Monetising Content Online

That’s interesting if Google has started this business.

I think Osnos should probably have cited EPIC 2014 — the flash movie that circulated half a decade ago and which covered (in fictional, and futuristic detail) so much of what he argues.

I think that we should be careful to distinguish between “content creators” and “journalists” on the one hand and “media owners” and “channels” on the other. Too often an ill-informed audience can conflate the two. Not understanding that TV channels rely on independent content producers, or that newspapers rely on freelance journalists and writers (or even that record labels rely on independent artists) makes the argument so much more complicated, don’t you find?

Look — On the whole we don’t get our news on paper; we get it via radio or TV (both of which have steadfastly refused to kill newspapers off.) The State of the News Media report from Journalism.org says that “Newspapers are still far from dead, but the language of the obituary is creeping in. The industry has been in declining health for some time now. It got sicker rather than better in 2007, and 2008 offers no prospect of a quick cure.”

The important words to pull out there are “in declining health for some time.” It’s not just the web. That would be to ignore the massive convergence of media ownership, overall changing attitudes towards news, the commodification of the writing and editorial functions, and the consequent rise in churnalism.

Their websites are doing OK, of course. We keep hearing uplifting news stories about that (although I suspect we all take these with a pinch of salt.)

Things will change. Paper may even become a niche medium. But I don’t think it’s happening as fast as people think it’s happening.

(For some useful links, see my Journalism bookmarks on delicious)

Mat Morrison’s last blog post..links for 2009-02-14

When Google turn into more offline works my suggestion is they should hide there “google brand on the sandbox “I don’t think google can be the king of everything,mostly in the “real world like this”however it is nice to meet Google in this new challenge,I will wait your innovations to compete your elder industry in this ” unexplored area”

Nokia went from Forresting and Rubber Boots into Mobile phones. That day the CEO got almost killed because employees didn’t see any future.
Still it was the best decision ever for Nokia & Finland.

Now Google goes from Internet search technology into a Mill.
No employee spoke out.
No CEO got endangered.
Maybe the worst decision of Google?

Google never ceases to amaze me. Whenever I turn around, they’ve bought something new, or improved something they have, or launched another product… Should we be concerned? It’s taking over the internet.

When I heard the news of YouTube, I thought it was quite clever, especially in a recession… and it will help Google Checkout increase its market share.

But they are truly getting to big… And what’s this about the mill?! lol. I know they’d never use the mill in the way it was used before, but what is to stop them from getting into other forms of media? print… radio… paid word-of-mouth advertisers? lol.

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@Matt: Not for much longer

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*Apologies if I didn’t make it clear enough that Google are NOT going in to print media! – thanks for clarifying Jordan!*

@Malignant Melanoma: I agree that “the delivery mechanism and the journalist feed on each other” – the point I sought to make is that the delivery mechansim enjoys a disproportinately large chunk of the revenue. Of course the two form a symbion circle but for it to work there needs to be financial reciprocity and equality. Well, possibly, as you’ll see from my response to Mat below this is certainly not a new problem…

@Mat Morrison: You’re absolutely right that I played a little fast and loose with terms such as ‘journalist’, ‘content producer’, ‘media owner’ and ‘channel’. I’m not sure its as complicated as you suggest however. In old media each medium relies on a delivery system: bands need a record label, freelance journos need a newspaper, writers need publishesr, tv shows need tv networks and so on. What we’re beginning to see is that where the producers of media content (be it writing, music, whatever) might by-pass “management” to get their content in front of an (online) audience, the internet (and in the case of my initial post, Google) is taking much the same slice of revenue as traditional media distributors (i.e. media owners and channels) did. The problem is, the content producers didn’t think they were going to get similarly shafted!

@Shirley: Nice thought about purchasing YouTube vids increasing Google Checkout market share!

@Jonathan Beeston: thanks for the link – really interesting!

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