This is a great article detailing a manifestation of several problems:
- "News" as entertainment. The primary purpose of many articles isn't to inform, but to entertain. Or otherwise provide utility other than a deep, informed, and/or unbiased/NPoV perspective.
- "News" as marketing. This is so prevalent in tech (and has been for decades) it's passed from "not funny" to trope. Company launches (itself, product), hires PR team, shops story to various media outlets, breathless hagiography ensues. The real market is usually 1) investors and 2) market shaping (for consumer products), though influencing legislative and regulatory environments (as in the Google car story) may also be a goal.
- "News" as linkbait / attention generator. Though we think of this as a modern phenomenon, and Web-based concepts of eyeballs and social networking don't help, it's also old as dirt. So you get crap like PC World, Engadget, and even the New York Times with recursive, internal references, and lacking (as Clay Johnson points out) the truly useful references to original sources. HN is a great antidote to this -- the "Ron was wrong, Whit is right" direct link (and discussion of) PKI RNG weaknesses.
And yet ... to a large approximation of "it works", it works -- as a business plan, these are fairly successful market strategies.
For any service which requires payment for access to the information, said information tends to be hard. Blomberg news and the Wallstreet Journal, are examples for this in terms of financial news.
WSJ is largely a mouthpiece / propaganda arm of Fox and the Murdoch empire these days. Some would say it's always had a strong bias toward, shock, surprise, Wall Street interests. There's a great quote somewhere by Warren Buffet if you can find it about the WSJ's editorial staff believing its own writing.
There are a number of information venues that are member/subscriber based, and which do relatively well: NPR, Mother Jones, the Christian Science Monitor, Consumer's Union. The Economist Newspaper (as it styles itself) has a rather interesting revenue model, roughly one-third each subscriptions, ads, and EIU. The last is the Economist Intelligence Unit, a bespoke research arm, though I suspect much of its work ends up in the public edition at least in the form of background and depth.
There's a great deal which could be written on markets and funding streams for information goods -- not just news, but arts, invention, data, and other works. Over the past several millenia, we've seen patronage, sponsorship, performance, publication, subscription, advertising (both direct and sponsorship), data mining, music sales (sheet, player roll, analogue recording, digital downloads), mechanical royalties, and other methods. Each has a profound influence on the nature, quality, and form of work produced.
- "News" as entertainment. The primary purpose of many articles isn't to inform, but to entertain. Or otherwise provide utility other than a deep, informed, and/or unbiased/NPoV perspective.
- "News" as marketing. This is so prevalent in tech (and has been for decades) it's passed from "not funny" to trope. Company launches (itself, product), hires PR team, shops story to various media outlets, breathless hagiography ensues. The real market is usually 1) investors and 2) market shaping (for consumer products), though influencing legislative and regulatory environments (as in the Google car story) may also be a goal.
- "News" as linkbait / attention generator. Though we think of this as a modern phenomenon, and Web-based concepts of eyeballs and social networking don't help, it's also old as dirt. So you get crap like PC World, Engadget, and even the New York Times with recursive, internal references, and lacking (as Clay Johnson points out) the truly useful references to original sources. HN is a great antidote to this -- the "Ron was wrong, Whit is right" direct link (and discussion of) PKI RNG weaknesses.
And yet ... to a large approximation of "it works", it works -- as a business plan, these are fairly successful market strategies.
Hard information markets are hard.