Cory Doctorow Calls Death To Music, Movies, Print 336
An anonymous reader writes "Boing Boing editor Cory Doctorow depicts an unfortunate near-future for a handful of media industries being transformed or killed by the Internet. Predicting a large-scale transformation of the music, movie, book, and newspaper industry, Doctorow says, 'The Internet chews up media and spits them out again. Sometimes they get more robust. Sometimes they get more profitable. Sometimes they die.' While the Internet has the potential to help the dying book industry, for example, Doctorow predicts the 'imminent collapse' of the American newspaper industry because advertisers are uninterested in spending money on the remaining offline readership, such as senior citizens, who prove less valuable."
That's just a bit premature... (Score:5, Insightful)
news @ 11 (Score:2, Insightful)
This is actually quite obvious. Does he enlighten us about how those media are going to evolve? Tthis part isn't obvious.
Death of the newspaper is overrated (Score:1, Insightful)
People have been claiming newspapers will die for years and will be replaced by blogs. Not going to happen. When is the last time you saw any blog doing real reporting? When did they ever put facts together or do any level of investigation? Never. What do they do instead? They link to an article on someone else's blog and add some commentary. Where did the eventual first link in the chain end up coming from? A newspaper.
You will eventually see more papers going online only, and you'll definitely see more effort put into the web editions vs the print ones. But you won't see the death of the local paper, just a change in how its delivered.
Re:Death of the newspaper is overrated (Score:4, Insightful)
Where did the eventual first link in the chain end up coming from? A newspaper.
No, it came from a newspaper company's website. Newspapers _are_ dying, and the companies that own them are currently shifting to other media for their reporters to publish news.
Re:Death of the newspaper is overrated (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That's just a bit premature... (Score:1, Insightful)
Minimal Logistics - Television is dissimilar to Newspaper in many respects, whereas the Web can perform the functions of both, FOR FREE. No publication money, broadcast license, nor big ad revenue needed, and minimal startup costs. It's just a better wheelbarrow. So why cry because the old rusted out expensive wheelbarrow is going away?
he might be right (Score:4, Insightful)
What pisses me off about these blogs (techdirt is another), is how doggone smug they seem about the whole thing, with the implication that they (the bloggers) have found a business model that works for writers and creative artists; everyone else needs to get with it and adopt a similar approach.
But the bloggers' business model depends on linking to other people's content, which is usually produced by non-blogging professionals. Almost anyone with a college degree and a few years' background in an industry can spend 15 minutes writing a provocative summary about some story in the news, or someone else's work. Nobody is going to pay to read these blogs, since similar quality posts on the same subjects can be easily found by googling. Frankly, what these industry bloggers do has little to do with either creativity or journalism (or economics, in the case of techdirt).
Who is going to pay for the original piece of investigative journalism, specialized analysis, or original creative work? Should everyone under 35 in one of these businesses start applying to law school?
TV has no classified ads (Score:5, Insightful)
That's because ads in television are directed to the mass market, while newspapers carry classified ads. With the internet full of advertisements which are easier to search and read than newspaper classified ads, there's that much less motivation to buy printed papers.
Re:news @ 11 (Score:3, Insightful)
And, uh, where exactly is the profit for that? Because if you think modern media has a 75% markup over costs, you have no idea what the costs of modern media (books, television, music, movies, any of it) actually are.
Yes, you must factor in profit, because as much as the "free everything" crowd wants you to believe it, most high-quality media is still put out by profit-making people who spend money to make money.
Re:That's just a bit premature... (Score:5, Insightful)
Minimal Logistics - Television is dissimilar to Newspaper in many respects, whereas the Web can perform the functions of both, FOR FREE. No publication money, broadcast license, nor big ad revenue needed, and minimal startup costs. It's just a better wheelbarrow. So why cry because the old rusted out expensive wheelbarrow is going away?
the problem with this argument is that the Internet is not "free". There are real costs involved, and a major but hidden cost is the development of content, especially news journalism.
Sending someone to report on conditions in some remote area of the world doesn't happen for free. That person has to be transported, fed, clothed. Also needs some training in writing skills, probably photography. Maybe videography as well. All of that costs money. So does the cell phone, land line, or whatever means used to connect that person to online resources that are used to file the story, whether it goes into a print or online newspaper.
