Tweet du Jour

by Chris Fontecchio on Nov 27, 2009 10:52 AM EST in Cafe Happy Hour!

Today's double winner is Lionel Birnie, author of one of the English cycling media's more invaluable columns, Cycling Weekly's Wednesday Comment (known to actually appear on Wednesday, unfathomable as that may seem). Not sure what's in his coffee today:

In the ten years I've been using the train line to Croydon the service has gotten slower and more crowded. Well done to everyone involved.

OK, traffic complaints. Happens to the best of us, on occasion, even if the everything-used-to-be-better stuff is often paired nicely with a "get off my lawn" or two. Then he chimes in with:

Love how many people who've said Murdoch's pay wall 'will never work' are busy retweeting the Tim Montgomery interview from the Times Online.

This is crank-ness of the highest order. The concept of Murdoch's pay wall is that people like me would have to buy subscriptions from Murdoch-owned media (e.g. the Times) in order to provide a link to a story of theirs. The complaint seems to be that Google and other aggregators are making money by using their content. The reality is that Google is delivering huge traffic to sites like the Times.co.uk that probably wouldn't find the article otherwise, but hey, since when do websites rely on impressions for their business model? Regardless, as stupid as this idea may be in general practice, it's improbably even stupider in Cycling, where people like me can watch events and interviews online without anyone's help, and find the news we need from a million sources. I can't think of a single incentive to post links to some interview on the Times website, so my price point for this paywall access is something under a penny. Paying a penny involves effort, and that's beyond what I care to invest in directing people to some greedy bastard's media site. Why Birnie would pitch this nonsense is unknown.

Still, love his work.

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+1

I read a blurb from an interview, where Mr. Murdoch was saying how he would settle for less website traffic if what traffic did arrive was from paying subscribers. Guess he will get a chance to test that particular happiness theorem.

I know I won’t be subscribing to the Wall Street Journal or FoxNews online; however, I know lots of people who, at their offices, read that stuff religiously. Do you think all those businesses are going to pony up so that their employees can waste time like?

I don’t think so.

by ManBicycleThing on Nov 27, 2009 1:14 PM EST via mobile reply actions

However; I bet all those same companies would just pay through the nose for a PodiumCafe subscription!

by ManBicycleThing on Nov 27, 2009 1:32 PM EST via mobile up reply actions

ah good old Lionel

always right, even when he’s wrong ;-)

by civetta on Nov 27, 2009 3:29 PM EST reply actions

even

I can’t think of a single incentive to post links to some interview………..Oh well, I can’t help about the shape I’m in………..

by lucybears on Nov 28, 2009 6:30 AM EST reply actions

Print Journalism People...

…seem, on the whole, to be remarkably clueless about the economic structure of online journalism, and really, journalism in general at this juncture. Somehow, they all seem determined that the profit model of the 1980s is totally viable if they can just find someone with the moral courage to insist on it. It’s…odd.

by Ed K on Nov 28, 2009 3:16 PM EST reply actions

a damn shame, though

decent investigative journalism can be expensive to do (which is why even the good papers have reduced how much of it they do, in some cases to nil). It’s worth paying for, in my view.

Whether the blogosphere or whatever can consistently devote the time needed to write those stories is not yet clear, I don’t think.

by Drongo on Nov 29, 2009 12:24 AM EST up reply actions

I don't think it's odd ... just a bugger

The demise of print media is something about which I personally mourn.

"How strange it was to see men doing something beautiful. Something pointless and elegant." Tim Winton, 'Breath'

by Seahorse on Nov 29, 2009 2:34 AM EST up reply actions

Yes and No.

I like the print media when it really does serious journalism and maintains meaningful editorial standards (which are getting rarer and rarer by the week).

But I surely don’t think saving it for its own sake is particularly urgent, which is the argument that’s often made (not attributing this view to you). The healthiest of the old guard newspapers in the US are those which have continued to do unique work that generates an audience, like the New York Times. The unhealthy ones have consistently sacrificed exactly that stuff, the original, quality writing and research, for cheap to produce fluff or just a paper full of AP stories. Nobody should be paying for that.

As for Drongo’s point about the internet, there surely are purely digital outfits now that have devoted themselves precisely to investigative journalism of the sort that is dying in the old-line newspaper business. I don’t think the net is in danger of killing that, though it may not look like Woodward and Bernstein’s articles on Watergate (b/c it’ll come out faster and more piecemeal, if for no other reason).

And just to anticipate one objection, I’m not even super worried about consolidation any longer. Yes, the newspaper business narrowly defined is becoming very consolidated, but that’s largely a result of shrinkage. The flip side is the proliferation of other, independent outlets that are succeeding in much the same way that the newspapers of the 19th century did, by gaining readership. Some of that is due to publishing sensationalist crap and pandering to their audiences or corporate funders (and the newspapers themselves did), and some of it is due to producing quality work that is ultimately more far reaching in its effects for that very reason.

by Ed K on Nov 29, 2009 5:20 PM EST up reply actions

Well put.

I think in the end there is a (paying) market for quality content… but where and how we find it, and by what mechanism we pay for it, remains to be worked out.

by tgartner on Nov 30, 2009 2:10 AM EST up reply actions

Not sure

you can blame “old print journos” for not understanding the economic structure of online journalism. Does anyone? I don’t think too many people are making money off internet content. At the moment, I’m not sure there is a viable economic structure to understand. There will be eventually, because I don’t see how the current, look at it for free, blinky ads pay the bills, model is sustainable. In the main, it rests on the vastly underpaying the people who make content.

by Jen See on Nov 30, 2009 11:46 AM EST up reply actions