Sunday, May 17, 2009
WaPo OpEd: Web unfair to Newspapers
UPDATE 5/18: Art Brodsky and Kos weigh in.
Yesterday's Washington Post OpEd, Laws That Could Save Journalism is an explicit call for protectionism for the Old Journalism, aka MSM. It whines that, "the playing field has become so uneven."
It's worth noting that even the conservatives aren't saying, "Let the market take it's course," anymore. So now that we've agreed that some regulation is desirable, the next question is, "What kind?"
If a nation wants to remain at the forefront of new technology, its government should regulate to nurture new, young innovations so that established behemoths don't strangle them in their crib. If progress is to occur, a government doesn't regulate to protect big, old, powerful entities from young, new ones. If government is to treat corporations like persons, the least it could do would be to treat mature ones like adults that can take care of themselves!
The Internet's innovations are just beginning. A pro-progress government doesn't say, "We've seen enough of this new stuff," unless it is in the pocket of the old, threatened industry. This is Tim Karr's main point in his HuffPo takedown of the "Save Journalism" OpEd. It's authors are old-media sock puppets.
But there's a bigger point, one that Clay Shirky makes in his March, 2009 essay, Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable. This essay points out that newspapers saw the Internet coming miles away. They devised a number of plausible strategies to deal with it. They only missed one of the major plausible scenarios, to wit:
The "death of telcos" was the scenario that AT&T missed while I was working there. Discussing the possibility that AT&T might wither and die was seen as impolite in the extreme. My Rise of the Stupid Network was rejected and I was treated accordingly. Shirky says:
Yesterday's Washington Post OpEd, Laws That Could Save Journalism is an explicit call for protectionism for the Old Journalism, aka MSM. It whines that, "the playing field has become so uneven."
It's worth noting that even the conservatives aren't saying, "Let the market take it's course," anymore. So now that we've agreed that some regulation is desirable, the next question is, "What kind?"
If a nation wants to remain at the forefront of new technology, its government should regulate to nurture new, young innovations so that established behemoths don't strangle them in their crib. If progress is to occur, a government doesn't regulate to protect big, old, powerful entities from young, new ones. If government is to treat corporations like persons, the least it could do would be to treat mature ones like adults that can take care of themselves!
The Internet's innovations are just beginning. A pro-progress government doesn't say, "We've seen enough of this new stuff," unless it is in the pocket of the old, threatened industry. This is Tim Karr's main point in his HuffPo takedown of the "Save Journalism" OpEd. It's authors are old-media sock puppets.
But there's a bigger point, one that Clay Shirky makes in his March, 2009 essay, Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable. This essay points out that newspapers saw the Internet coming miles away. They devised a number of plausible strategies to deal with it. They only missed one of the major plausible scenarios, to wit:
The ability to share content wouldn’t shrink, it would grow. Walled gardens would prove unpopular. Digital advertising would reduce inefficiencies, and therefore profits. Dislike of micropayments would prevent widespread use. People would resist being educated to act against their own desires. Old habits of advertisers and readers would not transfer online. Even ferocious litigation would be inadequate to constrain massive, sustained law-breaking. (Prohibition redux.) . . .This seems to be the scenario that's playing out. In scenario planning, it's worth taking each, "We'll always have . . . " assumption apart before the scenario exercise is complete.
The "death of telcos" was the scenario that AT&T missed while I was working there. Discussing the possibility that AT&T might wither and die was seen as impolite in the extreme. My Rise of the Stupid Network was rejected and I was treated accordingly. Shirky says:
Revolutions create a curious inversion of perception . . . Inside the papers, the pragmatists were the ones simply looking out the window and noticing that the real world was increasingly resembling the unthinkable scenario. These people were treated as if they were barking mad. Meanwhile the people spinning visions of popular walled gardens and enthusiastic micropayment adoption, visions unsupported by reality, were regarded not as charlatans but saviors.The WaPo OpEd falls short of a useful contribution because its authors didn't read Shirky's piece. Or, if they did, they didn't acknowledge it. Perhaps the OpEd's authors (or the WaPo OpEd editor, who could have asked for appropriate revisions) wasn't aware of it, because it was published only in the blogosphere. They're newspaper folks. They didn't know about Shirky's essay cause it wasn't published in their version of reality. More'n likely, there's the rub.
Technorati Tags: AgeofHeretics, blogging, ClayShirky, Internet, Press, WashingtonPost
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