Comments on: Who’s your source on that, chief? http://snarkmarket.com/2009/3861 The stomping grounds of Tim Carmody, Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson. It's a long-running conversation about media, journalism, technology, cities, culture, design, books, music, movies, the future and the past. Fri, 27 Apr 2012 18:20:47 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1 By: Zack http://snarkmarket.com/2009/3861/comment-page-1#comment-6704 Zack Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:43:16 +0000 http://snarkmarket.com/?p=3861#comment-6704 I'm also curious to what degree newsrooms are implementing these innovations in house to scale down the cost of operations. Maybe Matt has some info on this (I guess Robin too, from his experience at Current). I was just reading Anderson's Long Tail (I know it's old, but it's for a class and I'd just never gotten around to reading it) and it got me thinking about news operations' economics. If technology is increasing the distribution and ease of access to content, thus diminishing what people are willing to pay, isn't it time these large news operations implemented this same innovations in the newsroom. Does this mean selling the Times lucrative office building, scaling back office space, allowing reporters to work from home and teleconferencing (not to mention the costs associated with the printing machines - something I admittedly know little about)? Has this been mentioned anywhere? To me (someone who has worked in news rooms, albeit television), it seems almost wasteful to drag out the misconception that an org needs this large structuralized office economy. Maybe the problem isn't with the devalued price of content, but with the overvalued price of production. OK, sorry if that's a bit off-topic but I just literally had this thought and then read this post and it seemed at least a tangential fit. I’m also curious to what degree newsrooms are implementing these innovations in house to scale down the cost of operations. Maybe Matt has some info on this (I guess Robin too, from his experience at Current).

I was just reading Anderson’s Long Tail (I know it’s old, but it’s for a class and I’d just never gotten around to reading it) and it got me thinking about news operations’ economics. If technology is increasing the distribution and ease of access to content, thus diminishing what people are willing to pay, isn’t it time these large news operations implemented this same innovations in the newsroom. Does this mean selling the Times lucrative office building, scaling back office space, allowing reporters to work from home and teleconferencing (not to mention the costs associated with the printing machines — something I admittedly know little about)? Has this been mentioned anywhere? To me (someone who has worked in news rooms, albeit television), it seems almost wasteful to drag out the misconception that an org needs this large structuralized office economy.

Maybe the problem isn’t with the devalued price of content, but with the overvalued price of production.

OK, sorry if that’s a bit off-topic but I just literally had this thought and then read this post and it seemed at least a tangential fit.

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