A VC - Latest Comments in Avoiding The Big Yellow Taxi Moment

Re: Avoiding The Big Yellow Taxi Moment

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Re: Avoiding The Big Yellow Taxi Moment

Debunkr — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 14:13:31 -0000

BTW, Fred, interesting article showing the breakdown of traditional journalism (from a different MSM outlet):
http://www.newsweek.com/id/...
Great read.

Re: Avoiding The Big Yellow Taxi Moment

fredwilson — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 08:38:22 -0000

Twitter can provide that

Re: Avoiding The Big Yellow Taxi Moment

rahmin — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 23:14:01 -0000

The news of the day is a commodity. I will pay for interpretation and context that helps me parse what's going on though.

Example: http://Gregor.us is a top notch energy analyst turned blogger. He recently release a premium newsletter that comes out monthly at $1470/year. Having read his posts religiously over the last few months, I would pay for it (if i had that sort of cash :)

The irony here is that the walled gardens seem to be going back up.

Re: Avoiding The Big Yellow Taxi Moment

Adrian Palacios — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 13:24:45 -0000

I think Rick might have too idealistic a view of American journalism; while I have friends who have worked hard in the industry and have done excellent *reporting* (as opposed to opining), they still lost their jobs. However, journalism has its own issues as well: how many stories do you see each day that are most likely cut and paste from press releases? Even more, how much of the news is rather useless (did anyone catch NY Times coverage of Google having more than the typical number of words on their homepage during the wide release of Android? Really, who do they have counting the number of words on Google's homepage each day? Come on, this is the eff-ing NY Times!).

Re: Avoiding The Big Yellow Taxi Moment

Perry — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 12:46:47 -0000

There's one aspect to the downside that I really personally appreciate. I think of it as the "joy of unconnected discovery". Over my lifetime, I have stumbled upon many rich things in "browsing" the Sunday Times or any of my local newspaper experiences. Web technologies all seem to be heading for increasing personalization and relevance. I fear the loss of serendipity than comes from things that A) are NOT related to anything I'd be logically be following, and B) not something I'd likely learn from friends. The efficiency of new media loses serendipity, I fear, and serendipity is a subtle but very important part of the human learning experience. The "I'm feeling lucky" button is a very lame proxy.

Re: Avoiding The Big Yellow Taxi Moment

Greg — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 02:03:29 -0000

Good timing relative to this conversation, New York Magazine on how the new NYT innovates like a tech startup: http://nymag.com/news/featu...

Re: Avoiding The Big Yellow Taxi Moment

Jason Preston — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 14:54:09 -0000

Last Friday The Seattle P-I announced that it was on-sale (for 60 days), after which it would either shut down or become an online only publication. I think that the chances of Hearst running an online-only operation is huge, but the announcement has nonetheless thrown these issues into the spotlight in the Seattle area.

Like it or not, and for the record I am a huge fan of blogging and a long-time blogger myself, blogging in its current or near-future form is not a replacement for journalism. The economics work yes, and many bloggers ARE doing real journalistic work, but journalism as a fourth estate is still an important pillar in our democracy, and I don't think that self-selected coverage is going to be enough.

Can you imagine a world where reporters could tell their editors to suck it if they didn't like the assignment? That's the world of micro-journalism. And it's not going to be enough.

Re: Avoiding The Big Yellow Taxi Moment

fredwilson — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 09:42:18 -0000

Tell me about it!

Re: Avoiding The Big Yellow Taxi Moment

fredwilson — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 09:40:17 -0000

Exactly. Ads are part of the answer but they probably will only cover the rent/mortgage. She's going to need some money for shoes and bags and the like

Re: Avoiding The Big Yellow Taxi Moment

BobN — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 23:59:12 -0000

Thanks for the reminder! 150+ comments later, it's easy to lose sight of the original point (which is a characteristic flaw of the blog model, but that's a different post...).

But I think you overstate Fred's advertising avoidance. I'd state his challenge thusly: "Jane Blogger may be one heck of a microjournalist. But her blog isn't going to attract enough eyeballs to generate enough advertising revenue to support her. How does she make more money off her product, enough to make a living at it?"

I think that advertising can and must be a part of the solution, but she needs to get it from more than just her blog.

Re: Avoiding The Big Yellow Taxi Moment

BobN — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 23:41:28 -0000

“I just hope there’s a business model when we get there.” Sounds like too many of my startups.

At least he (Pilhofer) knows the difference between a hope and a certainty!

Re: Avoiding The Big Yellow Taxi Moment

BobN — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 21:34:22 -0000

Interesting article posted yesterday at NYMag about NYT's efforts to at least go down fighting: http://nymag.com/news/featu...

Re: Avoiding The Big Yellow Taxi Moment

fredwilson — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 20:46:13 -0000

I just finished reading it (in the magazine actually) and I enjoyed it

The ending is classic

Re: Avoiding The Big Yellow Taxi Moment

markjosephson — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 18:02:20 -0000

I think there needs to be a distinction between "journalism" and "useful content".

There is no denying the explosion of content. Blogging, twittering, facebook status updating and more. Everyone can be a publisher today. That doesn't mean that everyone is a journalist, though.

