Comments on Shoryland: Sorry, Mr. Murdoch, But I Ain't Buyin'

I agree with you almost 100%. When I surf for news...

2009-08-09T16:31:48.066-05:00

I agree with you almost 100%. When I surf for news or other journalism and I find a site that charges or even wants you to register and create a "free" account, I (with a few rare exceptions) click "close" and look elsewhere for the information.

One thing that might work is micro-payments, where if the article only cost $0.001, then I might be willing to pay for it.

-Neil Brock

There will never be an ideal solution. Sure, the T...

2009-08-06T16:29:24.562-05:00

There will never be an ideal solution. Sure, the Times has dropped the ball a few times, but for the most part, it hasn't. And that's also why we need multiple sources.

The alternatives are either a) just accepting everything you see or b) vetting everything you see yourself. I don't see that as practical.

And for a more recent example, did you see what ha...

2009-08-06T14:30:25.097-05:00

And for a more recent example, did you see what happened with their Walter Cronkite piece? I mean, really. Screwing up Walter Cronkite's bio. That's as good as Amazon deleting the Orwell books.

Lamar, In an ideal world I would agree with you. ...

2009-08-06T14:27:31.041-05:00

Lamar,

In an ideal world I would agree with you. But which entities have proven themselves reliable? Why would I trust the New York Times, the supposed newspaper of record, after Jayson Blair, Judith Miller, and Rick Bragg?

An issue with the surf model is reliability. If I ...

2009-08-06T14:08:28.267-05:00

An issue with the surf model is reliability. If I read something that comes from an outlet that has a reputation for reliability, I'm have a degree of confidence that the article is reasonably reliable.

On the Internet, though, as the saying goes, no one knows you're a dog -- or someone perfectly willing to manipulate facts or just lie in order grind a particular ax. Sure, you can vet an online journalist's work, but who has time or the expertise to do that?

So, for decades if not centuries, we have invested trust into various outlets (packages, if you will) on the assumption (not always valid, true) that the news from a trusted outlet will be reliable. Basically, we have trusted the New York Times or Time or CNN or what have you to do the fact checking and vetting necessary in order to trust an information source.

One of the drawbacks of information from the Internet is that so much of it doesn't consist of facts that have been verified by research -- a lot of it is simply opinion, and a lot of it is just out and out propaganda. The Internet puts a lot of power in the hands of individuals to present whatever they want to present, but it also has given a lot of power to neocons, birthers, pseudo-science advocates, vaccines-cause-autism-and-I'm-just-not-going-to-listen-to-your-research-that-proves-they-don't-lalalalalalalalala crowd -- name your group-of-wingnuts of choice here.

So, however one gets one's news and information, there needs to be some way of validating it, and the most effective way of doing that is having, for lack of a better term, a publisher that oversees reliability. And there need to be a wide variety of these publishers to serve a checks-and-balance function on all the others.

That's what we should be paying for, in addition to the research and reporting that goes into a reliable news article.

My 2 cents.

Steve, The problem as I see it is that the group ...

2009-08-06T10:51:38.854-05:00

Steve,

The problem as I see it is that the group package is old school. Shirky would say it's industrial age thinking. You put together a package of content with pieces that appeal to enough people in order to justify the cost of running the printers. The package becomes a brand.

But on the Internet, do you care about the brand, when you can surf from site to site, from article to article, and it doesn't matter where it is? I don't think there's any way you can put together a package that's appealing enough, that's high enough quality from top to bottom, to warrant my paying for it all.

It's like cable. I want ESPN, not EWTN. I hate paying for both. That model can't die soon enough either.

Folks have talked about group/package/network deal...

2009-08-06T09:47:15.977-05:00

Folks have talked about group/package/network deals for years.

Let's just say BFN (Big Fake Network) owned some online news outlets, an online music store and a streaming concert site, in addition to whatever else I need to make my point.

Would you pay $5/mo to access all of that content? To SUBSCRIBE to BFN and be able to download TV shows, mp3s, news articles?