Re: AP Declares War on Google and Others -- But the Collateral Damage Will Be Ours

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Dan Gillmor <dan () gillmor com>
Date: April 7, 2009 10:27:09 AM EDT
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>


Two quick and not fully responsive comments to Lauren's piece. (I'm  
working on several much longer posts.)

First: The news industry has spent most of the past half-century  
persuading us that the news is free or close to free. On TV it's  
supported by ads, or part of an entertainment bundle via cable, or  
both. Newspapers don't begin to cover their manufacturing and  
distribution costs from subscription dollars, and have used  
advertising to sell products that are trivially cheap. So the sudden  
"omigod we're giving it away!" stuff is fairly weird. And, critically,  
once you remove the manufacturing and distribution costs from  
newspapers, you can support a fair amount of actual journalism with  
the revenues already being generated online.

Second: Having said that, we are definitely going to lose some of what  
we've had, at least temporarily, and some of what we're losing is  
important. But we're also going to gain a great deal, due to the low  
cost of innovation, that we never had before. We'll end up with a more  
diverse -- and I hope healthier as a result -- journalism ecosystem.  
We are so early in this process that we have only glimmerings about  
what will work as sustainable business models; note that not-for- 
profit is one growing option, and just as valid (maybe more so) as the  
for-profit model that led to monopolies and oligopolies that sucked  
the life out of most journalism in the late 20th Century. It's going  
to be messy. But in the end I'm pretty confident that we'll find a way  
to make it work.

(I'm more worried at this point about the demand side than the supply  
side... more to come on that.)





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