Clay Shirky on the ‘whys’ of newspaper demise

Clay Shirky has three great posts on why the online newspaper world, as a business model, is basically vaporizing. I’m going to look at all three.

First, Shirky gives us the big picture of where we’re at today and why, including why the TV-radio model, the “digital garden” model of pay circulation, the micropayment model like iTunes and others, won’t work.

Here’s his nut graf, about one-quarter the way down:

The curious thing about the various plans hatched in the ’90s is that they were, at base, all the same plan: “Here’s how we’re going to preserve the old forms of organization in a world of cheap perfect copies!” The details differed, but the core assumption behind all imagined outcomes (save the unthinkable one) was that the organizational form of the newspaper, as a general-purpose vehicle for publishing a variety of news and opinion, was basically sound, and only needed a digital facelift. As a result, the conversation has degenerated into the enthusiastic grasping at straws, pursued by skeptical responses.

He next looks at the details of why some proposed alternative models won’t work, and have already been proven that way, at least to some degree:

“The Wall Street Journal has a paywall, so we can too!” (Financial information is one of the few kinds of information whose recipients don’t want to share.) “Micropayments work for iTunes, so they will work for us!” (Micropayments only work where the provider can avoid competitive business models.) “The New York Times should charge for content!” (They’ve tried, with QPass and later TimesSelect.) “Cook’s Illustrated and Consumer Reports are doing fine on subscriptions!” (Those publications forgo ad revenues; users are paying not just for content but for unimpeachability.) “We’ll form a cartel!” (…and hand a competitive advantage to every ad-supported media firm in the world.)

Shirky then pronounces his judgment, and it’s a somber one:

Round and round this goes, with the people committed to saving newspapers demanding to know “If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?” To which the answer is: Nothing. Nothing will work. There is no general model for newspapers to replace the one the internet just broke.

Shirky goes on to like how the Internet is doing some form of what (we hope) Joseph Schumpeter called “creative destruction” to print media is the biggest such change since Gutenberg and the printing press.

I insert the link multiple times because this is a LONG blog post; twice as long as many a newspaper column, and because it’s WELL worth reading. So read it.

But, as I said, this is only one of three posts.

Shirky also tackles the details of the micropayments model and why it won’t work. First, we relisten to the same songs, but don’t re-read the same newspaper story. Second, Napster and its kin have been declared illegal; blogging and hyperlinks have done something different in media.

He then takes a more general look at the micropayments model. He says part of the problem is that the various micropayments models under discussion are entirely publisher-driven and don’t take the reader into account.

If that’s not enough for you, back in 2003, Shirky listed out the multitude of failed micropayment programs.

Read all four, not three, links I’ve provided, and accept that the mass-audience newspaper of today is probably doomed.

That all said, Shirky is light on prescriptions for the future.

And, as I blogged last week, online advertising is becoming the junk mail of the Internet world.

If various versions of charge-for-content aren’t going to work, and, with Shirky’s acknowledgement that the Gutenberg Revolution 2.0 will throw out lot of experimental models, at the least, I’d like to see Shirky throw out some ideas, and handicap some of the more promising models out there.