Another example of how the newspaper industry is its own problem

Oct 20, 2013 - NY Times - Tech Wealth and Ideas Are Heading Into News

Absurd statement from the story:

Silicon Valley and its various power brokers — some who had roles in putting the news business in harm’s way to begin with — are suddenly investing significant sums of money in preserving news capacity and quality.

For newspapers, it's always somebody else's fault for the demise of the industry over the past 20 years. The newspaper industry blames innovation for its problems.

Rather than "saving" existing news properties, it's probably better to build new ones from scratch.

Pierre M. Omidyar, the founder of eBay, revealed last week that he would back the journalist Glenn Greenwald and his colleagues in a newly conceived news site to the tune of $250 million.

Just over two months ago, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, spent the same amount to personally buy The Washington Post. That’s half a billion dollars dropped into serious news production, a sector that investors in distressed assets have been fleeing.

Two different approaches. Five years from now, will one outshine the other?

Bezos with WaPo may be able to create a lab or incubator to innovate new ideas that can branch off as their own, mostly independent units that exist under the WaPo umbrella.

And it will be interesting to see what Nate Silver creates with his media product/brand at ESPN.

This is why it's an exciting time to be in media, provided the people thinking about it do not live in the past and misdirect intellectual energy toward blaming technology for the newspaper industry's current woes.

I've thought for a while that "journalists" should not get their college degrees in journalism. The students should major in economics, physics, mathematics, political science, art, engineering, etc, and if they want, get a minor or a second degree in journalism.

Definitely biased in my thinking as a mathematics major, but I do think that getting a degree in a technical field will increase the critical thinking or logical thinking of the journalist.

Writing can be learned along the way, especially if the student gets a minor or a second degree in English or journalism.

More from the NY Times story:

Kenneth Lerer, who is a partner at Lerer Ventures and has backed online sites like BuzzFeed and The Huffington Post, says Mr. Omidyar’s enterprise, which does not even have a name yet, has a leg up.

“The freedom to start a digital concern without legacy baggage is an enormous opportunity, much easier than trying to pivot a traditional news organization,” he said, adding that in both instances digital innovation would be in the front seat. “You cannot launch a successful modern media company without technology as an equal partner.”

#media - #technology - #moronism - #blog_jr

Applied the moronism tag for that idiotic, blame-filled comment that started the NY Times story.