Newsnow Writes to Big Newspaper Bosses
October 21, 2009
I met with executives of Newsnow.co.uk when the company first opened its doors. Since that meeting, I have relied on Newsnow.co.uk as a way to keep track of certain content that is not available to me via other indexes. (Yes, Newsnow.co.uk is an index in my goose pond.) I am not wild about some of the interface but when I am looking for information from Australia, to cite one example, I use Newsnow.co.uk. I don’t think the managers of the index think of the service as a pointer to Australian technology information, but I use the service to tap into that content domain.
The open letter appeared when I did some routine checking about a New Zealand company called Pingar. To be frank, I did not chase down Pingar. I read the “Open Letter to the UK’s National, Regional, and Local Newspapers”. Several points made sense to me. The passage that struck me as quite important was:
The truth is, if anything, it is the growth of the Internet itself — not link aggregation — that has undermined your businesses by destroying the virtual monopoly that you once held over the mass distribution of written news. If you are seeking to blame something for your current predicament, we suggest you start there. It is disingenuous to blame legitimate link aggregation websites like ours for your financial woes and it is misguided to attempt to control linking. This cannot be the way forward. Linking is free, and links (and the sites that provide them) are at the heart of the Web. They are the means by which the Web works. We don’t think linking is something you can, or should be allowed to, control or charge for.
Please, keep in mind that I worked for the Courier Journal & Louisville Times Co., owner of a newspaper that was at one time listed as one of the world’s 25 best. I also worked for Bill Ziff, whose businesses usually had magazines at their core and who funded a daily technology newspaper which, I must point out, failed because the effort was a decade ahead of its time.
I understand the position taken by Newsnow.co.uk. I want to add three points:
- The children of newspaper (and magazine and book publishers) are going to put the nails in the coffin of many publications. The parents have not been able to prevent their children from finding the path that best suits their information acquisition preferences. When the kids of the newspaper bosses are undermining the future of certain traditional information business models, I don’t think there’s much hope for changing the behaviors of individuals who are not living in one’s home and under the direct control of one’s parents.
- The shift to the “digital Gutenberg” is just starting and the changes will be coming more quickly and be more far reaching than most people anticipate. I think Newsnow.co.uk executives will be better prepared than traditional publishing companies, but the changes will be stressful for young-at-heart outfits as well. The difference is that the Newsnow.co.uk type of company can adapt. Ossified publishing companies try to adapt but in the end fall back on the tired excuses that “we don’t have money” or “we have methods to protect” or some other reason. Without the ability to adapt, organisms die. Lawyers cannot change this fact of life… yet.
- The technology of the Internet is not new. What is different is that some countries are forcing their citizens and organizations to shift their business methods to these technologies. Some countries want citizens and businesses to have high speed access. Others drag their feet. At the end of the day, the diffusion of Internet-centric technologies is spreading in multiple dimensions because users are willing to embrace these solutions. The reasons may vary, but the diffusion is quite real.
The sum of these three points is obvious to some people. Others struggle with the “new math” of the Internet. What we have is a new dividing line between those who surf the new waves of technology and those who want, like Venice, to alter the way in which the Mediterranean flows. Sure, Venice may survive as a European Disneyland, but Venice no longer rules the financial world, and Venice is a long shot to regain that title. Venice survives, but it does so at a considerable cost and the anguish of a new business model.
Newspapers are in a tough spot, but Newsnow.co.uk and similar Web sites did not create the problem. A failure to adapt created many of the problems that bedevil newspapers. Maybe a Venice strategy will work? I know I won’t make many trips to Venice. I like to visit every six or seven years. I can envision a time when today’s 12 year old views a printed newspaper in a similar way. Useful but not a frequent or necessary activity.
The Gutenberg era is ending. The digital Gutenberg era is beginning and gaining momentum. Just my opinion.
Stephen Arnold, October 21, 2009
To the DEA, IRS, and DoC or whichever US federal entity is regulating Web logs: No one paid me to write this. I did it for internal mental satisfaction, which for an addled goose is sufficient compensation.
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Venice as the prototype City of Italo Calvino’s “Invisible Cities” offers the type of mind bending exercise fundamental in getting heads around a new paradigm. Emperor Khan wanted to get some kind of handle on the diversified, sprawling and “unscanned” world empire that he ran. It took the phenomena as well as someone to highlight it and begin to make sense of it but also someone who could do something about it to and make practical use of it. In “Invisible Cities”, isn’t Marco Polo Kubla Khan’s “Google”? If so, and Google Inc.is well on its own way to becoming a digital world empire, then who is today’s Marco Polo and Kubla Khan?
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