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Sep
14
Why does it always seem as though the debates I’d most want to dig into happen on the days I’m least able to dig? I’m sure it’s just a perception.
Brewed Fresh Daily is hosting this debate about changes in the media. Certainly not a new topic and, frankly, I don’t know what the hell the most current comments are really talking about. It started when Ed Morrison drew attention to something (which I later blogged about with a hattip to him), but now - the conversation is going into nooks and crannies that seem better left undiscovered, if only because they look exactly like plenty we’ve already investigated.
One point I would like to add comes from a column I read today in the October Vanity Fair. In one comment in the aforementioned debate, it’s intimated that the New York Times has been successful in its online efforts. But, in Michael Wolff’s piece, “Is This the End of News?,” he writes, in regard to what he says is the unaffordability of reporting news,
The paper version of The New York Times has 1.1 million daily readers and makes less than $2 billion a year; the online version has 40 million readers a month and likely makes about $250 million—a problem, since the Times’s newsgathering budget is about $300 million. This is some conundrum: you have an old-fashioned business which supports your newsgathering operation, so you take that news and put it online (free to readers—and much cheaper for advertising), which, ultimately, attracts all your readers and advertisers, and puts your moneymaking enterprise out of business.
So, you can argue all you want, and I’ll even agree, that readers love the New York Times’ online presence. Why wouldn’t we? But as for that love translating into “doing well”? Well, we’d best be describing what exactly we’re looking to measure, and from whose perspective, before making such assertions.
The tone and content of Wolff’s piece caused me to pull out a marker and write in the margins. Frankly, I can’t tell if he’s joking or not in various parts. But I am familiar with his new product, Newser.com. Its panelized front is actually a design, albeit far more sophisticated, that I liked in some Wordpress blog themes I considered as I migrated this blog.
Wolff’s Newser, is, however, an aggregator. It’s not original content. And one of its taglines: “You can’t follow 100 news sources, but we can follow them for you.” Oh yeah? Through Bloglines, I follow 277 feeds from an enormous range of sources, not just “the 100 top news sources.” Partly because, why would I cover the top 100 news sources? They repeat each other and use wire reports. The beauty of the Internet, for news and information, is the ability to find a variety of write-ups about what’s going on.
And lookie here, they use editors to filter the stories that others wrote, for other outlets, that they then put on Newser’s frontpage: “Newser is staffed with editors who scan the Web continuously and become experts in ongoing stories. They’re familiar with the background, sources, reporters, and points of view on each. They make it easy for you—by finding the best coverage, highlighting the most important information, and distilling it efficiently.”
Now, look - I won’t disagree - using such a site would be wise for me. No question.
But trusting Newser, liking what it provides, is no different than discerning for myself that I like what George links to, or Tom Blumer or any of the other bloggers I know who provide meta-lists of what they’re interested in.
I’m supposed to trust Newser because the folks doing the picking are editors?
I think nit.
I mean, I could come to like what they choose, but being an editor in a past life isn’t going to be the reason why.
And it’s that element in the equation - the getting to know the editor - that is the difference between any one Internet resource and any other. It has zero to do with anything that came before and everything to do with what you come to know.
What are others saying about Newser?
Gawker says, “It’s the dullest thing I’ve seen all day…”
And from Conde Nast Portfolio:
I didn’t see the promise in Newser.com, Michael Wolff’s nascent news-aggregation site, when it first soft-launched last month, and I can’t say I do now after reading Wolff’s 3,200-word brief for it in the new issue of Vanity Fair. (Or maybe that should be “3,200 page ad for it.” Thanks, Graydon!)
Ayup. There’s lots of other good stuff to pick apart in Wolff’s column, but I’ll save that for another post.
As for Newser, when I see experiments like it, I start thinking that the experimenters have Munchausen by proxy and a need to describe and have us see news dissemination as being in an unhealthy state. And yet, the reality is, no one needs to see it that way, because, while print’s health may in fact be in doubt, news and its gathering and dissemination couldn’t be more robust. So, in fact, it isn’t unhealthy - it’s strengths and areas that need improvement are shifting. (Although stories like this about NYT shares value and discounting ad space might indicate some serious patches of bad health.)
Just consider those 40 million online readers of the NYT versus the 1.1 million readers of the print version. That’s some healthy numbers as far as consumers go.
There’s no time like the present for following the adage, the customer is always right.
If only those that want to please us, not to mention ourselves, could figure out what “right” looks like.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 11:33 pm September 14th, 2007 in Media
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[...] 2. In case I need more reasons to leave SPJ, I can start and end with the fact that its President thinks Michael Wolff’s Vanity Fair piece was “wonderful” and his project, Newser.com is “brilliant.” So very, very not. [...]