Newspapers Lose Even More Revenue; Advertising In "Striking Decline"

It's getting bad out there. Pretty soon I'll have to resort to cutting and pasting stories from Cracked.

It's fun to think that this is due to the public rejecting the liberal bias of the increasingly partisan media, and to some small extent it is. But the real problem is the internet -- people have now simply become used to the idea that news ought to be free, the same as broadcast television.

Before the Internet made newspapers from around the world available at the touch of a button, people were used to the idea of paying for it. Now they're accustomed to not doing so, and fewer and fewer people will bother as more and more people get hooked up online.

That's a pretty serious problem -- you have all the same fixed costs that you had when people were buying your product now that people aren't buying your product, but merely consuming it for free.

I don't know why on earth every news organization hasn't already installed an ad entry page which you must sit through in order to access their content. That in itself won't pay the bills, but for crying out loud, what business makes its product free without any attempt to get some payment for it?

These idiots really want the same bullshit email addresses and biographical information I keep feeding them when they ask me to register
(it's free and it's fun!)"? They're, um, making serious coin out of all my various "eatme@yahoo.com" fake email addresses? Or do they just all own stock in BugMeNot.com?

posted by Ace at 08:27 PM

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