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The Demise Of The Net Magazine
from the -why-the-end-of-Suck-sucks- dept.
The virtual extinction of the online magazine is upon us. Slate exists primarily as a massively-subsidized bulletin board for narcissistic Washington and New York publishing and media people -- it wouldn't last an hour without Microsoft's cash. Word folded last year and Salon is in almost continuous decline, struggling to stay afloat by doing something it really, really, didn't want to do -- charging subscribers for some of its content. Earlier this year, the floundering, media-centric, super-hyped Inside.com was swallowed up by Stephen Brill's Contentville.
One of the persistent myths about the Net has been that because it costs so little to publish online, and the technology makes it so simple, diversity can flourish in cyberspace no matter how big "Big" media gets. As we're learning, that isn't so. The history of media, especially of the large corporatized media of modern times, is that individuals, small groups, and people with some common interests can spout off to their heart's content on their own websites, pages, mailing lists, and in chat rooms, just as they once did in pamphlets and on posters. But independent, distinctive and varied media entities find it just as difficult to compete with conglomerates online as off.
This creates an odd new reality for media online. Individual voices have never been freer, more numerous or outspoken -- witness the rise of instant messaging and inward-looking p2p forums. But they've also never been more marginalized or insignificant.
What happened to the traditional media -- acquisition by conglomerates that offer diverse services which happen to include tepid and homogenized content -- is happening in cyberspace, too.
As Feed and Suck, two of the smarter, more attitudinal publications of the Net's first generation, vanish, they will not be replaced by similar kinds of publications. The difficulties of competing for staff, services and content with Big Media have become dauntingly obvious. AOL Time-Warner is now the largest media company in the world, with revenues of $36.2 billion. Disney is second, at $25.8 billion, followed by Viacom ($20 billion), Vivendi Universal ($17.7 billion), Bertelsmann ($15.7), News Corporation ($14.2 billion) and Sony ($10 billion). Feed and/or Suck could each have gone a decade on one day's petty cash from any of these companies.
Against these behemoths Feed and Suck had a combined editorial staff of between four and eight people, according to the New York Times, and the publications had no marketing budgets with which to reach beyond their small, and generally, elitist, readerships. Nor did they have enough of a sales force to generate additional revenue. They couldn't drawn enough subscribers, or raise even a small amount of money. That's a pretty chilling bit of media truth.
AOL Time Warner has Wall Street investors drooling over its new "all you can eat" Net access strategy. It's now a company that can deliver to its subscribers nearly every form of media content -- magazines, movies, web sites -- via every form of delivery -- including print, Net, wireless, digital, cable and phone. Sure, countless grown-ups and adolescents can still spout off on its mailing lists and public discussion forums. But individualistic sites like Feed, Suck and Salon can't deliver in all those different modes, can't offer large numbers of consumers the same range of services. They can't give you all you can eat, or even that big a meal.
This is a danger that much of the hacker universe has missed from the beginning. The problem isn't that cops will show up at your doors, and close down our sites and shut us up. Why should they bother? The real threat is that companies like AOL Time Warner and media outlets like MSN are already marginalizing, then eliminating lesser competitors by offering vast amounts of content and service to middle-class consumers at relatively low cost. Idiosyncratic Net voices get stilled by economics: they're forced into positions where they can't function independently or competitively. And a lot is going to be lost - like diversity of opinion. AOL Time Warner's idea of fierce civic discussion is a spokesman for the left, and one from the right, screaming at each other.
Salonhas for years provided some of the smartest coverage of technology anywhere. None of the big media companies offer smart and smart-ass commentary the way Suckonce did. What's the last provocative story or discussion you saw in a Disney or AOL Time Warner property or on AOL?
In an only-recently different world, Time's reporters would be keeping an eye on companies like AOL. Now, Time itself is one of the behemoth's smallest and least significant properties. What's the last story you read there?
"This has got to be some type of conservative plot to restrict free-thinking attitudes," Plastic contributor Star Freed wrote in the site's chat area earlier this week. "I'm sure of it." But he's flattering himself. In the Corporate Republic formerly known as the United States, neither liberals nor conservatives need a plot to wipe out a small magazine website. Big Media will do it for them.
Weblogs and blogs can be vibrant and fascinating. So can mailing lists and me-to-me-media media entities. But they don't reach significant numbers of people; the don't have significant influence; they don't offer any real bulkwark against the AOL-ing of the Net. Nor are they a substitute for truly free-wheeling, idiosyncratic media outlets.
