Saturday, November 05, 2005
On the Changing Media Landscape
A few days back, I attended a panel discussion at the Columbia Journalism School on the 'Changing Media Landscape.' The panel was moderated by my friend, Sree Sreenivasan, and the panelists included Len Apcar, editor-in-chief of NYTimes.com; Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist; Andrea Panciera, editor of the Providence Journal website (projo.com); Jeff Gralnick of NBC News, and James Taranto, editor of the Opinion Journal of the Wall Street Journal.
As you can infer from the title, the discussion was mostly about the huge impact of new technologies on traditional media. Obviously, a lot of the discussion was focussed on the impact of blogging. I found it rather surprising that Len Apcar wasn't taken to task for walling off the op-ed page via Times Select, though he was questioned about TS several times. To me, it seems silly that the New York Times would try to prevent bloggers from discussing and linking to Maureen Dowd, Tom Friedman etc.
If I were Len Apcar, I would be thinking in terms of tying up with the search firms to deliver ultra-targeted advertising. After all, the NYT has both my location and a reasonably good idea of my tastes from my browsing habits. It seems fairly obvious that a tiny sliver of the fast-growing ad market would earn the NYT a great deal more money than a few thousand paying subscribers. Though Apcar insisted that Times Select would be a money spinner, what we can deduce based on current evidence is that Mo Dowd and Friedman don't appear in the most frequently e-mailed stories anymore.
Last but not the least, I have say, Craig Newmark is as interesting in person as I imagined him to be. He certainly believes is not saying much, describing himself as someone with very few opinions (the self-deprecation is oozing by this point). I suppose the advantage of being on a panel with James Taranto is that you really don't have to voice that many opinions :) Craig also has a wicked, cynical sense of humour, exemplified by his crack about the 'vigilant' media in the U.S. helping prevent 'vanity wars.' Craig also made a point about Wikipedia that ZS guest blogger Andrew Lih has made in the past. History is traditionally written by the winners and the western bias we see in modern historical records is more a testament to western dominance (in the last 500 years) than to actual fact. One could argue that Wikipedia democratizes the process of documenting history by allowing anyone to create/edit entries. To that extent, Wikipedia may well push the history writing process closer to the facts than ever before.
I could go on and on, but since Sree and gang have helpfully put the audio of the entire discussion online, I should direct you there instead. Video should follow shortly. If you'd rather read just the synopsis of the discussion, head over to Editor and Publisher.
As you can infer from the title, the discussion was mostly about the huge impact of new technologies on traditional media. Obviously, a lot of the discussion was focussed on the impact of blogging. I found it rather surprising that Len Apcar wasn't taken to task for walling off the op-ed page via Times Select, though he was questioned about TS several times. To me, it seems silly that the New York Times would try to prevent bloggers from discussing and linking to Maureen Dowd, Tom Friedman etc.
If I were Len Apcar, I would be thinking in terms of tying up with the search firms to deliver ultra-targeted advertising. After all, the NYT has both my location and a reasonably good idea of my tastes from my browsing habits. It seems fairly obvious that a tiny sliver of the fast-growing ad market would earn the NYT a great deal more money than a few thousand paying subscribers. Though Apcar insisted that Times Select would be a money spinner, what we can deduce based on current evidence is that Mo Dowd and Friedman don't appear in the most frequently e-mailed stories anymore.
Last but not the least, I have say, Craig Newmark is as interesting in person as I imagined him to be. He certainly believes is not saying much, describing himself as someone with very few opinions (the self-deprecation is oozing by this point). I suppose the advantage of being on a panel with James Taranto is that you really don't have to voice that many opinions :) Craig also has a wicked, cynical sense of humour, exemplified by his crack about the 'vigilant' media in the U.S. helping prevent 'vanity wars.' Craig also made a point about Wikipedia that ZS guest blogger Andrew Lih has made in the past. History is traditionally written by the winners and the western bias we see in modern historical records is more a testament to western dominance (in the last 500 years) than to actual fact. One could argue that Wikipedia democratizes the process of documenting history by allowing anyone to create/edit entries. To that extent, Wikipedia may well push the history writing process closer to the facts than ever before.
I could go on and on, but since Sree and gang have helpfully put the audio of the entire discussion online, I should direct you there instead. Video should follow shortly. If you'd rather read just the synopsis of the discussion, head over to Editor and Publisher.
