Newspapers: thinking the unthinkable


3:43 am - March 17th 2009

by Newswire    


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Back in 1993, the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain began investigating piracy of Dave Barry’s popular column, which was published by the Miami Herald and syndicated widely. In the course of tracking down the sources of unlicensed distribution, they found many things, including the copying of his column to alt.fan.dave_barry on usenet; a 2000-person strong mailing list also reading pirated versions; and a teenager in the Midwest who was doing some of the copying himself, because he loved Barry’s work so much he wanted everybody to be able to read it.

One of the people I was hanging around with online back then was Gordy Thompson, who managed internet services at the New York Times. I remember Thompson saying something to the effect of “When a 14 year old kid can blow up your business in his spare time, not because he hates you but because he loves you, then you got a problem.” I think about that conversation a lot these days.

The problem newspapers face isn’t that they didn’t see the internet coming. They not only saw it miles off, they figured out early on that they needed a plan to deal with it, and during the early 90s they came up with not just one plan but several. One was to partner with companies like America Online, a fast-growing subscription service that was less chaotic than the open internet. Another plan was to educate the public about the behaviors required of them by copyright law. New payment models such as micropayments were proposed. Alternatively, they could pursue the profit margins enjoyed by radio and TV, if they became purely ad-supported. Still another plan was to convince tech firms to make their hardware and software less capable of sharing, or to partner with the businesses running data networks to achieve the same goal. Then there was the nuclear option: sue copyright infringers directly, making an example of them.

…the full essay here by Clay Shirky

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Reader comments


1. Andrew Ducker

Clay _Shirky_. His name is right there in the URL…

2. James D

Let’s not overstate this — the dead tree edition of newspapers has certain virtually unassailable advantages. For instance, I don’t see electronic editions being of much use for doing the crossword on the train.

3. Sunny Hundal

James: What about when the Kindle becomes a mass-market product?

Thanks Andrew, corrected.

4. Rayyan

Why not have touch-screen newspaper editions, so you can not only do the crossword with a stylus (like Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training) but also zoom in to particular columns etc. I reckon people will be stubborn enough to continue buying paper newspapers, which has always seemed odd when you can get all newspaper content for free online – I guess they “like the feel” of the paper in their hands – so publishers will continue to make paper versions.

And then there is the issue of the low-quality freesheets in London – the sooner they go, the better, but I reckon many commuters find them a convenient distraction.


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  1. Liberal Conspiracy

    New post: Newspaper: the unthinkable http://tinyurl.com/c5oaup





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