That old rusted wheelbarrow still provides the majority of reporting that allows the chatterati to expound on subjects that they have no means to access otherwise. In the meantime, we pay every time our eyeballs are assaulted by the growing screen real estate taken by advertisers, in exchange for our "free" web.
a bit optimistic about the printed page, aren't we (Score:5, Insightful)
FTA:
for many kinds of books -- long-form narratives, for instance -- reading off a screen is a poor substitute for a cheap and easy-to-buy codex...
Me thinks the author is being a bit biased since this is what he writes. I hate to break it to you Cory but long-form narratives are EXACTLY what an e-book reader is good for. They are not good for reference material because random access is too slow. (at this stage, they just can't compete with thumbing through a printed text-book, programming manual or travel guide) They might be ok for newspapers & magazines if anyone ever decides to format them properly. BUT, they are absolutely perfect for novels and anything else that you'd care to read from cover to cover.
I don't know that e-book readers are for everyone but if you love to read and you travel a lot, it's great to be able to lug an entire library of books with you in one very small package. On any given trip, I can bring, on my reader, more than enough reading material for myself, a bunch of children's books to read to my daughter, and maybe an audio-book and some music for good measure.
After a year with it, I can't say that I miss the printed page at all... and don't get me started on what I can find to read on the internet for free....
Finally, they cost about $270 now and dropping. Be afraid.
I remember when... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:That's just a bit premature... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's utter nonsense. Doctrow is a self important blowhard who, for reasons unknown, people think is actually relevant.
I watched a lecture from David Simon (creator of "The Wire", former journalist etc...) on this very subject, and his was the exact opposite opinion. That the Internet can't ever replace newspapers and proper reporting. Smaller newspapers will fold (no pun intended) but larger ones will always exist. I remember one comment was "How many bloggers are embedded in Falujah?"
It's a very good lecture, but I'd recommend avoiding it if you've not seen at least the first four seasons of "The Wire" due to potential spoilers, but really "The Wire" is the jumping off point for the lecture, not the subject.
I believe this is it. USC Lecture [youtube.com]
Content @ 11 (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate to be blunt but this is the real reason modern media will have problems. Basically to start with there's an uneducated public when it comes to the process of content creation and profit. Throw in unrealistic expectations. Add in a public armed with the technological tools to bypass any means to recuperate costs. Shake well and you have no one really getting what they want.
Um, who cares? (Score:1, Insightful)
Does anyone really give a shit what "Boing Boing editor Cory Doctorow" has to say?
Re:That's just a bit premature... (Score:2, Insightful)
Much like the streaming video is starting to cause a hit for the cable companies since people can simply view what they want to see when they want to see it online, it just makes better sense.
Re:That's just a bit premature... (Score:5, Insightful)
And why exactly do we need to send someone to a "remote area" to report on conditions when there are already people in those remote locations who are quite capable of telling the story?
What's really dying here is the colonial idea that only a white man who speaks English with a US accent can tell the truth. We used to only believe a story when we heard it come from Walter Cronkite. You want to hear about the Middle East? You think you're going to get a truer story from CNN or Al Jazeera? Or even better, from Mahmoud who lives in Basra.
No, there's no need to send Wolf Blitzer, no matter how dashing he may look in his clever little vest with all the pockets.
Plus, considering the fat lot of truth we got out of the big news organizations during the run up to the Iraq War or the election of 2004, I'm not sure I'm prepared to believe a single fucking thing that comes out some high-toned foreign news bureau.
If newspapers die it will not be because of the internet, but rather because they long ago stopped serving their main function and became outlets for national pundits who have all the veracity of a west-side pimp.
Great example just last week: George Will wrote some hack piece for the Washington Post on global warming that had exactly four data points in it, and each one of those facts was wrong. Do you think the "ombudsman" of the Washington Post is going to print a correction? No, because it's supposed to be an "opinion piece". Well, as the man said, you have the right to your own opinion, but not your own facts.
Here's a safe rule of thumb: If a news agency is owned by a large corporation, it's not worth a good god damn and cannot be trusted, even for the weather report. It's a shame, but they're the ones that broke faith, not us readers.