These defunct sites aren't blameless. While Feed and Suck offered interesting original and provocative reading, they never quite embraced the power of interactivity. They never really gave readers a role in agenda-setting, and they clung too long to old, top-down media sensibilities. Salon has never quite shaken the feeling that it's at heart a newspaper/print magazine grafted onto the Web.
For all that, these online magazines were and are interesting and important. Disney, AOL and Sony are, at their core, entertainment entities, not journalistic ones. They aren't interested in free speech or outspoken opinion that might offend potential consumers or spook advertisers and stockholders; they function according to the principle of mass-marketing, not hell-raising or intellectual exploration.
The corporatization of media ought to be a hot political issue, but who's going to raise it? AOL? The members of congress whose campaigns are funded by large corporations? The public has little consciousness that its media have been taken over by conglomerates.
The process that has essentially homogenized the popular press and made it irrelevant to anybody under 50 is spreading online, unopposed by regulators or by the Netizens who ought to be up in arms about the creation of a monstrous entity like AOL Time-Warner.
The demise of Suck truly sucks.
format AND content (Score:5)
BTW two of the biggest columnists @ Salon are David Horowitz and Camille Paglia neither of which are very far to the left of Ghengis Khan.
What is needed is a new advertising concept... (Score:5)
Where's Mr. Subliminal (*Nike. Just do it.*) when we need him? He was one of the (*Wasssup!! Bud Lite*) least effective on television (*Read Slashdot!*), but his ideas (*Watch Shrek!*) may appeal in cyberspace where (*Disney's Atlantis -- Opening Tomorrow!*) banner ads have been met with both (*Tojans mean never having to say 'I'm Sorry!'*) open hostility and ridicule.
Somehow, we must (*Salon.com -- only $30/year*) find a new way to finance (*Vote Republican in 2002, or we will send Willie Horton to your door!*) the sites that we really love to surf (*Summer sale at Macy's: up to 20% off!*) or we will find many more of these well-written, but (*Carl Hiassen's new book: Sick Puppy! Now in paperback!*) underfunded sites go down just like (*Isuzu welcomes back Joe Isuzu! Buy a truck from us!*) Salon, Slate, Suck, and (*New York Times. We have the fnords!*) Feed.
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Re:The real reason Salon and Slate are failing (Score:3)
No, I don't think the libertarian audience really is that big.
Oh, you mean conservatives? Those bastions of "fact" that in some cases rely on Rush Limbaugh for "news", when he's repeatedly been caught in flagrant opposition to the facts (and waves such things away since he's only entertainment after all)?
Sorry, but everyone, right left and center, tends to gravitate towards views of the news that reinforce their own world view, and so towards anything that is "sanitized" in the direction that they want to hear. It's human nature. To claim that liberals are all for censored news, but the freedom loving (ha!) conservatives want everything to be told is to ignore all kinds of conservative whitewash.
people who want the honest truth about the socialist and homosexual communities
You want the honest truth about "the homosexual community"? Here it is: gay people want to be allowed to express themselves and love whoever it is they love without fearing that their jobs, their homes, and their lives may be taken from them by people who are afraid of them because they are different. Just like the italian community, the puerto rican community, the asian community, and every damn other community in this country.
Unfortunately, some people who have to have a "them" to be against have to invent moronic evil agendas that bear only fleeting resemblance to reality so they can feel justified in having no sympathy when those they fear "get what they deserve." "But we weren't really advocating violence against them." As Dogbert says: "Bah!"
With this statement you've demonstrated exactly how "objective" the news you consume is--no more than that on Salon etc., just better targeted at the prejudices of the majority.
Re:The real reason Salon and Slate are failing (Score:4)
With conservatives running the show in Washington, the country is beginning to gravitate back towards its moral roots.
Those puritan roots are what you're talking about? Never mind the convicts and other criminals that also helped establish the colonies...
And of course, this trend toward our puritan roots is why rude rap songs about sex, teenaged slut pop and online pr0n are doing so well....>coff<.
The fact is, Suck & Feed had little to nothing with being "mouthpieces for the liberal left", and inasmuch as Salon & Slate do, their failures have nothing to do their ideology and everything to do with the fact that banner ads just don't support a website unless they're porn ads.
