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 the newspaper industry, it's always somebody else's fault for the demise of the newspaper 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 s