Re:That's just a bit premature... (Score:5, Insightful)
That is my concern. I hope that the virtues of newspapers will carry through; but it is far from assured. Things like foreign and political reporting, and stuff that pisses off possible advertisers, are socially vital; but they are cost centers in the strictly financial sense. They could, fairly easily, end up just being eliminated, without replacement.
The time when privately run, for profit news actually served a socially noble purpose, if they ever did exist, are long gone.
If you want such things to exist, they need to be socialized, and they need to be transparent, and accountable, and dedicated exclusively to a higher social purpose. Even then it's hard to prevent them being corrupted.
Media companies are propaganda machines. They're staffed by the people who brought you the cold war. They're nothing but groups of evil manipulators, and it's good that they're going to die.
Re:news @ 11 (Score:3, Insightful)
If you're going to charge micropayments, you're better off doing advertising anyway. We all tend to tolerate that in small amounts, I got a google text ad on this very page I'm writing this comment and it doesn't bother me. I don't want to constantly look and see if it's 10 cents or 25 cents for this and that and suddenly there's some link scam to rack me up some dollars. With ads I'm paying in the watching and it's incredibly much simpler for me. Micropayments got such a negative value in itself that it negates any cents that I might have been willing to pay. If you really want people to pay in cash you have to go the premium route, offer content at a real premium worth the premium. Not the 10 cents "slightly better than free" service because it's going to be damn similar to the other kind, only more annoying.
Dying book industry??? (Score:3, Insightful)
While the Internet has the potential to help the dying book industry,
What dying book industry? Sure, quality books might be dying and in the economy not many people want to pay ~$16 for something they can get at a library for free, but in the last 10 years, literature, especially children to teen books have been exploding with growth, you only need to look at the Harry Potter craze and now the Twilight craze to understand that.
Re:Death of the newspaper is overrated (Score:5, Insightful)
It depends on how you define "newspaper". Yes, the physical news sheet with printed text that arrives every morning may die. However, in fifty years, the "New York Times" will still exist as a news organization.
Re:a bit optimistic about the printed page, aren't (Score:3, Insightful)
I have to agree. The only thing that's keeping ebook readers from taking the world is their closed nature.
Now an open device with an e-ink display that can run for a couple of days on a charge (99.9% on standby of course) and can read the usual formats... that would be something I'd buy in a heartbeat. Right now I still read e-books on my laptop (tried the phone but it doesn't have enough resolution for comfortable reading.)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Hardly "nonsense" and Doctorow's quite relevant. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's hard to see how your criticism is correct. Doctorow hedges a lot in this essay (one's "favorite medium" will be "devoured, transformed, or destroyed". That covers a lot of possibilities). But even if he's wrong in this essay, your criticism is unjustified and overly harsh: Doctorow is a writer making his money from selling books one can download free, something long thought impossible in the 'why pay for what you can get for free' philosophy. He is walking the talk showing us through his example how one can license liberally, make a living with a huge online component to one's work, and sustain this for years on end. Perhaps there's a message in there for the proprietors of movies, newspapers, TV, and music.
One hopes the lecturer didn't conflate such different things as you just did. There's nothing categorically improper about the reporting going on online, and there's nothing categorically proper about reporting in print. Newspapers can switch to online publication and offer the same caliber of reporting they offer now. It's not the quality of reporting that prevents newspaper publishers from losing their print publications. The New York Times, for instance, can continue to lie about the most important issue of the day [commondreams.org] while punishing authors of far less important articles in ridiculous public displays (Judith Miller versus Jayson Blair) whether they do it in print or online. The medium can change and the reportage can remain the same.
That doesn't strike me as nearly important as asking: How many reporters are independent? How many are not embedded with the military? How many are failing to present a "difficult public face for [their media organization] in a time of war" or judging their effectiveness by comparing to competitors who are "waving the flag at every opportunity"? Phil Donahue's CNBC show was cancelled for the reasons quoted in these last two quotes, according to a leaked internal memo [commondreams.org]. I don't recall most of the major news outlets telling us much about the millions on the streets of the world protesting the US invasion of Iraq before it began. I recall them getting head counts wrong and ignoring well-spoken war critics lest their contrary views gain mainstream exposure and thus legitimizing them in the views of those who consume nothing but corporate news. I don't recall good corporate news analysis of the run-up to the war before or after Col. Powell's lies to the UN. Instead, I recall seeing a strong imbalance of views on-air favoring pro-war voices [fair.org]. Some of the most valuable journalism about this war has come from unembedded independent journalists on far less-widely seen shows like "Democracy Now! [democracynow.org]". It seems to me that the medium isn't the critical factor here, what the news organization says is.
