Since the dawn of time, NY Times owner has been b*tching and moaning about bloggers ruining his precious paper and sh*tting away revenue at the seams. Next week is the annual shareholder meeting for The Times and Gawker managed to weed through the report to give us all juicy snippets of the content and possible agenda items.
My favorite is this:
“The proliferation of nontraditional media, largely available at no cost, challenges the traditional media model, in which quality journalism has primarily been supported by print advertising revenues. If consumers fail to differentiate our content from other content providers, on the Internet or otherwise, we may experience a decline in revenues.”
Oh Sulzberger will you give it a rest already? Didn’t ya know that no one subscribes to, let alone buys that elitist line anymore? Your precious content smells the same as everyone else’s.
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it depends on what blogging model you are refering to. Some unmoderated ones for example, where they let lunatics rant and curse at long time posters, that is not everyone’s cup of tea for example. It’s content, I will grant you that, lol.
This quote comes from the “risk factors” section of the annual report, in which SEC regulations require publicly traded companies to disclose factors that could make investment in their stock risky (i.e., pretty much anything that could hurt their business).
In addition to mentioning competition from nontraditional media, they also cite things like the cost of newsprint, seasonal variations in ad revenue and labor negotiations with employees’ unions.
This is not an example of the owner of the Times complaining about bloggers. It’s the company’s lawyers informing investors of potential pitfalls facing the NYT Company’s business.
I don’t think that bloggers can compete with traditional media, although we successfully sap its strength. No bloggers have the resources to compete with a strong publisher like a NY Times or a Washington Post. In fact, we end up relying on their research and journalistic output for some of our information.
The problem mainstream media has is that the Internet levels the playing field between all publishers and Google as well as other search engines also cause damage to the relative standing of various publishers. This issue is clouded even further because Reuters and AP sell their content to so many different newspapers that sometimes it doesn’t matter which publisher puts out a story because so have another couple of dozen. Within this context, bloggers can steal eyeballs but they are far from a key problem for the publishers other than that bloggers can effectively redirect eyeballs to competing publishers.
“Since the dawn of time, NY Times owner has been b*tching and moaning about bloggers”
Or writing about bitching and moaning bloggers.
I always thought Television would be more hurt by bloggers over newprint. Simply do to the fact that most work commuters love their newspapers. Papers also have online divisions so that equalizes things.
It is very hard to quantify numbers in this anyways, populations grow, numbers of literate people,etc.
For sure, there is a need to moderate on some blogs and establish civility rules, where one member cannot rant and curse at others for no legitimate reason, i.e. diff of opinion is not justified.
You don’t have that problem w/ newsprint. you do, w/ TV & Radio, where lunatics can and do call talk shows.
Beth, I’m going to officially inaugurate you into the Jewlicious family by criticizing your spelling. For instance, I maintain that wacky is spelled w-a-c-k-y, in other words, correctly; CK and Muffti persist in the erroneous spelling w-h-a-c-k-y, which I believe is fine if you’re talking about Tony Soprano or Michael Corleone, but does not mean quirky-odd-weird.
What’s this got to do with you? Your choice of “poo-poo,” which implies defecation, over “pooh-pooh,” which means to belittle.
So if it was intentional, you made me laugh at the prospect that a newspaper was defecating on bloggers. And if it was not, then you made me cry. Such is the multi-layered burden of my spelling superiority complex and self-empowered grammar policing. Welcome, Beth!
I do not watch TV news because it makes me very frustrated and irritated. Newsprint, like the NYT, is a somewhat prime source of information, however, I view them as establishment media. Moreover, the NYT has done more to hurt their own credibility than any blogger.
It has been my opinion for years that to be informed means reading everything and anything from all sorts of media outlets. I like Victor Navasky view of the situation in his book about opinion journalism, A Matter of Opinion. I would rather a source be clear and direct about where is stands then feign objectivity. Blogs tend to do that better than the NYT.
Another note/sign of the times: about a year ago I switched my home page from NYT, where it had been for YEARS, to google.
The longer it takes to product an article, the better it will be.
Mainstream journalists (and their editors) take the time to fact-check everything from the spelling of names and places to historical dates and events. Accuracy — when reporting just the facts of an issue — is paramount. Bloggers, for the most part, focus on opinion.
In addition, it takes time to construct quality prose. And — in the never-ending media and Internet news cycle — bloggers need to publish content NOW. (I say this as a blogger myself.)
Essentially, there will always be a market of people who want accurate, comprehensive and balanced coverage of the issues of the day in the form of well-written articles.
I trust major newspapers to do this more than the average blogger. (Jewlicious bloggers excepted, of course!)
I like the use of poo – poo and then later Beth uses “smells” like any other content.
Wasn’t it Drugde who started as a blogger?
ha. it was on purpose esther! miso funny!
*Grinning an evil grin*
Yes, nontraditional advertising mediums… hehehe
I will, this very afternoon, present a “myspace” themed option to one of our largest clients…
It’s called “viral” and it’s for “real” people!”
…this will be fun – hehehehehhehehe
This post is nonsensical. As noted, this is in their financial reporting. Sulzberger had nothing to do with the copy. Furthermore, every public company has a similar statement about the threats to its business in its financial statements.
the print media was dying long before blogs came on the scene. Print media died when it decided any and all ad revenues were more important than an informed people.
hopefully someday something will fill that vacuum again. Until then, a lot of criminals are getting away with murder.