I don't know how much this has to do with copy editing, but I'm going to talk about advertising and journalism anyway.
It seems that the only thing people know about the future of journalism is that the way advertising operates is going to have to change. Why? Well, we all seem to blame it on the Internet. Actually, we seem to blame Internet users for not wanting to watch advertisements or pay subscriptions.
But before newspaper corporations and businesses that are having a hard time advertising start pointing fingers (well, they kind of have already), they need to realize that they are the ones who created this situation. It's not the Internet's fault, and it's not the users' faults either.
Come to think of it, it's not even the fault of the companies who built Internet sites (although they're more at fault than anyone else, because they chose not to charge people with subscriptions). Back when the Web was starting out, people weren't thinking about making money. It was a cool thing with lots of potential; companies probably weren't thinking about how one day, that cool thing would be both their lifesaver and their downfall at the same time.
In short, the Internet, its users, and the companies who are trying to profit from it are all at fault for the mess we're in today. But this whole mess was unavoidable. If companies had bombarded people with ads and/or charged for subscriptions from the get go, who knows, the Internet might not have caught on as fast...
I agree that it is difficult to place the blame when it comes to the advertising/journalism/internet problem. So I say that instead of focusing on where to place the blame, we should place more energy on finding a way to make advertising on the internet more profitable for online journalism sources. Now, I'm not saying this is obvious or easy, or that I could do it, but I'm confident that people smarter than me can find the solution we are all praying for.
ReplyDeleteIn my view, Internet advertising will come around eventually. One must realize the Internet is only been in commercial use for about 15 years, so it's still relatively young. More time will lead to more solutions. As our younger generation that has been around the Internet all our lives goes out into the real world and get jobs, I feel online advertising will be more successful. Many of the people that use the Internet now are still under 25 years old and therefore don't have much money. When people that grew up with Internet get older, online advertising will explode.
ReplyDeleteFor me, I don't really think it's anybody's fault. And I agree with Cody that when everyone in our age bracket gets a little older and hopefully have their big boy or girl jobs, this will not be as big of a problem. But at the same time, I am pretty confident that the entrepreneurs out there will figure out something before it's too late to save newspapers.
ReplyDelete"Back when the Web was starting out, people weren't thinking about making money."
ReplyDeleteI don't know how much I agree with that statement. When the World Wide Web started, I'm pretty sure tons of people were looking at how they could profit off it. For example, lots of people were buying up domain names of companies with familiar names so they could turn around and sell them--not to mention all the search businesses people were trying to start as well as online auction sites like amazon and ebay and a host of others that didn't quite become as popular.
I don't think it would ever really work out with charging people on the Internet. The Internet has become so synonymous with the ability to get things for free. Just look at the rampant pirating that's out there: mp3s and movies are the most common. You can just as easily download monthly issues of magazines or books that have been either scanned or cracked. The Internet is such a hard place to make people pay for things when it's so easy to manipulate the computer networks and programs at will.