Oh Murdoch... You Really Don't Get It!
|
|
This so represents old media mindset that it needs to be shared with anyone who thinks this way, in order to see the idiocy of it in written words. Here's a quote from The Associated Press CEO, Tom Curley: "We content creators have been too slow to react to the free exploitation of news by third parties without input or permission...." He was speaking in Beijing, along with Rupert Murdoch, at a meeting of 300 media leaders. Curley went on - "Crowd-sourcing Web services such as Wikipedia, YouTube and Facebook have become preferred customer destinations for breaking news, displacing Web sites of traditional news publishers...."
When the News Corp's Murdoch got to the microphone, these words came tumbling out of his mouth: "...if we do not take advantage of the current movement toward paid content, it will be the content creators — the people in this hall — who will pay the ultimate price and the content kleptomaniacs who triumph." He was referencing search engines' use of media content, though I'm not sure what "movement toward paid content" he means. (Full story at Editor & Publisher)
Neither one of them had clothes on (like the folk tale emperor).
Just kidding on the clothes.
1911 Nobel Prize laureate in Literature, Maurice Maeterlinck is quoted: "At every crossroad on the road that leads to the future, each progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand men appointed to guard the past."
Curley and Murdoch are just two of the old guard. The rest are fumbling now. Wondering how to tame this beast called the internet is an item no longer on their table. Today the cry is stay the course - and charge for content! Old media minds still think their content is desired. They don't believe that people change and what was once valuable to them just trails off and goes to sleep.
The old guard hasn't yet figured out how to justify the price of their content in a world of a million voices. How do you begin charging search engines for leading people to your content? If search engines die, how will a web site be found online? These are not rhetorical questions.
Time for content payment is past. Free is the new keyword, and how you monetize "free" is a new business model. The old guard doesn't want to address that, though this doesn't mean the old guard will be replaced soon. There's still time before that happens.
Old media thinking still revolves around controlling what the masses are exposed to. Old media minds need to learn that the masses are now like moving water. Momentum is in constant flux, and the molecules talk to each other. To quote another, Dave Evans - HearThis.com - If traditional media talks in terms of velocity (how quickly you can get your message out), then social media is best understood in terms of acceleration (the change in how fast your message spreads over time).
In the new media world, only a few online publications are worthy of subscription because no one web site has become too "worthy." There are always other places where the same news, information, or entertainment can be found.
Perhaps some commentators will be able to make a few bucks at subscriptions. (Me? Don't think so.)
As for search engines. The vast majority of those online use search engines, and Google is used by the vast majority of the vast majority. You don't just walk up to the eight hundred-pound gorilla and tell it to pay up or quit eating your bananas. If it does quit eating, in a matter of weeks nobody will be following its lead to your banana farm.
The next eighteen months will see a new world order in media moguls. They won't be worth as much as the current ones, but there will be a lot more of them. Their common thread? All will have figured out how to make money off of "free."
|
From: Geert Lovink
Institute of Network Cultures
Amsterdam/The Netherlands
Your 'crowdsourcing' example of Wikipedia I understand, Facebook becomes questionable... but YouTube is straightout a corporate site, owned and heavily manipulated by a competitor of Murdoch, namely Google Inc. Just ask all the thousands of users whose YouTube content was recently deleted. |
|
|
|
|
About
Contact
Indie Artists
Radio Stations
Audience Data
Privacy
|
|
|
|
|
|
