Dead Tree Update: Times Roman Edition
March 7, 2009
Robert K. Blechman’s “The Decline and Fall of the Times Roman Empire” seemed at first glance to have little to do with my interests in search, content analysis, and text processing. You will want to read the essay in BlogCritics here. The article begins with the Times’s decision to sell its building. Once this was a great MBA notion. Now it suggests moving from a Long Island mansion to a trailer park in New Jersey. My metaphor, not the cultured Mr. Blechman’s. The Times has a number of businesses that are performing in a sub par way. Mr. Blechman provides useful background information about the information environment. His analysis is sound. For me, the most important point was:
How I see traditional media working to make newspapers, broadcast radio and television, and blockbuster motion pictures money earners in the Twitter Era. Source: http://thusagricola.com/wp-content/uploads/sisyphus.jpg
Having consolidated their smaller competitors out of existence, the declining newspapers can’t use the same trick that they used in the face of broadcast journalism, that is exploiting “local advantages in providing information to readers and connecting advertisers and consumers in a city.” This opportunity has been sucked away by the Internet.
I quite liked the phrase “sucked away by the Internet.”
Good writing. Incorrect view of reality in my opinion.
My view of this situation is distorted by my interest in search and my experience in traditional and electronic publishing. Points of importance to me not referenced in the write up include:
- Electronic aggregators tried to work with established traditional media. The Business Dateline crafted by Ric Manning (Courier Journal & Louisville Times Co.) with some modest inputs from me and others on the team had to work quite hard to [a] explain what online meant as a revenue opportunity and [b] how electronic content different from print media. Believe me. We tried, and we arrived with the seal of approval of an old line monopolistic newspaper company. Didn’t matter. The mental leap was too great for those steeped in print. Sad thing is that even today, the leap is too great. Most traditional print wizards are clueless about the differences in the media.
- Online vendors tried to craft deals with traditional publishers, disintermediating the commercial database companies and offering incentives. Didn’t work. The New York Times “thought” it could do a better job with an online version of its paper than LexisNexis. The Times had an exclusive with LexisNexis. The Times thought that LexisNexis was not pulling its share of the load. The Times pulled out of the deal and fired up the Times’s online service. To this day, that service is not as useful as the original LexisNexis service. The Times put up with my giving a couple of talks to the troops and then told me that the Times knew how to make money online. That was more than a decade ago. The Times is still trying to figure out outline. An online service that looks like print media isn’t going to generate enough money. That gap means that the Times’s present online service has decreased in earning potential compared to the ancient LexisNexis service. This is not one fail. This is machine gun fail as in fail fail fail.
- Customers have abandoned traditional media for many reasons. Read my “Mysteries of Online” series in this Web log for some hints. The Internet did not suck anything. In fact, the Internet sucks even today, particularly in rural America where I paddle in the mine drainage pond. Customers had problems and found ways to solve these information pains more to their liking than slogging through the outputs of the dead tree crowd or sitting and watching time lock serial news and entertainment programs. The Internet just sucks less than traditional media so those who could switched. Now kids don’t think of newspapers and TV as information must haves. Damage done by people, not the crappy, latency ridden, ad choked Internet.
None of these points appear in Mr. Blechman’s write up. To me that’s a problem. Great writing that does not deal with lost opportunities, mental blocks, and customer choices guarantees that the dead tree crowd will become paper sacks or legal pads.
Electronic information is a tough business, far more difficult than running a newspaper in the late 18th century when work processes were shifted to mechanical devices, pictures, and the ad model. The flaws go back to publishers’ and producers’ perceptions of their role in information. The industry believes it is best placed to make information decisions. The advertisers had little choice of where to go to reach potential customers. Customers with information needs used what was available. For many centuries what was available was information on paper and then in broadcast or motion picture form. When electronic information became available, customers solved their problems.
The traditional publishing sector needs to face today’s reality. Their sector is being marginalized. Game over.
Stephen Arnold, March 7, 2009
Comments
2 Responses to “Dead Tree Update: Times Roman Edition”
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Thanks for the citation. Your critical point, if I understand it correctly, that denizons of the Internet tried to collaborate with the “dead tree crowd” but were rebuffed, is well taken. It is typical of the dominating media to look down their noses at any new media. What’s different now is the speed with which the older forms are being supplanted by the new ones. The dead trees are being uprooted and so I suppose it is natural for them to stump against the newcomers as uncontrolled weeds!
Robert K. Biechman,
Not look down. Fail to make the effort to understand plus some other patrician characteristics.
Stephen Arnold, March 9, 2009