How about another web magazine that somewhat disproves Jon Katz's poorly thought out premise? Nerve! They seem to be doing well, they're definitely not conservative, and their main selling point seems to be that they are just respectable enough to not be dismissed as pr0n while still appealing enough to that same part of people to be successful.
Re:The real reason Salon and Slate are failing (Score:3)
I think other people in this discussion have hit the nail on the head when they said it's not about content or dissenting opinions, it's about ad revenue dwindling and vanishing. Look at Keenspot [keenspot.com] and Sluggy Freelance [sluggy.com], both of which have instituted "if you pay us, you'll be supporting our site(s) and you won't have to see banner ads" programs. Look at Themestream [themestream.com], which went belly-up, and TheVines [thevines.com], which looks like it's also headed for extinction. Look at all the free ISPs that have either vanished or consolidated and cut way back on the services they offer. Banner ads just don't work.
There definitely does need to be a new model for websites to earn revenue. The problem is, nobody's really sure just what it is yet. Tipping might work, but only if the tipper is willing to subscribe to the payment service used by the tippee. Micropayments sound good, but there are a whole bunch of hurdles in the way, and there's no more venture capital [wired.com] to develop such a system.
Whatever happens, it seems like ad banners are rapidly becoming so ineffective now that having them at all is tantamount to a superstitious gesture, like crossing your fingers or putting a horseshoe up over the door--it makes you feel better, but doesn't actually do anything.
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HAHAHHAHA! (Score:5)
Look around you, dude. Net sites are failing left and right and it has nothing to do with people "loosing interest in liberalism". It has everything to do with not making money! Ever been to Fucked Company [fuckedcompany.com]? Read over just 10 of the FCs - they are mostly stupid ideas in the first place, such as the ever popular breakfastcereal.com - the breakfast cereal portal! Imagine, if you will, Yahoo! with nothing but breakfast cereal. Like I am going to make THAT my home page. And the guy who started that winner of an idea got VC for it.
This has nothing, zero, zilch, to do with us having an idiot president getting his marching orders from the religious right and big business. These sites are failing for a reason: they are poorly run from the outset, have burned through all their VC by buying Aeron chairs for everyone and their dog, and then are left wondering why nobody clicks on the banner ads.
Mixed feelings (Score:4)
In a way, I'm not really all that sad about the demise of Suck. I was a regular reader of the site from its inception, and one of the key points of the Suck philosophy back then was this: know when to cash in. Nothing on the internet lasts forever, so make the best of it when you can. The fact that they were saying this in 1995-1996 is proof of their insight and wisdom. The guys who started Suck made quite a name for themselves, and I'm sure they'll have little problem keeping gainfully employed for the rest of their careers. More power to them.
On the other hand, I do want to see high quality independent journalism and commentary survive on the net - I think that independent/grassroots journalism [indymedia.org] is one of the greatest things to come out of the internet, and I want to see it survive and propogate. But I don't have any answers as to how to pay for all the bandwidth that a popular site involves -- with any luck, bandwidth will become less of an issue in time, and this will make it easier for people to self-publish in any kind of significant way.
You can't have your cake and eat it too. (Score:3)
How is this a myth? This statement is absolutely true. It's never been cheaper to set up a website online. Many, many hosting companies offer web-serving, email, dns delegation, gigabytes in monthly traffic, and access to back-end technologies such PHP and ASP for under $20 a month. This kind of affordability just doesn't exist in any other form of media.
Suck was set up in the spare time of a couple of Hotwired employees - it quickly become an icon of intelligent/satirical commentary on the web. It was a success. Once they tried to to operate the site as a business it was then matter of waiting for the money to run out - but I for one certainly wouldn't be pointing fingers at big media in looking for the reason for their downfall.
Somewhere along the line large numbers of people stopped seeing the web as a cheap and effective place to publish original commentary or to host free-flowing discussion groups. Instead, they began eyeballing the bank balances of the ever-increasing numbers of geek-millionaires and looking to get a little of that action for themselves.
Katz, diversity can and does flourish in 'cyberspace', it just doesn't necessarily turn a profit doing so. That's all you seem to be saying.
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community? (Score:3)
The web is a better way of publishing zines. Zines and small publications are the way tastes outside the mainstream are solidified and built. Trends outside the mainstream are what drive the mainstream, which then pukes out tons of shoddy, pale imitations. Every now and then someone surfs the wave up and produces something truly amazing on the mainstream level.
