so apparently media mogul Rupert Murdoch acquired the Wall Street Journal and is making some changes to compete with other newspaper enterprise The New York Times. Where most newspapers are laying off reporters and editors, Murdoch is expanding, and will have a paper that has full color pages and is "fiesty", according to the man himself.
Now, I heard about this because it featured on NPR yesterday morning, and as usual, they took calls from listeners so they could voice their opinion on air. Some people were afraid that the New York Times would have to keep up with competition by making their newspaper fluffier, and have less dense (and informative) articles. Some felt that any competition is good competition.
what do i think? well, any competition is good competition if there are more than two competitors. When you just have two media giants duking it out, inevitably it will turn into an arms race and the newspapers worry about copying each others style instead of producing an accurate piece of journalism.
basically, the newspaper business is fucked. what else is new?
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I don't think turning the New York Times into something its not is a very wise idea. But I understand that competition is competition. The NYT should also consider that they may lose some longtime readers due to the fact that they are printing less informative articles. I think subtle changes in the newspaper would be a good idea but a drastic change may be too much for the average reader to handle.
ReplyDeleteMurdoch has the deep pockets to keep him in the game longer than the Times, I'm afraid. All papers are trying to find ways of *ahem* "sustainable monetisation"(is that a term, or did I just make that up?), and in the meantime, Murdoch's ownership of TV networks & a film studio make him well-placed to weather the storm...and possibly buy enough time to sort out a solution. It will be curious to see how various papers work out their "freemium" (free + premium content) on platforms like the iPad, released next month...
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