DAN

And therein lies the real problem of web 2.0 — whether it takes the form of SEO-driven “news” or crowd-sourced accommodation. To make money — real money — at this game you have to attract millions, or tens of millions, of users. And when you’re dealing with those kinds of numbers, it’s literally impossible not to treat your users as pieces of data. It’s ironic, but depressingly unsurprising, that web 2.0 is using faux socialization and democratization to create a world where everyone is reduced to a number on a spreadsheet.

Great read on Techcrunch.com by Paul Carr. It's a indictment without solution, for certain, but still a great read and very uncharacteristic of what Techcrunch has recently become.

There has to be some middle ground between building communities and building businesses. The old media industry did it well in my opinion. There was a sense of responsibility in the old newspaper industry that is substantially void in this "democratization" that is falsely fueling Web 2.0.

We can hear the great resonance in this transition for news and magazine publishers. First the principle: Spend your time on tomorrow, not today. For print publishers, that means moving as much of the thinking and as many of the resources to digital as possible — now. How about making “print” a division of a news(paper) company?

I'm not sure the Netflix model applies perfectly to the news business, but this article on neimanlab.org makes great points about investing in the future of news and the value businesses get from making that investment.

"If I had known what I know now, I would have pushed harder against" the Murdoch bid, said Christopher Bancroft, a member of the family which controlled Dow Jones & Company, publishers of The Wall Street Journal.

The reason, I'm sure, it took Mr. Bancroft four years to regret this 2007 decision is because that's exactly how long it took his family to finish counting the $1.2 billion they made from the sale — which is less than half the write down Murdoch had to take just 14 months after the deal closed.

I believe the saying goes, "You can't go broke taking a profit." If the Bancrofts are really concerned about good journalism, maybe they should start another news organization. I know where they should be able to get $1.2 billion in seed money.

Which is why it’s time for journalists to come back to Earth. We need to remember our anchors: why we are in this business, who we are, what our mission is. We’re preoccupied with conveyances instead of with good journalism. Does a story “go viral” because of the transmitting technology? No, it goes viral because it’s an insightful, groundbreaking story. The great thing about the new technologies is that a good story will always find its audience.

The new ombudsman at The Washington Post, Patrick Pexton, articulates well the value of journalism and journalists.