Entries tagged with “digital transition” from Tools of Change for Publishing
The Inevitability of Newspapers' Downturn
Mac Slocum
December 11, 2008
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In a post at Boing Boing, Clay Shirky takes issue with the newspaper industry's slow adaptation to digital and its propensity for playing the victim:
I'd only arrived on the net in '93, a complete newbie, and most of my opinions about newspapers came from talking with Gordy Thompson of the NY Times and Brad Templeton of Clarinet. Instead, what struck me, re-reading my younger self, was this: a dozen years ago, a kid who'd only just had his brains blown via TCP/IP nevertheless understood that the newspaper business was screwed, not because this was a sophisticated conclusion, but because it was obvious.
Google, eBay, craigslist, none of those things existed when I wrote that piece; I was extrapolating from Lycos and it was still apparent what was going to happen. It didn't take much vision to figure out that unlimited perfect copyability, with global reach and at zero marginal cost, was slowly transforming the printing press into a latter-day steam engine. [Emphasis included in original post.]
Change Always Leaves Someone Behind
Mac Slocum
November 11, 2008
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Seth Godin discusses the realities of digital change and free distribution in an interview with HarperStudio's The 26th Story:
... the market and the internet don't care if you make money. That's important to say. You have no right to make money from every development in media, and the humility that comes from approaching the market that way matters. It's not "how can the market make me money" it's "how can I do things for this market." Because generally, when you do something for an audience, they repay you. The Grateful Dead made plenty of money. Tom Peters makes many millions of dollars a year giving speeches, while books are a tiny fraction of that. Barack Obama used ideas to get elected, book royalties are just a nice side effect. There are doctors and consultants who profit from spreading ideas. Novelists and musicians can make money with bespoke work and appearances and interactions. And you know what? It's entirely likely that many people in the chain WON'T make any money. That's okay. That's the way change works.
(Via Differences & Repetitions and Jose Alonso Furtado's Twitter Stream.)
Acknowledge and Move On: A Useful Debate Format
Mac Slocum
July 15, 2008
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Mindy McAdams tries to kick start a useful conversation about the future of journalism by outlining 10 facts that should not be part of the debate. Here's a select few:
#1. Newspapers did NOT make a huge mistake by giving the content away for free.
#5. Newspapers were a nice business ... However, this is clearly over. It's done. It worked for a long time, but now, like trans-Atlantic leisure travel in big passenger ships, it will never work again.
As we've recently discussed, book publishers would be well served by a similar debate format -- i.e. put away past models and current fears so you can take on the issues and opportunities at hand.
News Roundup: Foldable E-Reader Coming Soon, New "Libraries" Bring New Privacy Issues, Analyst: Digital Change Targets TV and Film
Mac Slocum
July 11, 2008
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Foldable E-Reader Launching in Europe This Fall, U.S. in '09
The New York Times takes a look at the Readius foldable e-reader:
... the Readius, designed mainly for reading books, magazines, newspapers and mail, is the size of a standard cellphone. Flip it open, though, and a screen tucked within the housing opens to a 5-inch diagonal display. The screen looks just like a liquid crystal display, but can bend so flexibly that it can wrap around a finger. (Continue reading)
New "Libraries" Bring New Privacy Implications
As Google, Amazon and others become de facto digital libraries -- and lawsuits emerge -- Jeff Jarvis wonders what this means for users' privacy. From BuzzMachine:
Any site with content -- Google, Amazon, a newspaper, a blog, an ISP -- is now the moral equivalent of a library or bookstore, two institutions that try hard not to hand over information on what content we seek and consume arguing that that would violate our First Amendment rights. The controversy in the telco immunity legislation is that those searches were made without warrants. In this case [Viacom/YouTube], there is a warrant. When I ran sites, we got subpoenas all the time and handed over IP addresses when ordered; that was company policy. I always found it troubling and as a result ordered that we would change our data retention policy and get rid of IP addresses as soon as possible. Should Google and other sites erase IPs and rely only on cookies without personally identifiable information?
Analyst: Digital Disruption Has TV and Film in Crosshairs
In the wake of Lehman analyst Anthony DiClemente downgrading a wide swath of the entertainment industry, paidContent.org provides some blunt analysis:
Boiled down, the core argument is basically: You saw what happened to the music industry and the dramatic fall-off in CD prices. You've seen what's happened to the broadcast TV and newspaper industries. Now it's time for it to happen to TV and filmed entertainment. Hopes that digital revenue might somehow make up for lost physical sales are misguided, he [DiClemente] says, and again, you just have to look back at the music industry. (Continue reading)
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