[p2p-research] Stop Giving the Newspapers Your Advice - They Don’t Need It

[Ryan]

Exactly right...newspapers die because they are...not P2P.

Sent to you by Ryan via Google Reader: Stop Giving the Newspapers Your
Advice - They Don’t Need It via O'Reilly Radar - Insight, analysis, and
research about emerging technologies. by Joshua-Michéle Ross on 9/15/09

Speculation about the demise of the news business and advice about what
they should do about it is everywhere. It makes for great,
self-congratulatory sport but it won’t help the news industry.


Why?



Because the news industry doesn’t suffer from a shortage of ideas or
possible revenue models, it suffers from a different but more acute
malady: being an institution during a time of disruptive change.


While we have all been busy telling the newspaper institution what they
should do differently we have missed one big point: Institutions are
structured to precisely NOT do much of anything different.



The number one thing that ails newspapers? 70% of all costs lie in
physical distribution and printing while readership and revenues have
dramatically moved away from paper. This leads to a simple-minded but
commonsense conclusion (and my superfluous piece of advice): maximize
your online presence, build your online community, concentrate on
journalistic talent, and jettison all costs associated with print; stop
the presses.



Even if I you think I am wrong, just play along with me for a moment
and, for the purpose of this exercise, assume I am right. If you can’t
go that far substitute your own radical therapy (you know you have
one!) in place of mine and answer the next question. Which major
newspaper could have gone to its board anytime before 2009 and
successfully proposed such a radical solution? The answer if you have
ever worked in a large, “institutionalized” organization is zero. The
scenario is so horrific, involves pains so great, outcomes so unknown
and certain near-term revenue loss such that no institutional body
would be capable of acting on it - much less restructuring around so
medieval a remedy.



The failure of newspapers is not a failure of imagination or foresight
nor is it a failure of individuals. This kind of failure is the
hallmark of all institutions in the face of tectonic disruption.
Institutions are a set of agreements that perpetuate a social order
beyond individual intention or tenure. Changing those agreements is
costly and time-consuming. So when the rate of change accelerates
beyond the institution’s adaptive capacity - extinction follows.



The question is not “what should newspapers do?” but “how can a large
institution effectively organize in response to disruptive change?”
Taken thus, it is not only the fundamental question to ask of
newspapers - but to ask of ourselves in relation to a host of
big-ticket game-changers such as peak oil, environmental collapse and
climate change that simultaneously require and defy our capacity for
institutional response.



The stakes are much bigger than news. Let’s put our mind to that
question instead of making more to-do lists. From the Radar audience I
would like to ask for historical examples of institutions that have
effectively responded to disruption? What are the lessons that we can
draw from them?


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