What sucks is that the infrastructure and costs for subscription stuff is still expensive, difficult, and/or time-consuming, and subcription content is a hard sell until people understand how to sell it as "insider" community. You can't do that with 100 employees on staff, and you won't, ever.
There are plenty of us who realize that the Net is the future of underground COMMUNITY, and appreciate that for what it is. If a few of us make careers out of it, great. I don't see the immediate need for something on the order of major movie studios to come out of the way the 'net is changing our consumption and production of culture.
Many to many is SUPPOSED to create fewer blockbusters that everyone sees and more small content. All the pissing and moaning about content on the web is silly when you realize that it basically amounts to the breathless expectation that content will be produced "peer to peer" and then disappointment when that turns out to be true.
Fine with me, though I'm still certain that the bell hasn't even rung to START round 1 yet, so there's a lot of time to see what happens and what new empires arise. Suckdot was hilarious.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Why Devote a Column to Name Calling? (Score:5)
Big Tobacco
Big Oil
Big deal.
This column would get moderated down as a toothless, ad hominem attack -- it claims to tarnish an entity (in this case, by making the ridiculous assertion that outlets like The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times conspire to Keep the Man Down) simply because they exist in the mainstream, and, therefore, are recognizable.
Mister Katz takes this argument to the epitome of lunacy, arguing that media is undergoing "corporatization" (defined as organizations associating freely, but not to Mr. Katz's taste) and that you, me, and my neighbor should care -- it "ought to be a hot political issue." In fact, one could infer that the reason why Mr. Katz's column appears not in The Washington Post but rather an online rag has much to do with a "Big Media" conspiracy to keep his opinion out of the public view.
And he does this by calling newspapers of both good and poor quality one name -- "Big Media." Say it with me now: "Big Media" controls your thoughts. "Big Media" will take over the world. "Big Media" must be stopped.
This makes a column? Sadly, yes. Quoth Katz:
The process that has essentially homogenized the popular press and made it irrelevant to anybody under 50 is spreading online, unopposed by regulators or by the Netizens who ought to be up in arms about the creation of a monstrous entity like AOL Time-Warner.
The ridiculousness of such a passage is astonishing. "Essentially homogenized?" Check out http://www.fair.org/ [fair.org] or the Media Research Center [mrc.org], both of whom strive to point out media bias, FAIR being liberal, the MRC being conservative. And they are not creatures of the web -- both were founded in the mid-1980s! Oh, and Brill's Content often runs two news articles side by side that, apparently, cover the same story, but come out w/the opposite headlines. Homogonized?
The idea that any newspaper or news station is "irrelevent to anybody under 50" is not only wrong, it shines of ignorance. C-SPAN callers come from all walks of life. CNN, FoxNews, etc. get decent if not fantastic demographics from the 25-54 age group. OpinionJournal.com, which echoes WSJ editorials, wouldn't work at all if it only appealed to AARP members. And if a doughnut was valued more than a copy of the New York Times, the commuter rail to Grand Central would be littered with crumbs, not the "House & Home" section.
But no! The notion that people may not care if media is "Big" or "monstrous" or, erroneously, "homogonized" is impossible! Why? Because, asserts Mr. Katz, things that are "Big" or "monstrous" or having to do with corporations or conglomerates or other things are ipso facto evil! Perish the thought that people may not care because they weren't reading Suck or Salon or Inside.com anyway -- out of personal preference -- and instead wished to continue reading the Chicago Tribune -- but did so via an AOL dialup.
When reality does not support your political motives, it works to call your enemies names. If anything is homogonized about media, that's what it is -- and Mr. Katz has shown that he is willing to add his name to that milk carton.
Re:the subversion of democracy? (Score:5)
You've got the first part absolutely right on the head. An active and informed citizenry is crucial to a free state. You are also correct in pointing out that Americans are rarely active and informed. Yes, this is a problem.
But blaming the "Corporate Republic" is an intellectual cop-out. First of all, the entire concept is a load of bullshit. You better damn well believe that if the government had any real desire to shut down Microsoft or AOL, they could. Corporations aren't more powerful than government, they only sometimes seem that way. If America were really owned lock stock and barrel by corporations then we wouldn't be seeing the load of regulatory garbage that gets passed through Congress each year.