Re:That's just a bit premature... (Score:1, Insightful)
So you prefer our side's spin to their side's? Good citizen, you get a cookie.
Re:That's just a bit premature... (Score:3, Insightful)
So true. And why would we need Woodward and Bernstein, when we could simply look at Nixon's or Deep Throat's blog?
Re:That's just a bit premature... (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, I prefer knowing what the spin is, and deciding what to do about it.
Most people can tell the difference in spin between Fox News and CNN. I have no idea what the spin is of "Momar, broadcasting live from Tel Aviv."
Re:That's just a bit premature... (Score:4, Insightful)
So, should we get news about NASA just by taking the word of insiders at NASA?
If you'd *ever* been involved with the press covering something technical, you'd know that the press would be more accurate if they just made up their stories whole-cloth. The whole "sending the j-school major to interview the rocket scientists" thing actually *lowers* the accuracy of the result below straight fiction.
This is the primary reason that the newspaper industry is dying. The don't add any value. The lie that there is some sort of "editorial fact checking" is exposed every days by blogs that actually have a clue, and really I can get plenty *opinions* for free on the internet. I think "the news" in general, even though cable news neworks scale better, is going to feel the pressure next.
Sending a reporter to a war zone, who then hides in his hotel and reports gossip, isn't really helping much. That's the appeal of the "Joe the Plumber now the Journalist" gimmick: at least he's walking around talking to the man on the street, which might not by insightful political analysis, but *at least* you get to hear what the man on the street would be blogging.
I'd far rather read the rocket scientists blog (even if I only understood half of it) than the crap some journalist thinks he heard. I'd far rather hear the political rants of a ramdom Israeli or Palistinian raw (even if I had difficulty with cultural context) than some journalist's spin on the man on the street's spin! The man on the street will certainly have a political axe to grind, but at least it won't be ground on American politics - two degrees of spin just makes my head spin.
maybe ... just maybe (Score:2, Insightful)
maybe ... just maybe he knows ssomething we dont know:
* 2012 (do i have to elaborate?)
* all ice melts, everything is under water and we need to think of new ways anyway
* To the melody of Peter Garrett's "beds are burning" we will sing now "... how do we read while our books are burning"
* Gutenberg came back to this world as annother person and invented something completely new
Re:Risk of Death Spiral (Score:4, Insightful)
I must say that the race to the bottom began a long time ago when newspapers stopped doing original reporting in favor of rehashing AP articles and started doing more fluff and spin. They are the ones who devalued their product, because it was cheaper and easier to do and because it puffed up the owners' ideological egos (read: Rupert Murdoch). So why not get equally vapid content and chatter on the web for free?
Anyone who wants real news will turn to the BBC, CBC, NPR, PBS, or foreign-language publications like Der Spiegel. And because they do something valuable, they will survive.
Doctorow doesn't know what he's talking about (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a rash of hyperbolic commentary lately about the "death of newspapers" from people who have no idea what they're talking about. Doctorow's post is just one more float in the parade.
In the United States, the typical newspaper is fundamentally a local-regional advertising business. Local and regional advertising is changing, but it's not going away.
The typical American newspaper produces a portfolio of print (daily, weekly, monthly) and online products. These include both mass and targeted media. It turns an annual profit (not a loss) ranging from 10 to 20 percent. The ad revenues alone -- not counting print circulation --roll up to a $45 billion annual total nationwide.
Some newspapers are losing money and will close this year. But the more common situation is a publisher cutting staff, pagecount and sometimes even frequency in order to maintain profit margins so that corporate finance requirements can be maintained.
