We are living through a revolution, writes Clay Shirky, just like the one that Gutenberg started around 1500. And all revolutions are more or less the same, he writes: "The old stuff gets broken faster than the new stuff gets put in its place."
The old stuff getting broken in this case is newspapers. More and more of them are failing or approaching the verge of failure. No doubt dozens more will close by the end of the year, if not more. Why is that?
Because the business model that they operated on for centuries has shattered, Shirky writes. It is no longer difficult and expensive to publish information; the Internet makes that possible for next to nothing, and that is a serious problem for an industry that counted on that advantage to pay for itself.
Shirky's essay, posted Friday, winds us through a little of the history of the print revolution and, now, the digital revolution. The focus is, of course, newspapers; but separating the problems facing newspapers from the transformation that is happening to the world of printing (thanks to the Internet) is impossible. The Internet didn't set out to kill newspapers, but it has made good work of it by accident.
This is important to note: The Internet is killing newspapers, the physical product printed on paper and delivered (at ridiculous expense) to customers every day. The Internet is not killing journalism, the practice that is vital to a free and informed populace. However, the Internet is killing the business model that supported journalism, hence the current crisis.
"'If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?'" Shirky asks. He answers, "Nothing. Nothing will work. There is no general model for newspapers to replace the one the internet just broke."
In fact, he goes on:
And so it is today. When someone demands to know how we are going to replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that old systems won’t break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren’t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to.
It's like the singularity, that point in time and technological development that will trigger so much change that predictions beyond that point are impossible. I'm not saying that the current crisis is the singularity, but I am saying that we are in the midst of revolutionary times. Predicting the outcome of that revolution or what will work when the dust settles is not possible, not yet.
Nobody has any answers for the newspaper industry. There aren't any. As long as the Internet continues to have at least as much influence as it does now and as long as access to the Internet is as free and open as it is now, there won't be any answers for the newspaper industry. The Internet is its replacement; now it's time to figure out what "replacing newspapers" means.
Shirky says that, like all revolutions, this one must have a period of unbridled experimentation. The entrepreneurs and volunteers who will drive (and are driving) those experiments must not be afraid to fail. It won't be until long after the revolution, when we all have the benefit of hindsight, that we'll be able to know which of those experiments (even if they were failures) were transformative and vital.
Related posts:
- An e-reader scenario
- Notes on Nicholas Carr
- Shirky says micropayments won’t work
- No news is bad news
- On Michael Hirschorn and the future of daily print journalism
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Michael Becker has been blogging about academia, digital culture and journalism since 2005. He is the Web editor of the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.
Revolution and the unthinkable scenario
We are living through a revolution, writes Clay Shirky, just like the one that Gutenberg started around 1500. And all revolutions are more or less the same, he writes: "The old stuff gets broken faster than the new stuff gets put in its place."
The old stuff getting broken in this case is newspapers. More and more of them are failing or approaching the verge of failure. No doubt dozens more will close by the end of the year, if not more. Why is that?
Because the business model that they operated on for centuries has shattered, Shirky writes. It is no longer difficult and expensive to publish information; the Internet makes that possible for next to nothing, and that is a serious problem for an industry that counted on that advantage to pay for itself.
Shirky's essay, posted Friday, winds us through a little of the history of the print revolution and, now, the digital revolution. The focus is, of course, newspapers; but separating the problems facing newspapers from the transformation that is happening to the world of printing (thanks to the Internet) is impossible. The Internet didn't set out to kill newspapers, but it has made good work of it by accident.
This is important to note: The Internet is killing newspapers, the physical product printed on paper and delivered (at ridiculous expense) to customers every day. The Internet is not killing journalism, the practice that is vital to a free and informed populace. However, the Internet is killing the business model that supported journalism, hence the current crisis.
"'If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?'" Shirky asks. He answers, "Nothing. Nothing will work. There is no general model for newspapers to replace the one the internet just broke."
In fact, he goes on:
It's like the singularity, that point in time and technological development that will trigger so much change that predictions beyond that point are impossible. I'm not saying that the current crisis is the singularity, but I am saying that we are in the midst of revolutionary times. Predicting the outcome of that revolution or what will work when the dust settles is not possible, not yet.
Nobody has any answers for the newspaper industry. There aren't any. As long as the Internet continues to have at least as much influence as it does now and as long as access to the Internet is as free and open as it is now, there won't be any answers for the newspaper industry. The Internet is its replacement; now it's time to figure out what "replacing newspapers" means.
Shirky says that, like all revolutions, this one must have a period of unbridled experimentation. The entrepreneurs and volunteers who will drive (and are driving) those experiments must not be afraid to fail. It won't be until long after the revolution, when we all have the benefit of hindsight, that we'll be able to know which of those experiments (even if they were failures) were transformative and vital.
Related posts: