Hello! My name is Nikki Loehr. Thanks for replying to my tweet!
These are the varying notes I've been writing down since about April of this past year. It isn't a formal project proposal, but I think it summarizes everything well enough. If you need further explanation on varying details, I'd love to talk to you further about all of this.
I've been thinking about all of this since about 2008, during my employment as the layout editor at the Dallas Observer (Village Voice Media) and when I'd worked with the co-founder of the internationally renowned, award winning art publication Art Prostitute. As of 2010, my former position at the Dallas Observer no longer exists. Art Prostitute has not put out a new issue since 2007. I've seen and felt the fall of the media and publication industry from the inside and out in different industries (fine art, film, music) very closely the past few years.
I'd like to discuss this all further with you. I have some software engineer/architect contacts at Yahoo! and some other places, but I know that I need to work with an organization (or several organizations) in order to get this to fruition. I'm trying to get ahold of certain key figures that I know would be a great help to all of this.
Thanks for taking the time to look at this! :)
Nikki Loehr
(214) 563-2023
How to Save the News Industry
The Business Model is Not Outdated
They say [1] the business model for the news and publication industries is outdated and hasn't evolved with technology. I disagree. I just think that they simply need to think bigger.
In the past, content access was regulated through newsstand and subscriptions. Only 20% of revenue of newspapers and magazines came from consumers through subscriptions and newsstand prices [2]. most of it comes from advertising. Google currently has a team that is trying to help save the news industry because, a few years ago, they realized that if the news industry dies, Google will soon after. Google simply aggregates information and has no manner of editing the content aggregated; with everyone producing content on the internet, it is so much harder to find quality amongst the quantity.
"The Paywall Argument" (Content Access Regulation, Part I)
The argument to save the news industry has been about a pay wall.
Normal internet users are not going to want to pay to subscribe to information and content that was freely accessible in the past. Most people are lazy and don't want to pull out their credit card -- if it's more effort than one or two clicks, that news outlet, that content provider, will lose that potential audience or subscriber.
The content access for newspapers and magazines was regulated by the physical paper or magazine itself. The only way you could access the content was to go through their pay wall and, well, purchase the thing.
Copyright
It's much harder to regulate copyrighted text-based information on the Internet. It's easier to regulate copyrighted media content (mp3s, movie files, pictures, etc) being that metadata can be encrypted into those file formats. Text is simply text. There is no file format that can have embedded metadata or encryption.
Canada has dealt with music piracy by establishing tariffs on recordable media (e.g. there's an extra tax on CD-Rs) which they dole out to the applicable industries (e.g. music, etc).
Internet/Content Access Regulation, Part II
There are entire countries that block certain websites or data available on certain websites, as evidenced by China, and especially by the recent revolutions (Egypt) in northern Africa.
Variable Internet Networks and Usenet
(aka Preface for my concepts of the Evolution of the Internet)
During the recent events at the beginning of the Egyptian revolution, people all over the world were trying to help the Egyptians set up a communication network after the government had shut down their Internet and texting. I was a passive participant/observer of these technological aid efforts (via the "hacktivist" Anonymous IRC channel #OpEgypt) where people (many from Telecomix [3]) were quickly working on concepts to establish a network on 802.11 network over bluetooth, utilizing ham radios, instructing how to use dial-up, etc to establish local networks. With the recent events in Egypt, many tech savvy people, especially those whom know the basics of networking, programming, and the inception of the internet and internet technologies, will be developing local networks and accessing them much more easily accessible for laymen [4].
I believe this is the future of the internet and the web. Web 2.0 was about expansion, connecting with anyone anywhere, accessing new things outside of one's realm. Web 3.0 will be about refocusing the new technologies developed with 2.0 and creating specific networks and interest groups that similarly developed during Web 1.0.
Usenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCParchitecture of the same name.
Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980.[1] Users read and post messages (called articles or posts, and collectively termed news) to one or more categories, known as newsgroups. Usenet resembles a bulletin board system (BBS) in many respects, and is the precursor to the various Internet forums that are widely used today. Usenet can be superficially regarded as a hybrid between email and web forums. Discussions are threaded, with modernnews reader software, as with web forums and BBSes, though posts are stored on the server sequentially.
One notable difference between a BBS or web forum and Usenet is the absence of a central server and dedicated administrator. Usenet is distributed among a large, constantly changing conglomeration of servers that store and forward messages to one another in so-called
-- from the Usenet Wikipedia article [5]
Usenet is still being used, though its popularity has declined. People can subscribe to access to Usenet, or an individual's Internet Service Provider may provide access for free or for an additional fee.
Cable TV
Cable TV has a paywall/requires subscription.
As the Google presentation [2] notes, Cable TV ad revenue has had the largest ad revenue increase since 1995.
Conclusion
The people trying to save the news industry aren't thinking large enough. Sure, you can subscribe to magazines and newspapers through new apps being developed for the ipad and kindle, but, overall...
Charge the companies that provide the access, not the individuals. This is how the major news outlets are failing at the paywall concept.
Content providers (news outlets, major publications) should collectively charge a fee. My initial idea included the concept of the Canadian tariffs on recordable media, to where the the government could impose a tax on all internet access providers that will be doled out directly to the news outlets and major publications, but I think that media/free speech/journalism should be as separate from the government as possible, because once government regulates financing, they will begin meddling in regulating the content. With this initial idea, if the ISP, phone companies (via 3G or 4G or whatever phone provider internet access networks), or whatever internet access providers do not comply, they would be unable to access any newspaper, magazine, or whatever websites.
Though, that initial idea had too many holes in it.
The worldwide tech efforts in aiding the Egyptian revolution got me thinking --
A separate network must be created, similar to Usenet. The development of this new media network will save the news industry, as well as provide many new opportunities in which to capitalize upon. This could be considered the "cable" version of the Internet -- as cable TV is distinguished from regular television. This will change the internet completely. Subscription to the network will provide access to much more content and media than normally accessible. Subscription could also have an easy user-interface and pay structure to that of things such as iTunes or Steam (video games) for purchasing actual physical subscriptions to magazines. It will open up a whole new market that will potentially challenge Netflix, iTunes, hulu, etc (which, I think is good, because it's never good to have monopolies -- which is a bit of how I feel we got into this mess)
This is how the news industry can be saved.
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