The journalism model is shaking out. Not entirely clear yet how journalism as a public good exists in the next phase. Much of the answer depends on how quickly the rest of the ad dollars leave print and other media to get online and how much of an editorial team (as we think of them today) that supports.

We're betting that a new model will evolve that combines informed curators (new form journalists) who aggregate (with help from co's like outside.in) all of the content that is created.

oh, and love to know your experience and what led to your opinion. feel free to drop me a line at mark <at> outside dot in.

mark

Re: Avoiding The Big Yellow Taxi Moment

fredwilson — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 17:59:16 -0000

Very true

I think yahoo's share is up for grabs over the next several years

Google owns theirs and will likely grow it

Re: Avoiding The Big Yellow Taxi Moment

NMM — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 17:17:11 -0000

there's just too much supply of content.

Re: Avoiding The Big Yellow Taxi Moment

Debunkr — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 15:36:45 -0000

If they're as good as the pro-journo supporters say they are, they'll break the biggest news items and provide the best analysis such that they'll become huge on the web. Another way to think about this problem is whether NYT.com with it's top 30 reporters and just the web ops is a viable business. I don't know the answer but would love to hear some informed opinions...

Re: Avoiding The Big Yellow Taxi Moment

jrh — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 13:32:09 -0000

Yes, you're totally right, those are world and US numbers mixed. Google's take was a little more than 25% of US internet ad spend in 2007 -- could be as much as 30% in 2008. Yahoo was greater than 15% in 2007. So between the two of them it's about 50% of US internet ad revenue.

I've worked with many big US media companies over the last decade, and have been amazed at how bad they are at extracting revenue from their online content. They've basically ceded the job to outside firms such as google, and in the process, they've given away a big chunk of the revenue.

Re: Avoiding The Big Yellow Taxi Moment

Colin Mathews — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 13:29:06 -0000

The utopian fantasy is that citizen journalism/microblogging will, on its own, spontaneously replace the content that we now know as journalism. There has to be "something else" on the content creation side (not just the aggregation/distribution/ad-serving-monetization-technology side) to allow useful, valuable local news content to exist in some form.

Fortunately, readMedia has figured out a big part of that "something else."

Re: Avoiding The Big Yellow Taxi Moment

Colin Mathews — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 12:52:05 -0000

Fred and Dave both punt on the most important question: how will news content--especially local news content--get created? "That's why everyone needs a blog and readers" is simply wishful thinking; that blog content that replaces reporting will emerge spontaneously is part of a utopian fantasy among some members of the technorati that technology will free people from the shackles of the corrupt/lazy/doomed legacy media.

Outside.in is an aggregator. It helps with the discovery and distribution of content--like Topix, but from the bottom up rather than the top down. But someone still has to create the content! SAI (any many like it) is a curator of content: that team assembles stories from the WSJ (primarily) and other publishers the way a museum chooses, and then comments on, pieces of art. They even provide some useful contextual commentary. But they're not creating 90% of the content that powers the commentary.

Re: Avoiding The Big Yellow Taxi Moment

alphanaliste — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 12:34:34 -0000

To me, the most interesting -- and telling -- thing about this discussion is how almost every respondent ignored Fred's core question, which was: What alternative non-advertising revenue streams might be available to support the micro-journalist? Almost every commenter avoided that question and instead talked about how advertising might actually work after all, or why no revenue streams were necessary (public funding, pure volunteers could work, etc.) Or just talked about how the blogging experience or the traditional media product could be improved.

I think this tendency to avoid Fred's question comes from a deep unwillingness to face reality. Consumer journalism will almost certainly be a loss leader for most writers. Deal with it.

Re: Avoiding The Big Yellow Taxi Moment

fredwilson — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 12:02:31 -0000

Colin - you are absolutely right that the content needs to get created.

My bet is that we'll see an explosion of citizen journalism over the next five years. I suspect you disagree as you call that a "utopian fantasy".

Re: Avoiding The Big Yellow Taxi Moment

jrh — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 10:20:56 -0000

For 2007, total internet ad spend was about $21b, total GOOG revenues were about $16b. I'm presuming the ratio is a bit higher now -- so yes, Google probably takes in 80-90% of all internet ad revenues.

You could imagine a model where the main internet search engine functioned more like Visa, taking a very small cut and transferring the bulk of the revenue to other players in the ecosystem. Google does that to some (small) extent with Adsense, but not at all with the organic results on its main search page. Under the Visa model, Google would have revenues of a few percent per year of the Internet total, rather than the gargantuan share it has now.

I'm not criticizing Google, just observing that the current ecosystem is structured in an odd, and probably unsustainable way. Both GOOG and the NYT add value, but the current compensation for what they do is out of whack. It seems like one way or another we will end up with a model that makes a bit more sense in the long run.

Re: Avoiding The Big Yellow Taxi Moment

fredwilson — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 09:43:20 -0000

I think the $21bn is wrong. Maybe that is US internet ad spend but Google
gets a lot of its revenue outside the US

If the ratio was 50%, I might buy that