Corporate finance is the real problem. Over the last 20 years, newspaper owners borrowed heavily to buy more newspapers (and take over other chains), assuming that historically aberrant profit margins -- sometimes in the 35 to 45 percent range or even higher -- would continue forever.
The current business recession has suddenly placed those debt-laden companies in peril. Lee Enterprises, which recently narrowly avoided bankruptcy by renegotiating some loans, actually turned an operating profit of over 20 percent last year.
I'm not in denial about the effects of the Internet. They are real and serious, but they are longterm, and they are not the cause of the crisis currently facing newspapers, regardless of the self-serving BS being spread by various media pundits.
The irony is that the financial crisis has awakened slumbering newsrooms and sales forces, while robbing them of the resources they need to respond to those longterm challenges.
Ever since I left print and moved to the online side of journalism in 1994, I've been battling people who had their head in the sand about the importance of the changes in media caused by the Internet.
No more. Confusion and bewilderment, yes. Denial, no.
I fully expect to see some big bankruptcies in the next several months. Journal Register Co. declared bankruptcy Saturday, following the overleveraged (Chicago) Tribune Co. and the Minneapolis Star Tribune in seeking protection from creditors. Some big dailies, such as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Rocky Mountain News, will close, along with a lot of weeklies.
But hundreds of other papers will continue to operate profitably.
Among them, some will be smart enough to invest in creating new products that are more aligned with our net-connected and increasingly mobile lives.
[Note: Worrying about this stuff is my day job. You can follow me on twitter [twitter.com] or at my blog [yelvington.com].]
Are you kidding me? (Score:4, Insightful)
This from someone who works for a website [boingboing.net] that believes they can actually "unpublish" something. Can I "unpublish" this comment after submitting it? No.
Yes, it's their website. Yes, they can do what they want with it. That's not the point. Anyone who believes they can just "unpublish" something after they've already put it out on the Internet for all to see isn't someone I would listen to about things like this.
Fortunate Near future (Score:2, Insightful)
It doesn't really sound like any thing really unfortunate was predicted.Some Darwinian natural selection applied to industry. News both printed and broadcast has more dis-information which is more to be feared than mis-information from bloggers.
The music industry? Good riddance to an unnecessary parasite.
Hollywood? Aside from modern special effects to detract attention from endlessly recycled storylines I don't see any contributions made by Gomorrah since the 60's. Any interesting filmmakers lurking there are capable of independent filmmaking with crap they have laying around the house and still make excellent movies.
As for all the jobs lost if Hollywood folds, I quote a movie" The world needs ditchdiggers too Danny" I figure someone can fill Californias need to repopulate jobs vacated by ejected aliens.
Hopefully Hollywood will fold before the music industry so they can get the jobs and we can watch music industry swine cannibalize their own before perishing a slow starving death.
Books don't really seem to take a hit here.
The cream will rise and the vanity books will stay small printings.Theres no replacing the experience of reading a good pulp book.(unless of course you find an actual paper edition)
Re:Right on! (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's another one, a bakery analogy. Listening to those alleged journalists is like walking into a bakery and all they have for sale is 20 different types of cheap sliced white bread, all the same, just in different bags with different names.
So it's like a car company(say, General Motors) which builds a lot of different brands of cars using a common handful of parts.
I'm sure there's an analogy in there somewhere...
Re:Hardly "nonsense" and Doctorow's quite relevant (Score:0, Insightful)
Only he's not. He makes his money on the talk circuit, which he can do because he's a self-aggrandizing blowhard.
Re:That's just a bit premature... (Score:2, Insightful)
...he's "especially" careful on scientific issues...
By the way, isn't global warming still basically just a theory at this point anyway?
Anyone who uses the phrase "just a theory" in relation to any scientific theory isn't qualified to judge whether others are careful when talking about scientific issues. The word theory in science doesn't mean the same thing as the word theory in colloquial English. In science there are hypotheses, observations, and theories (we used to call some things "laws" but we don't do that anymore, other than the ones already in existence for historical reasons--and some of those have been proven not universally correct, such as Newton's Laws). The only thing which is fact out of all those terms are observations. Theories make testable predictions, and a theory with the most successful predictions and that has not yet been falsified becomes the currently accepted theory until a better one comes along / it is proven wrong. In other words, the currently best accepted theory is the strongest term you can possibly have in science
That said, I don't give a shit whether or not you want to give up your SUV. Just be honest that you're driving it around because it's convenient and NOT because "global warming is just a theory."