The idea that corporations are able to shirk all responsibility is also BS. Corporations live and breathe by the market, and the market is driven by the consumer. The reasons we're seeing all this vertical integration is sure as hell not out of some kind of diabolic plan to squelch the voices of independent content producers, but because it's getting harder and harder to attract the kind of audiences that media outlets are used to. Hence AOL buying everything from ICQ to Netscape - they need to get subscribers to keep their bottom line. If you've got several million eyeballs, you can keep afloat of ads... and even then it's a crapshoot. "Big Media" isn't more powerful than ever... it's trying desperately to keep from hemorraging cash by spreading itself around. In the end, that may only make the situation worse.
Unless corporations understand market demands, they're doomed to end up pretty well fucked [fuckedcompany.com]. Corporations have an *extreme* amount of accountability, to their shareholders, to the market, and more important to the consumers. AOL is sucessful because it caters to a large group of people and does it well. Ditto Microsoft, or almost any other major corporation.
This whole "corporate republic" bullshit is getting real old. It's the same anti-capitalist rhetoric that should have been buried a long time ago. The alternative proposed by this New Left is a socialist system where the *government* runs everything - and all you need to do is go take a little trip to a former or current Communist country to see where that would lead us. (And don't talk about Sweden like it was paradise either - they have a yearly national dept equal to 133% of their GNP. That's a burn rate that would make some dot coms flinch!)
The problem is, advertisers are seeing the truth.. (Score:3)
The problem is mainly the truth that advertisers may be coming to grips with: that their whole business may not be as effective as they believed.
When advertisers place ads in magazines / on TV, they try to get our attention with flashy scenes, big pages, etc. But the fact is that 99% of people ignore them. And even if they DO pay attention to the ads, the odds of the add enticing them to purchase anything are low.Until now, advertisers have had no die hard proof about how much their ads were affecting revenues. One can't monitor everyone who buys a magazine and see how many were affected by a particular ad. All you can do is make extrapolations based on the aggrigate.
But with internet ads, you can see EXACTLY how effective an ad is. If your clickthrough is low, the ad is not effective (at least that is the premise). So the revenues go down. It's that simple.
This whole way of measuring ad effectiveness is ludicrous. There are no ways to measure "clickthrough" rates for magazine ads or TV ads, so why should web sites be subject to the same thing?
Maybe this decline of the internet ad industry will cause some people depending on advertising to take a look at what they are spending so much money on, and ask if it is really effective at all, and if so, to what degree.
Re:What a Load (Score:3)
People don't "read" Slashdot. They skim it. Most people don't even really read the posts before they start writing replies, and don't even ask about clicking links to read off-site articles.
true, but in our defense, most of this shit isn't worth reading. i don't mean this to be flamebait, but it's bound to happen with any site who's content is primarily generated by users. there's a good chance, even with moderation, that a good number of the comments will be poorly written, perhaps with bad grammar, no thesis or common thought pattern, ignorant and/or completely wrong contect, or even written without capital letters! all of these things make reading comments painful and time-consuming.
of course that doesn't make the content useless, and there are always gems to be found, but it does excuse us for skim reading a lot of the content here on slashdot.
to stay on topic: as for Feed and Suck i didn't really like either site but i will miss Wednesday's Filler on Suck. any idea what "Polly Ester" will be doing in the future?
- j
Re:Two problems... (Score:4)
Actually print ads don't really work either, but there's no micro-tracking mechanism (i.e. real life counterpart of "clickthru's") to prove this. What happens is only a very small number of people will act on a magazine's ad, but usually this is, more or less, enough to pay for the ad in the first place. Plus ads help with name recognition, so no action is even required. Evidently banner ads aren't held to the same standard.And 1% click-thru is considred a "failure." Uh-huh. How many ads have you seen in magazines that you actually acted upon (visited the car dealer, whatever)???
I suspect the real dirty secret is that its not that banner ads don't work, its just they show how badly ALL advertising works in general, at least in any sort of specific "see donut ad-->buy donut" way. But no ad agency will admit this, and very few companies w/ ad dollars want to admit this either, so there is this big consipiracy to keep shush about this so evryone who works in marketing and ad sales can keep their jobs. It's working, for now.
The second problem is that Suck, Feed, Slate, and Salon are all essay-centered reflective publications. Sorry, there's *never* been a big market for those. The real-life counterpart to to them (Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, The New Yorker) have *always* sold poorly too(around 200,000 each, actually). I don't see MSNBC or CNN.com going anywhere. ..
