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by dexen
2702 days ago
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>[news isn't] free to produce Software also isn't free to produce, and yet here we are - in a world dominated by freely available software. It runs on every computer, because it's either "good enough", or in some cases, outright better quality and supported for longer, than paid-for software. And yet Microsoft and friends are alive and thriving in the ecosystem with free competing software. How come? They re-invented themselves into billing for related hardware, services & guarantees. We are still waiting for the top-heavy media - including the missing link "online newspapers" media like HuffPo and WaPo - to adjust to the current market situation. If they can't, or won't, too bad. The new-style online media, typically a one-man operation spanning several channels, are already well established and turning profit. By publishing for free news that costed real money to produce. |
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Free, single-producer news is, if we want to try to adapt this analogy (perhaps past the breaking point) more like free software that only has a single developer/maintainer. We all know what those projects can be like. There are some diamonds in the rough, but overwhelmingly they're hyper-specific, difficult to modify, hard to question (file issues with), and often of dubious quality.
Edit: The analogy also falls apart: I'm not sure how going from single-maintainer -> multiple contributors has a parallel in the blogging/tweeting world that is doable for many writers. Some blogs have informal editorial boards and groups of publishers who edit each other, but most multi-writer blogs I've seen are just separate threads that happen to appear in the same place.