Re:Death of the newspaper is overrated (Score:3, Insightful)
Erm -- not to be a smartass, but isn't that how everybody defines a newspaper?
I don't think anybody is trying to claim that news or reporting is ever going to die out, and as such there will always be organizations that pool those resources. Of course people are talking about the print aspect of it.
Re:he got there on the backs of boingboing retards (Score:5, Insightful)
For chrissakes, sales volume is not about quality;
If you wanted to talk about quality, you shouldn't have used the phrase "comercially successful".
Of course, if you had you would've been inmediately told that quality in these kind of things is completely subjective. I, personally, didn't like "Little Brother" but loved "Down and out on the Magic Kingdom" and I like most of his short stories, so I'd qualify him as a good writer overall but again, that's just me.
if it weren't for boing-boing? (Score:4, Insightful)
You think slashdot useless? Why are you here?
Perhaps if you had anything worthwhile to say, you might be able to build a site around your own content with enough traffic to build a marketable community around. I expect hell to freeze over first.
The only real fail in that article is that Doctorow didn't project the impact of low-cost high-quality e-book readers on what he personally does for a living. I expect to see print books as a mass medium a decade from now just as much as I expect the horse and buggy to replace the auto for long-distance commuting.
Re:That's just a bit premature... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you want such things to exist, they need to be socialized... Media companies are propaganda machines.
I'm amazed you can say such things with a straight face. However bad private media companies may be, as propagandists they pale in comparison to governments [flickr.com]. And the worst instances of "private" propaganda just happen to align with the interests of the governments under which those companies operate, by some strange coincidence.
And you wish to socialize them further?
Re:That's just a bit premature... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:That's just a bit premature... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, it's better that we send in Geraldo Rivera to stick a camera into the faces of the people trying to survive.
Remember, there were news helicopters taking pictures of the people on New Orleans rooftops during Katrina, while those people begged to be saved. Some later died.
Re:That's just a bit premature... (Score:3, Insightful)
"You want to hear about the Middle East? You think you're going to get a truer story from CNN or Al Jazeera? Or even better, from Mahmoud who lives in Basra."
In principle, this is a good idea. However, remember that in locations where English is a rare skill, there are serious selection effects going on.
One of the early, popular Norwegian English-speaking bloggers was BjÃrn Stærk. He was (at the time, he's become far more moderate) extremely right wing by Norwegian standards. Not only that, he was right-wing in a manner more characteristic of American conservatives rather than Norwegian right-wingers. He was in many ways an Americophile, with far more US reference points than the typical Norwegian.
I don't blame him. Everyone who spends a lot of time on US sites will be affected by it in some way - I know I am. Although I'm politically far from him, I know so much American trivia unknown to most of my countrymen that it's downright disturbing.
But my point is, for Stærk, this was probably an important reason why he was capable of blogging comfortably in English in the first place. An Iraqi in Basra who spoke good English would probably be a very atypical Iraqi.
Re:he might be right (Score:3, Insightful)
You know what I'd pay for? Decent news that is CITED. Like a scientific paper, or even a fricken' Wikipedia article. If stories are grossly in error, they should be retracted. Smaller errors are corrected through notification.
That's all it would take, really, and I'd start paying for it.
Journalism, as it currently stands, is hopelessly unreliable. Have you ever read a piece on something you have specialist knowledge of? It's scary.
Re:Hardly "nonsense" and Doctorow's quite relevant (Score:1, Insightful)
Doctorow makes his money from very large speaker fees. His "free" books are just advertising for the man himself. The more outspoken and controversial he is, the more young people will tune into him to reinforce their pirating ideals. Thus he becomes a more valuable property when trying to advertise to a young IT literate audience.
That's not to say he's talking 100% crap. But you do need to be realistic about what he is doing, and more importantly, why.
Re:That's just a bit premature... (Score:4, Insightful)
People crave reasonably accurate news. Someone will find a way to make a buck giving it to them.
People crave news that agrees with there particular world view. Hence...Fox.