"Google is like a gigantic parasite that hollows-out existing (media) businesses," says Jason Pontin, editor and chief and publisher of Technology Review. For example, newspapers distribute ads through-out the paper. These ads pay the bills for the reporters and columnists to cover a broad range of topics that are read, skimmed, or skipped as people flip-thru the pages. Online newspapers get read by the home page headlines. Only things that drive pageviews get funded by ads. Any page more than a few clicks in, might as well not be written because it won't be read. The ads that support that page won't be scored and the paper might as well fire everyone but the headline writer and the guys who mash-up news from other blogs in the world. And they are, at newspapers and all other forms of printed information. The result is the disappearance of diversity, the disappearance of critique, and the disappearance of depth. Only the very wide and very thin survive. Only a paper that reads more like every other paper than any other paper survive.
At the same time, if Obama blurts out something in Smallville, USA, it's published on a video blog almost instantly. The (hollow) news has become more transparent (but only if you are famous).
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Hollow Men?
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