does for Democrats in his other businesses, the inverse of what’s happening to Musk, who is being punished for revealing the game.
A business model for internet news sites has started to evolve. Sadly, newspapers are on their deathbeds. They can’t be saved.
Some things in business are forever and universal: When your product sucks, people will quit buying it. Eventually even the legacy businesses in any segment will die off if they're product is awful, they do not respond to their customer base, do not listen to their customers, and are not willing to change when necessary.
Worse- if the decide it's good to isolate and attack half of the customer base, even if it gets notice, it's burying any chance for growth in the larger marketplace. Quality and standards count in the world, eventually. Being a tech billionaire doesn't mean you can avoid any of this.
Who Owns the World’s Media?
Project Veritas?
Elon Musk?
Ann Althouse?
oh! I know!! The World's Media is OWNED by Donald Trump!
The billionaires buy media to push their Leftist ideas. They’re already rich.
Bezos bought the Post as political protection for his business monopoly schemes and not as an independent money-making enterprise.
Everybody everywhere will be better off the moment the Washington Post (and NY Times) are out of business. What were once actual journalistic enterprises have been deliberately turned into incurable cancers that are slowly killing this country. Bezos' mistake wasn't in thinking he could cure the disease through technological innovation -- it was in thinking he could cure the disease at all.
Haha, all that comms at his fingertips and nothing interesting to say.
Musk should buy WaPo.
Purely for the entertainment all the weeping and wailing would provide.
John Henry
I read the whole article and still don't understand the point.
Amazon has content produced from multiple sources, large and small. The range of options is broad. It went from a one trick pony, book selling, to a bazaar of goods. How in the world has Bezos replicated that success model for the WaPo? It's still selling only books, figuratively. Where's the content/creator diversity?
Allo it iz the Guardian it iz.
I fink it must be true.
"News" is a commodity (like green beans) and is currently properly valued as such: Zero. Any idiot can write a "news" article. ChatGPT will automate that process within 12 months so that no human being is required to operate a "news" website.
News' limited utility in collecting advertising money was diminished by how advertising is sold now: people don't get paid unless the product sells. You can no longer just market eyeball counts. People have to actually BUY the product, then you get a small cut. Otherwise, you go hungry.
This model doesn't work for broadband applications such as radio or newsprint or television networks such as CBS. In order for this model to be efficient, the proper ad has to be targeted to SPECIFIC named individuals, so they have to identify everybody and what everybody likes and wants. Thus you have this gigantic privacy nightmare. This new information collection will be used in very unsavory ways by enemies of the country or political parties bent on control.
And of course, with technology, you can simply refuse to accept any advertising. With Firefox and AdBlock Plus, I don't ever see any internet advertising, even on YouTube. It's great.
The fundamental trend is a bias that turns off half the readership, plus a desire to make every story more sensational than it really is or ought to be that turns off large parts of remaining readers. Technology has nothing to do with it.
The print business will die. I have watched print edition of the local paper, The Knoxville News-Sentinel, slowly degrade to almost nothing, while doubling in price over the last 11 years. I would have cancelled it long before now, but my mother insists we keep the subscription. I suspect the vast majority of people buying physical newspapers are over the age of 65.
And I wouldn't subscribe to any newspaper electronically, so I am not sure the internet customer base is all that promising either.
As for Bezos, he didn't buy WaPoo for the revenue or profit- he bought it for the political influence, as did all the other oligarchs funding US and foreign papers. On balance, it is smart buy, even if it loses money on operations every single quarter.
BIII Zhang said...
ChatGPT will automate that process within 12 months so that no human being is required to operate a "news" website.
How's That going to work? If there aren't any humans generating data, how is ChatGPT going to 'report' it? Do you think that ChatGPT is going to go out, and develop sources?
ChatGPT is going to need input from SOMETHING
Earnest wrote: “ Bezos bought the Post as political protection for his business monopoly schemes and not as an independent money-making enterprise.” I agree. I have always felt that he bought it as anti-trust breakup protection. As Charles Foster Kane says, ‘the people believe what I tell them to believe.’
Temujin, may I suggest an important point. The readers of the newspaper or watchers of the news are not the customers. They are the product. The customers are the advertisers. The “news” is the bait to lure the product. Think of it as a fishing business. The news is the worm.
If only he took Blue Origin as seriously.
I have always loved newspapers. At one time, I had subscriptions to four.
Now, one. An online subscription to the Wall Street Journal.
I worked in the newspaper industry intermittently from the late 60's to late 90's and, while they always had liberal tendencies, they are now just cheerleaders for the Democrats. I don't want to give my money to those organizations.
It would be interesting if, in a parallel world, there were truly quality newspapers that kept bias out of their reporting. Would they be dying?
"This generation of tech billionaires has probably reduced its appetite for print publications, and there’s a growing scepticism of their ability to turn the business around in the face of fundamental trends."
Right. Every day is Day 1. Every day could also be the last day. But Bezos probably bought WaPo as a form of protection, possibly a status symbol among the PTB, not as a "business."
Will low demand doom the print business before climate alarmists shut it down due to its carbon footprint?
The tech titans are learning what Warren Buffett learned a decade ago, when he sold all the local newspapers that Berkshire Hathaway had bought. Print media is dead, no matter how small and local the footprint is. Notice below that Althouse reads the Daily Interlake from Kalispell MT...online. She isn't worth much as a reader because she won't buy from the local advertisers and she won't pay much for a subscription. The problem is the revenue/expense model. News is expensive, and opinion is cheap.
Buzzfeed already announced they would be replacing most of their writing staff with ChatGPT-3 and their stock price almost doubled on the news.
ComfortablySmug on Twitter commented "the journos should have leaned to code before the code learned to journo".
Rusty: "If only he took Blue Origin as seriously."
Bezos' degree of "seriousness" regarding Blue Origin is irrelevant to performance now.
The die for Blue Origin "success" was cast 2 decades ago when Bezos bought into the "ideas" of "Old Space" and transferred those 1960's "vision"/goals/objectives to Blue Origin.
Thats why they pretend that launching rockets to the upper atmosphere with a handful of riders is a big deal.
Meanwhile, Starship looks to be setup for multiple launches this year (based on recent tests) which will move Spacex even further ahead of the rest of the world combined in a number of categories.
So, who does it turn out owns the World's media?
The only newspaper i subscribe to is the epoch times. Some would say it is conservative but so what? Balance is a good thing.
As far as my local paper, it has shrunk to almost free newsletter size, no one can afford to hand deliver like the post office, unless heavily subsidized now. And the local paper has decided to move printing about 5 hours away in a larger city, mine is about 400K. So now the news will be 3 days old instead of 2.
I get much more current news from a facebook group, real time and very localized.
As far as national news, well there is Dr. Ann Althouse.
Viability through financing.
Coach used to manufacture quality saddles, bridles,reins etc. for (literally) the carriage trade. They switched over to making luxury handbags, belts etc for their wealthy customers. Maybe some of the papers are in the process of doing something similar. A lot of news has become more stylish and fashioned for a particular audience.
Interesting that he keeps the yacht and gives up the Post. Some indulgences are more satisfying than others.
Quayle. I stand corrected. You are right on this.
Drago, said,
"Thats why they pretend that launching rockets to the upper atmosphere with a handful of riders is a big deal."
Sad isn't it. Not even low earth orbit. Alan Shepard orbit. He was in a position to be an innovator like Musk but he settled for safe and popular.
And his rocket looks like a penis.
My parents still get two papers, 50+ year subscribers to the LA Times, and a semi local called the Pasadena star news.
I got them a subscription to the epoch times, it helps.
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