Diigo Bookmarks 08/07/2008 (a.m.)
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Be Nice to the ‘Creative Class’! :: Views :: thetyee.ca
Why does one too often get the impression that publications like The Tyee are fighting a rear-guard and even anachronistic battle? That somehow, somewhere different patterns are emerging, which its journalists just don’t see, preferring instead the familiar world of what they knew “back in the day”?
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Lobdell’s OC: 42 things I know
William Lobdell’s entry about leavng the Los Angeles Times after 18 years of working there, and his list of 42 things he knows re the newspaper industry (and its moribund state).
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What’s really killing newspapers: They’re no longer the best providers of social currency. – By Jack Shafer – Slate Magazine – Annotated
Shafer’s subtitle says it all, “[Newspapers are] no longer the best providers of social currency.” What’s “social currency”? It’s “the information we acquire and then trade—or give away—to start, maintain, and nurture relationships with our fellow humans.”
In other words, it’s no longer relevant to your interaction with friends and co-workers and other citizens whether or not you’ve all read the same newspaper that morning. There is other social currency that’s more valuable, more interesting, more useful — as currency.
In that sense, the “news” is secondary to “currency” / “value.” It seems that newspapers need to figure out — if they can, if it’s possible — how to leverage currency, not news.