What a Load (Score:5)
You don't see blood, guns, t&a, tears, massive armies, explosions, sweat, smiles, or anything else when you read. You imagine them. Television and movies have rotted our brains enough that we are no longer capable of imagination; We simply watch. If it's not in front of us in living color, we can't understand it.
People don't "read" Slashdot. They skim it. Most people don't even really read the posts before they start writing replies, and don't even ask about clicking links to read off-site articles.
This has nothing to do with Big Media and everything to do with information apathy.
Re:Two problems... (Score:3)
Now reload just the slashdot page. You got a different ad. Sometimes I miss a banner ad, or click a link and then realize I want to see that banner ad, but the next page loads, and when you go back, the previous banner has rotated. And I've never seen a website have an "advertiser index" like so many magazines have.
Katz...quit your bitchin' (Score:3)
It is a simple mathematical fact many, many sources of media mean that most of them will not be viewed by a significant fraction of the viewers. So what? My mom and dad will never be remotely interested in Slashdot. They read their local newspapers and watch some network news. Are they being victimized by big media?
The good news here is still (for the time being, anyway) that people interested in almost any arcane topic can find information and opinion about it. When something threatens to shut down individual voices, then gripe away. But don't bitch because the masses don't appreciate your pet "elite" media outlet. The market does not owe you eyes for your favorite content.
the subversion of democracy? (Score:4)
Jon, I'm sure you're upset (Score:5)
hypocritical and missing the point (Score:5)
Is it really indicative of a state of our 'new' economy? If we can't produce content that people are willing to pay subscription fees for, or generate the audiences that advertisers are willing to pay to advertise too - then how exactly is that the fault of the conglomerates?
Perhaps Feed and Suck were too niche. Perhaps Salon just isn't all that great. Can you deny that they'd never have gotten half their time in the sun in paper and ink?
The Net has lowered the barrier of entry into the world economy - but it's even more ruthless on bad business. You can't succeed just because there's no competition in your area. All competition is everywhere. You have to provide the content that creates an audience that you can sell.
Demonizing the big businesses because a site 'suck'd and died is really quite childish.
online magazines are a business like any other. As an added advantage - the costs for an ezine roughly equate to exactly as many issues being printed as needed - so even if msnbc and cnn ate their audience - if they had decent content and a revenue stream then they'd be able to cover and cultivate the audience they kept.
who knows, in 5 years maybe we'll see that there is -no- market for content like salon, slate, or suck online. Perhaps their light-minded drivel is best suited for dead-tree editions you pick up for the flight and discard.
You can't blame the conglomerates for everything. The audience spoke and killed those zines. If people find content worth it - they'll pay. Perhaps when all the other zines dry up - and there's no other place to turn online to waste some time - a quality subscription site will spring up and flourish.
or not.
revenue strategies (Score:4)
Banners - These suck. The cpm's are falling every day. For whatever reason people aren't convinced they are worth paying much for. Also, half the time the banner company or advertiser doesn't pay the bill. An thus you can't pay your bills. There was a GREAT article on this on kuro5hin a while back where some people actually ran the numbers. It might be possible to make a profit with banners (slashdot), but it is very very hard. Most sites are lucky if they can pay for hosting with banners.
Subscription - Could be a viable idea. Too bad no one is subscribing. If you are a small professional publication like Suck, you have to compete with the conglomerates on the news side and the bloggers on the community side. Unfortunately, that leaves you stuck in the middle charging money while those you are competing with are giving away the content for free. What do you have to offer? Even sites that have rabidly loyal readers probably can't make this work. Why? Look at which real magazines sell well. Maxim? Stuff for Men (same company)? Generic woman's magazine? All those magazines are super-formulaic dribble targeted at the general population. Suck and Feed just don't appeal to most readers. Certainly not enough to make any real money. Look at me, I'm a total web addict and I didn't read either.
Micropayments - Am I the only one who thinks this is stupid? What successful business plan supports itself with tiny margins. How do you collect payments without spending more on the collection process? Ask anyone who's appeared on a talk show. It's more work than it's worth to cash some 8 cent checks you get from reruns. The only way this could work would be if a close system like PayPal let people have accounts and slushed micropayments around internally. But I still don't think it will work.
