This piece by columnist Jeff Jarvis has made the rounds, but is worth reading just for the told-you-so value.
The folks — including those at the Courant — who a few years ago opposed the idea of breaking news on the web, should probably read it twice.
And here’s a piece reporting on what Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, had to say to newspaper executives., who are carping about online aggregators taking advantage of their websites.
Maybe newspaper companies — or should I say multi-media news content providers — should look on themselves as wholesalers rather than retailers of the news, shutting down their own sites and selling their content in bulk to retail distributors such as Google and Yahoo. There’s no conflict that way, lower production costs, and the news companies don’t need to split their attention between the sometimes competing interests of readers and advertisers. They strictly serve consumers of news, focusing solely on news gathering, investigation and interpretation, and let the retailers and aggregators worry about how to sell it. News becomes a perishable commodity, like produce or fish.
At least this would re-establish the concept that news is valuable and that it costs money to find. It also puts into play the idea that brand names — like the New York Times and Hartford Courant — stand for a particular quality, like Toyota or Mercedes Benz. (Hard to say what brand auto would represent the Courant right now, but I’m open to suggestions.)
I guess I would call this the “Screw You Google” business model. If you and the rest of the world want this news, you have to pay for it. Otherwise we’re outta here.
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Taking this one step further, I could imagine a scenario in which top reporters, either individually or as a group, could contract with the Yahoos and Googles of the world directly, thus leaving the newspaper owners out of the picture.
“Hard to say what brand auto would represent the Courant right now, but I’m open to suggestions.”
The Zaporozhets ZAZ-968, a Soviet subcompact driven by more than 800,000 drivers in the late 1950s. Like the Courant, it’s warmly remembered. Also like the Courant, they were sold off for parts. The popular little vehicle — especially the white one — bears an astonishing resemblance to the redesigned Courant. Factory workers called it the “Malysh” (or “Kiddy” in English), and the Kiddy would be a good name for the reduced Courant — it’s descriptive and friendly, and gives some idea of the content. The Zaporozhets was also referred to as a “soapbox.”
Here’s another similarity: Special versions of the Zaporozhets, like the redesigned Courant, were equipped with additional sets of controls that allowed operation with a limited set of limbs or hands.
I’ve saved the best for last, and this is completely true (I am NOT making this up): The Zaporozhets plant was eventually converted to produce TVs. Yet another astonishing similarity, what with the merger/consolidation/room sharing with Channel 61. (Maybe Chicago has been looking to Soviet industrial history for guidance. One can only imagine.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaporozhets