Recognizing this and exploring new economic models to support journalism are core questions of the ongoing norgs discussion we've been having.
Stephen Downes
· 3 years ago
"Digg users will still be sitting in comfy chairs while other people put on body armor to report from war zones. Digg (and every news filter for that matter) is a leech on every news gatherer, from blogger journalists to institutional journalists."
Well, from that perspective, the Times editor is a leech on the same sources. And for that matter, the Times reporters are leeches on the wars and other events of human suffering they report on, living in relative comfort while those around them agonize and die.
What we have seen is that in fact more accurate and more gripping accounts are coming from these trouble areas from the residents themselves. Take a look at the Global Voices blog as only one example of this sort of reporting.
It is very quaint for the press to claim that aggregators are leeches. It is also very misleading.
Emmanuel
· 3 years ago
I m afraid it 's not the way we should read Alexa esoteric statistics. In the same way Nielsen is only counting US audience so you miss all international audience for the NYTimes (could be 20 to 40% more...). The gap is probably much better. I suggest to stop using Alexa funny toy... Would be better if Digg.com could disclose their site centric stats.
Scott Karp
· 3 years ago
Stephen,
First of all, I'm not "the press." This blog is my personal view -- nowhere have I represented otherwise.
Well, from that perspective, the Times editor is a leech on the same sources.
But the Times is actually paying people to gather news from all over the world.
And for that matter, the Times reporters are leeches on the wars and other events of human suffering they report on, living in relative comfort while those around them agonize and die.
Tell that to Nicholas Kristof or any of the other journalists who have made it their mission to raise awareness about ""human suffering." I knew Michael Kelly, who was the first journalist to die in Iraq, and I can tell you he was NOT a "leech" -- and I can assure he was not doing it for his personal enrichment. Many other journalists have died and risked their lives to report from war zones.
Frankly, I find this comment EXTREMELY offensive and twisted.
What we have seen is that in fact more accurate and more gripping accounts are coming from these trouble areas from the residents themselves.
I'm all for providing platforms for "citizen journalism" or whatever you want to call it -- that type of reporting by the people living the "news" exists rightfully alongside news gathering by people who are paid to gather news.
But that does not make valid the conclusion that all institutional news gathering is morally corrupt.
Michal Migurski
· 3 years ago
I don't see Digg competing with NYT, I see it augmenting the NYT.
How many times have we complained about an important story being buried deep in the paper, where it's ignored or (worse) skimmed-over by readers? Digg provides two functions that the NYT lacks: surfacing interesting information with swarming behavior so that interesting stories see the light of day, and providing a focal point for discussion on those stories. Yes, Digg's userbase is currently more focused on movies and XBox hacks, but Digg is an explicitly outwardly-focused site, and every page is a pointer to something with value out in the world.
"fund the reporting from Congo" is so 1.0. You've got to get it in this 2.0 world - It's about what's POPULAR!!! What's your opinion? You, yes, you! Click on the ads, consume. That's what pays.
[This is sarcasm, in case it wasn't obvious]
Scott Karp
· 3 years ago
Michal,
The Times, in and of itself, doesn't need Digg to fix the buried story problem because the problem doesn't exist any more. The Times has "Most Emailed" and "Most Blogged" stories listed on the front page, where the community of readers are already surfacing what's important.
That aside, sure Digg ads value to the Times, just like Google does. My point is that the whole system depends on somebody being willing to fund the gathering of all the types of news that the Times covers. If not then we are limited to content people are willing to produce for free and or content that drives contextual ad revenue (to Seth's point). The gathering of news from war zones and destablizing democracies will no longer be economically viable unless independently funded.
Karl
· 3 years ago
No only that, but the kind of work that's required to report on local government and business, which requires libel protection, and institutional sources, will no longer be economically viable.
ok, let's be honest here for a second - that kind of reporting was NEVER economically viable.
it was the bundle and distribution channel hat such news was wrapped in and provided by.
the net disintermediates bundlers and it has an entirely different model of distribution that enables doing without the traditional middleman.
hence *all* traditional media businesses are feeling these pressures. from music, to newspapers, and as bandwidth and tools of creation and distribution get cheaper - video.
Seth Finkelstein
· 3 years ago
Karl, small correction - I'd say the net re-intermediates bundlers. Digg is a bundler, an intermediary, a middleman. Except it's not interested in reporting, it's interested in repackaging (this is another way of expressing Scott's point about being a "leech").
It's as if someone could make a "remixed" newspaper, but with just the comics, horoscopes, opinions, letter-columns, and of course the ads.
Arul Sundaram
· 3 years ago
Seth - your point is a good one regarding re-intermediation. And it goes to Karl's point regarding the Net's effect on all media and Stephen's point about the NYT editors being leeches as well. We've all read about this (and as some of us have lived and breathed it) - what's happening is that production and distribution costs have dropped remarkably, allowing true competition amongst editors, packagers, promoters, or whatever you want to call the intermediary function. With Google AdSense and other such ad networks, there's even more competition possible. Why pay attention to the music that the record label A&R people think is cool - find bands on Last.fm or MySpace. Why pay attention to what the NYT thinks is important - pay attention to the news that TechMeme and Digg are promoting.
The question of the role of the media brand is I believe one of the issues Scott is trying to get to through his posts. Currently, the NYT brand has permission in both original reporting and the packaging / promotion of aggregated reporting. As with music, film / video, and even consulting (see prices on Guru) the cost of getting into the knowledge / information based work business is dropping, and the way money is made in these businesses is changing.
IMO - what the NYT and other media/information companies need to figure out is whether they're going to be in the bundling or original content business. Sure they can try to be in both - but there needs to be a recognition that these businesses are now distinct, and as such need to be managed that way. The idea that the reporting side of the business will generate content that will then be monetized by the bundling side of the business creates inefficiencies for both groups that allow sites such as Digg (and Weblogs Inc, for that matter) to swoop in and capture value. Unfortunately, as those of us at large media companies know, the desire to protect the current model is very strong, so it's likely that the revenue and cost pressures that media companies have been facing will continue for some time.
Karl
· 3 years ago
Seth you're right of course, it does empower *new* bundlers and intermediaries, as it destroys the old.
Your last comment isn't exactly fair though (well not entirely).
Karl
· 3 years ago
Spot on Arul.
webomatica
· 3 years ago
"Gatekeeper." The old newspaper model believes that an editor is needed to separate the wheat from the chaff and they know what's best for their readers. Digg says the readers know best and the editors that decide what story leads are inefficient. I love Digg and find most of the time, what makes it to the front page is interesting to me. I guess it depends on if you think the masses are smart enough to decide what's best for them or if you think some elite "knows better" and if the masses decide, they would just read the journalistic equivalent of junk food and potato chips. I'm on the side of the masses by the way.
kareem
· 3 years ago
Scott- An economically viable way for the Times to fund news gathering is to become a news aggregator.
Also, re this:
The Times, in and of itself, doesn’t need Digg to fix the buried story problem because the problem doesn’t exist any more. The Times has “Most Emailed†and “Most Blogged†stories listed on the front page, where the community of readers are already surfacing what’s important.
Actually, the Times is surfacing what's important on the Times' website. It's a huge difference, one that makes writing your post even possible.
Kareem
somaking
· 3 years ago
Scott,
Your blog is a place I look for valuable industry insights.
However, I must complain about your choice of the NY Times as a basis of comparison, and a news source of record.
Having been a former Times enthusiast myself, over the past 5-10 years I've come to realize how institutionally corrupt the organization really is. And of course this is reflected in their reporting. Their political coverage is so distorted with a liberal bias, I do not read it as actual news. Their track record on basic journalistic standards speaks for itself.
I realize that anybody labelling themselves a liberal would likely dismiss my criticism. However, what I've come to know as the real NY Times has made me less liberal than most anything I can name.
I hope you too will see through the ideological haze, and learn to judge the Times on their record, not their stature.
Marshall Kirkpatrick
· 3 years ago
Has Nick Carr gotten any love yet in this conversation? He's all about this arguement. I think it's fairly compelling. For another take on this question, http://blogswana.wordpress.com/ is worth a look.
Scott Karp
· 3 years ago
Mr. K, I'm not convinced it's necessary to take sides, which is why the Netscape experiment with masses + editor is so interesting. With Digg, you can make the case that any individual story is worthwile, but the whole of the Digg front page is rather incoherent. There's no context, no organization. The masses may be smart enough to spot what's interesting or important, but when acting a collective they've got some ADHD issues. Information by large committee, as with any effort by a large committee, is likely to be lacking in coherence.
Somaking, I didn't choose the comparison, TechCrunch did -- see first sentence of this post. I thought that the comparison, already on the table, was worth exploring. So your assumption that my choice was guided by ideology reflects your own "ideological haze" -- it's generally the ideologues who want to cast everything in terms of ideology.
Marshall, thanks for flagging Blogswana -- very interesting.
Jonathan
· 3 years ago
I'm not sure if this has been hit on yet, but I think Digg would help in the NY Times traffic. The articles themselves from the sites are being linked to from Digg and the people there click on them to read them. So I think, especially with Digg upgrading next week to version 3, it will provide the NY Times and other news sites with more readers.
Karl
· 3 years ago
This post recalls Dave Winer's long bet about the NYTimes.
Scott, I think you're right, there isn't a need to take sides.
Again, getting past the hype, it is important to just recognize there is a place for both approaches to news filtering. Indeed I think there is a real *need* for both, and that you can expect many other services like Netscape that mix them in novel and useful ways.
But answer this - who is paying for the original pieces of investigative journalism that are linked to at Newsvine and Digg, or produced at the New York Times? And who will do so in the future? What are the economic models that are emerging, if any, to support it? Because it costs serious money.
Scott, it sounds like you've come to the conclusion that it is still about advertising. And the service with the most attractive demographics to advertisers wins. That right?
Michal Migurski
· 3 years ago
Scott,
I get what you're saying about the "most emailed" feature, but it doesn't quite fulfill the same need in my eyes. Just getting what's popular is one thing, while getting what's popular + a facet is another. It's not just Digg augmenting the Times, it's Digg augmenting the Times for the Digg user base. There are other sites that do roughly the same thing, but for varying audiencies: lefties, techies, hippies, trekkies, whatever.
Michal Migurski
· 3 years ago
Dammit, hit "Submit" too soon.
Just wanted to add something on the whole war zone / global reporting topic. Without any hard evidence to back me up, I think there's no reason why this function of global news needs to wither or die. There is still an audience for global reporting, and not every news outlet needs to shoulder the cost (does every paper need an Iraq bureau?). Further, there are already people in war zones with Internet access who can feed information to the outside world. I can definitely imagine this function being adopted by independent entities or other involveds, e.g. soldiers or GVO's extensive network of worldwide bloggers. Sites like Digg, Groklaw, or GVO have the same kind of advantage over the Times that open source has over traditional software development models: many eyes, high backgroun-checking capacity, and so on. What they don't have is the reliable ability to produce lng-term narrative journalism, such as The New Yorker's "Annals Of National Security" series.
All Comments
Well, from that perspective, the Times editor is a leech on the same sources. And for that matter, the Times reporters are leeches on the wars and other events of human suffering they report on, living in relative comfort while those around them agonize and die.
What we have seen is that in fact more accurate and more gripping accounts are coming from these trouble areas from the residents themselves. Take a look at the Global Voices blog as only one example of this sort of reporting.
It is very quaint for the press to claim that aggregators are leeches. It is also very misleading.
First of all, I'm not "the press." This blog is my personal view -- nowhere have I represented otherwise.
But the Times is actually paying people to gather news from all over the world.
Tell that to Nicholas Kristof or any of the other journalists who have made it their mission to raise awareness about ""human suffering." I knew Michael Kelly, who was the first journalist to die in Iraq, and I can tell you he was NOT a "leech" -- and I can assure he was not doing it for his personal enrichment. Many other journalists have died and risked their lives to report from war zones.
Frankly, I find this comment EXTREMELY offensive and twisted.
I'm all for providing platforms for "citizen journalism" or whatever you want to call it -- that type of reporting by the people living the "news" exists rightfully alongside news gathering by people who are paid to gather news.
But that does not make valid the conclusion that all institutional news gathering is morally corrupt.
How many times have we complained about an important story being buried deep in the paper, where it's ignored or (worse) skimmed-over by readers? Digg provides two functions that the NYT lacks: surfacing interesting information with swarming behavior so that interesting stories see the light of day, and providing a focal point for discussion on those stories. Yes, Digg's userbase is currently more focused on movies and XBox hacks, but Digg is an explicitly outwardly-focused site, and every page is a pointer to something with value out in the world.
(Conflict of interest: Digg is a client - http://mike.teczno.com/notes/digg-v3.html)
You've got to get it in this 2.0 world - It's about what's POPULAR!!!
What's your opinion? You, yes, you! Click on the ads, consume. That's what pays.
[This is sarcasm, in case it wasn't obvious]
The Times, in and of itself, doesn't need Digg to fix the buried story problem because the problem doesn't exist any more. The Times has "Most Emailed" and "Most Blogged" stories listed on the front page, where the community of readers are already surfacing what's important.
