My issue isn’t with old or new media, but with people who feel that only one kind of media is better. I just get impatient when anyone says there can be only one kind of media — that one is “old” and one is “new,” and therefore is good or bad — when really the newness or oldness comes from the mechanisms for discovery, as you point out — not from satisfying reporting, storytelling or analysis, wherever you find it.

I’m hoping that we find a way to pay people to follow this path and still keep some standards and ethics in place — the standards being taught in journalism school, still, today; that we reshape institutions like the Times or the Observer so that they can make money to keep producing the content that we all find and link to — and yes, still support the independent blogs and vlogs and whatever’s next. A friend who blogs with an enormous following tweeted yesterday that she was offered $250 to blog on a particular topic. She responded, “why don’t you just take out an ad and avoid all the weirdness and slime?”

Those are the kinds of things we’ll all have to solve. But comments like yours make me hopeful — I know that a lot of smart, cool people with various perspectives are simmering on this and will eventually come up with something that catches on because it makes sense.
Thanks for stopping by!

Example: I’ve come to appreciate the snappy headlines and insightful summaries produced by new/old hybrid sites like the New York Observer. Last week, the NYO titled one of its headline-links “Times Investor Offers Advice to Arthur: Stop Sending Frank Bruni to Paris.” Which, of course, was a witty (read: appealing) and incisive way to get me to read a Reuters’ blog entry about the behind-the-scenes of last week’s New York Times board meeting.

The NYO doesn’t seem to archive its direct-link headlines. But you can find the cached page here (headline is halfway down scroll):
http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:N3GYHwbaeBUJ:www.observer.com/index.php%3Fpage%3D2+observer+%22stop+sending+frank+bruni+to+texas%22&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a

And the direct link to the Reuters’ blog post here:
(http://blogs.reuters.com/mediafile/2009/04/23/help-the-new-york-times-save/)

Okay. So. New York Observer: Context? (check) Findability? (check) Value to me? (check plus!)

Thanks for listening.
Emily

Simply fabulous people. I’m so glad for you and your Dad that Dr. Reusch came into your lives.

I will look for a couple more resources and send them to you/and post them tomorrow.
Thanks for stopping by!

_____________________
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I’m feeling guardedly optimistic that the free market and great minds being brought to bear will yield a solution — some kind of hybrid, partially-paid, partially free, or micropayment-based answer that will let all aspects of publishing thrive.

Of course, that’s what the editor of Publisher’s Weekly wrote, and then she was alid off the following Monday.
Thanks for the comments – so smart.

Chris Anderson’s original arguments in favor of ‘freeconomics’ seemed badly flawed at the time — I seriously doubted that he would have published the same ideas from someone else. They make even less sense now. At the same time, we’re on the brink of seeing elements of a barter economy return. Of course, bartering doesn’t help companies stay in business.

But then, I’ve never been a fan of the idea of free stuff. I’m biased — I draw from personal experience on the ills of free content. When I was at redherring.com and we developed our ‘breaking analysis’ approach to the news, we gave it away. Hugo Dixon started Breaking Views at about the same time, and charged for his content. Breaking Views is still around. Red Herring has died twice.

There are other organizations that charge for content, and do not give things away on the Web. I think they will be best able to get through the recession. If that’s right, they’ll be the ones to develop a model for content. They may be able to amass the capital needed to take over the best of today’s newspapers and make them work. There will still be lots of freely available content; the mixed model adopted by the Wall Street Journal and the Economist will probably spread. And I’m sure that some of the big blogging sites will find ways to profit, especially those that can develop young, inexpensive talent (as I’ve said before, it’s a great time to be a journalist, just a lousy time to have kids and a mortgage).