The balanced financial plan - We've taken a different approach. Our business plan doesn't require us to make any money. What we pay for hosting each month is about what I would spend on a meal at Wendy's. Add to that a slashdot-like submission system and our desire to write good articles about music for the fun of it and you have a system that works. We can never go out of business because we have almost no real costs. The worst thing that could happen is that we get bored. On the plus side, we don't have to display annoying standard banners or anything like that. Any money we make from affiliate type deals or short-term advertising contracts with specific businesses goes right into our pockets (and back into the site). IF people enjoy our content and site enough to want to pay for it or we grow large enough to attract some other sort of deal, fine. But we are happy now. I'd do it just for the free concert tickets.
Ok, so maybe I'm being negative. But the bottom line is that the mainstream press does a nice job of catering to the mainstream. The blog community caters to those who want an online community. Business-wise, there just isn't much room left. I say start the site because you care about what you are writing about. If a couple years down the road it becomes profitable, great.
Usenet & mailing lists are not about to disappear (Score:3)
The mistake Jon Katz (and Salon, Suck, etc) makes is the thinking "new media" will look similar to old media. New media is different. Just as print media is different from broadcast media.
It is pretty ironic for this Jon Katz spiel to be posted to a true "New Media" site like Slashdot, which couldn't exist in traditional medias, yet seems to continue without too much worry AFAIK of running out of money.
It would silly to wonder why a radio station that only updated their news once a day, like newspapers did, why they would be driven out of business; they are working within a different system with different capabilities and their competitors will embrace those advantages.
Join the Cluetrain [cluetrain.com].
It's Always Sumthin' fer Nuthin' (Score:4)
Big Media...ya right. The problem with Suck and every other high-quality failure is revenues! Until someone figures out a way to make advertising 'pay' on the Web, this scenario is destined to repeat itself. Like traditional media, advertising dollars pay the rent - not subscription fees. If Time magazine or your local newspaper tried to fund itself via subscription fees, the huge sucking sound you'd hear would by customers running for the door. The Web is no different.
No matter how good the content, it's getting tougher to find advertisers willing to put a ton of dough into Website sponsorships. Lots of top-notch writing and lots of top-notch web design costs money. Sure there are e-zines out there running on a shoestring, but they are largely aimed at small niche communities and run by volunteer labour (or at least eschew profit-making).
Advertising on the Web is inherently difficult. In printed media (for example) the advertisment is going to sit on the page until you're done reading the page. This paradigm does not hold too much water in the electonic format. So until there is a compelling advertising model and supporting technology for the Web, professionally-produced 'magazine' content will be difficult to keep alive.
Two problems... (Score:5)
The other part of the problem is that a standard magazine uses a "push" method of distribution. You don't have to go check for the magazine, it comes to you when it's ready. It says, essentially, "Hey, I'm here...time to read me!" On the other hand, websites are not that way, with the singular exception of whichever site is set as your default page in your browser. Yes, you may have a few you check every day, but how many are you really going to want to have to remember?
Re:New Media = Narcissism (Score:3)
Untrue on both counts. The term 'New Media' was coined to get people consulting gigs. The people who actually invented the Internet and the Web knew what they were doing all along. The people who had zero clue were the analysts and journalists who spent their time interviewing each other and bilging out puff pieces about 'internet time'. Nine years on and the Web is still a work in progress, so what was that 'internet time' they were talking about?
Most people talking about new media were talking about two things, interactivity and a different cost structure to print or TV. Interactivity is what brings people to Slashdot. Newspapers have always had letters pages, but online forums take the concept much further.
The difference in the cost structure online vs print is dramatic. If you don't have to pay for the content, publishing becomes close to free. If you are a government you can probably save money by putting documents online rather than printing them.
Where people's expectations failed was when they fooled themselves into thinking that new media would lead to new media empires. I don't believe that was ever going to happen and if it did what does it benefit anyone if an old media conglomerate like Time-Warner is replaced by a new media conglomerate like AOL?
We always thought that online new media would be small scale mom 'n pop type stuff with a few medium sized outfits (which it is mainly, look at the prOn sites). When the new media companies started to employ staffs of 100+ the writing was on the wall.
An old adage adapted for a new world (Score:4)
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Bullshit! (Score:5)
Ehhh? What?
WFT are you talking about, it certainly isn't "Big Medias" fault!
The one and only problem here is that THEY DON'T MAKE MONEY. End of story!
The very same problem the open source companies have out there. Companies (and their employees) must make money to survive, welcome to reality!