That aside, sure Digg ads value to the Times, just like Google does. My point is that the whole system depends on somebody being willing to fund the gathering of all the types of news that the Times covers. If not then we are limited to content people are willing to produce for free and or content that drives contextual ad revenue (to Seth's point). The gathering of news from war zones and destablizing democracies will no longer be economically viable unless independently funded.
ok, let's be honest here for a second - that kind of reporting was NEVER economically viable.
it was the bundle and distribution channel hat such news was wrapped in and provided by.
the net disintermediates bundlers and it has an entirely different model of distribution that enables doing without the traditional middleman.
hence *all* traditional media businesses are feeling these pressures. from music, to newspapers, and as bandwidth and tools of creation and distribution get cheaper - video.
It's as if someone could make a "remixed" newspaper, but with just the comics, horoscopes, opinions, letter-columns, and of course the ads.
The question of the role of the media brand is I believe one of the issues Scott is trying to get to through his posts. Currently, the NYT brand has permission in both original reporting and the packaging / promotion of aggregated reporting. As with music, film / video, and even consulting (see prices on Guru) the cost of getting into the knowledge / information based work business is dropping, and the way money is made in these businesses is changing.
IMO - what the NYT and other media/information companies need to figure out is whether they're going to be in the bundling or original content business. Sure they can try to be in both - but there needs to be a recognition that these businesses are now distinct, and as such need to be managed that way. The idea that the reporting side of the business will generate content that will then be monetized by the bundling side of the business creates inefficiencies for both groups that allow sites such as Digg (and Weblogs Inc, for that matter) to swoop in and capture value. Unfortunately, as those of us at large media companies know, the desire to protect the current model is very strong, so it's likely that the revenue and cost pressures that media companies have been facing will continue for some time.
Your last comment isn't exactly fair though (well not entirely).
An economically viable way for the Times to fund news gathering is to become a news aggregator.
Also, re this:
Actually, the Times is surfacing what's important on the Times' website. It's a huge difference, one that makes writing your post even possible.
Kareem
Your blog is a place I look for valuable industry insights.
However, I must complain about your choice of the NY Times as a basis of comparison, and a news source of record.
Having been a former Times enthusiast myself, over the past 5-10 years I've come to realize how institutionally corrupt the organization really is. And of course this is reflected in their reporting. Their political coverage is so distorted with a liberal bias, I do not read it as actual news. Their track record on basic journalistic standards speaks for itself.
I realize that anybody labelling themselves a liberal would likely dismiss my criticism. However, what I've come to know as the real NY Times has made me less liberal than most anything I can name.
I hope you too will see through the ideological haze, and learn to judge the Times on their record, not their stature.
Somaking, I didn't choose the comparison, TechCrunch did -- see first sentence of this post. I thought that the comparison, already on the table, was worth exploring. So your assumption that my choice was guided by ideology reflects your own "ideological haze" -- it's generally the ideologues who want to cast everything in terms of ideology.
Marshall, thanks for flagging Blogswana -- very interesting.
Scott, I think you're right, there isn't a need to take sides.
Again, getting past the hype, it is important to just recognize there is a place for both approaches to news filtering. Indeed I think there is a real *need* for both, and that you can expect many other services like Netscape that mix them in novel and useful ways.
But answer this - who is paying for the original pieces of investigative journalism that are linked to at Newsvine and Digg, or produced at the New York Times? And who will do so in the future? What are the economic models that are emerging, if any, to support it? Because it costs serious money.
Scott, it sounds like you've come to the conclusion that it is still about advertising. And the service with the most attractive demographics to advertisers wins. That right?
I get what you're saying about the "most emailed" feature, but it doesn't quite fulfill the same need in my eyes. Just getting what's popular is one thing, while getting what's popular + a facet is another. It's not just Digg augmenting the Times, it's Digg augmenting the Times for the Digg user base. There are other sites that do roughly the same thing, but for varying audiencies: lefties, techies, hippies, trekkies, whatever.
Just wanted to add something on the whole war zone / global reporting topic. Without any hard evidence to back me up, I think there's no reason why this function of global news needs to wither or die. There is still an audience for global reporting, and not every news outlet needs to shoulder the cost (does every paper need an Iraq bureau?). Further, there are already people in war zones with Internet access who can feed information to the outside world. I can definitely imagine this function being adopted by independent entities or other involveds, e.g. soldiers or GVO's extensive network of worldwide bloggers. Sites like Digg, Groklaw, or GVO have the same kind of advantage over the Times that open source has over traditional software development models: many eyes, high backgroun-checking capacity, and so on. What they don't have is the reliable ability to produce lng-term narrative journalism, such as The New Yorker's "Annals Of National Security" series.
http://adverlab.blogspot.com/2006/06/reality-ch...
Not the original source, but that's where I saw it.