Wired's Chris Anderson Bans Words "Journalism" And "Media" And Claims New Economy
By Tom Foremski - August 4, 2009
(Photo by Joi Ito)
When people travel out of the country, or speak with people not from this country, they sometimes say things they might not normally say. This seems true in the interview Chris Anderson, Editor of Wired magazine, gave to Spiegel, the top German business magazine.
This is how it begins:
SPIEGEL: Mr. Anderson, let's talk about the future of journalism.
Anderson: This is going to be a very annoying interview. I don't use the word journalism.
SPIEGEL: Okay, how about newspapers? They are in deep trouble both in the United States and worldwide.
Anderson: Sorry, I don't use the word media. I don't use the word news. I don't think that those words mean anything anymore. They defined publishing in the 20th century. Today, they are a barrier. They are standing in our way, like 'horseless carriage'.
SPIEGEL: Which other words would you use?
Anderson: There are no other words. We're in one of those strange eras where the words of the last century don't have meaning. What does news mean to you, when the vast majority of news is created by amateurs? Is news coming from a newspaper, or a news group or a friend? I just cannot come up with a definition for those words. Here at Wired, we stopped using them.
Foremski's Take: Wow. No words for media or journalism. I'm thinking Mr Anderson wasn't having a good day when Spiegel came calling.
It's a ridiculous position. The media is dead long live the media. We have more media, in more forms than at any time ever in our history. Yet Mr Anderson decides not to use words like journalism and media within Wired. Wow.
Mr Anderson also seems to think that payment isn't necessary for creating online content:
The vast majority of people online write for free. We've tried paying some of our bloggers and they thought it was insulting. They're not doing it for the money, they're doing it for attention and reputation, or just for fun.
. . .In the past, the media was a full-time job. But maybe the media is going to be a part time job. Maybe media won't be a job at all, but will instead be a hobby.
You get what you pay for. That's an expression that still rings true in this online world. I guess Wired's journalists have now been rebranded as hobbyists and they shouldn't expect a pay rise, or payment at all.
Mr Anderson also makes some preposterous claims about the online economy:
The online economy is about the size of the German economy. And it's based on a default price of zero. Most things online are available in a free form. We have never seen an economy this big with a default price of zero.
Last time I went to Amazon, I saw free shipping but that's the only free thing I saw. An online economy where the default price is free is not an economy.
Take a look at this:
. . .Free is the force of gravity. If we decide to resist it then somebody else will compete with something that is free. The marketplace follows the underlying economics. You can be free or you can compete with free. That's the only choice there is.
Competing against something that is free means there is no competition. Businesses compete in markets and markets are defined by revenues. If Mr Anderson looks closely, he will find businesses competing for revenues, nothing has changed. Mr Anderson is so tied to the premise of his book that he is attempting to create a strange new marketplace of "free." Yet "free" is not a marketplace. There is no such marketplace.
Nothing has changed
Companies that offer "free" goods or services make it up by selling goods or services and collecting revenues. The online economy works the same as any economy.
There is no new economy of "free.".
Free is a marketing gimmick, it always has been, and it has always been used in that way. I'm sure Mr Anderson is familiar with the term "loss leader." Nothing has changed. There's no free lunch.
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Comments (8)
Thanks for pointing this out.
Anderson is symptomatic of the trouble with any of the various group-think echo-chambers in the world (of which the SF digerati are but one).
He gets so caught up in the rhetoric and self-referential thinking that they lose track of the real world about which they are supposedly reporting. Is it OK to use "reporting," Chris, or is that too 20th century? Maybe you're just media-ing your way into the 21st Century.
While the implicit value of media and journalism are changing, in each case, the words have specific meanings.
Sigh... no wonder I quit reading Wired four years ago. Was a good, thoughtful mag once upon a time.
Posted: August 4, 2009 12:25 PM
Thank you Tom. I agree.
I've also never been much of a believer in The Long Tail theory. (I've been an IP/IT/Web lawyer here in Sydney for over 25 years.) Could you do a retrospective on your take on the credibility of The Long Tail theory, even if you only can apply it to some sectors?
I recall Eric Schmidt, CEO Google, saying briefly (though in a long Google Video with him lecturing in New York earlier this year) that in search engine traffic Google very clearly sees hits in operation as opposed to winnings from any Long Tail. He said little, but for me he was saying a great deal.
Posted: August 4, 2009 4:23 PM
Noricd: The long tail theory assumes that there is no marketing to be done to reach the small numbers of people that might be interested in buying long tail content. Those small communities are hard to reach, the marketing is expensive. No Silicon Valley startup wants to be exploiting the long tail when the bulk of the profits are in the short tail. There's no money in the long tail and it's a big (and growing) expense. Think about all those photos of my grandma that Facebook or Flickr hosts and that have a market consisting of maybe ten people. Even though storage is cheap managing that mountain of long tail content is not. I guess if we update this all with Mr Anderson's "free" economy, now that (nearly) all digital content is free there is even less money to be made in long tail content. Nothing much has changed from the old world to the new. Still very little money in the long tail...
Posted: August 4, 2009 8:14 PM
Dear Tom
Thanks for your feedback. It inspired my blog post, "Internet business models debunk The Long Tail theory". It ends by quoting your feedback. See - http://tinyurl.com/nc54lc
Posted: August 5, 2009 7:24 AM
Well, it seems Mr Anderson was not aware (he couldn't?) of the VSS study published two days ago
http://vss.com/news/index.asp?d_News_ID=183
that shows something quite different: media as a sector grow faster than ever; and -- that will hurt the author of Free the most -- for the first time, people spend more time on content they buy, than on the ad-supported or "free" content. How about that?
Posted: August 5, 2009 7:56 AM
Your are both correct Tom, you and Chris in ways.
The user is the new economy that everyone and the economy seems unable to get to grips with. What is the current market value of twitter would you guess? They do not make any money though..
Gary's take:
http://www.of-networks.co.uk/blog/users-the-new-economy
There is a trick I learnt from a great writer.
Posted: August 5, 2009 11:48 AM
Gary: Just because we don't currently have a viable business model for professional media doesn't mean we won't have one. I still remember when people said we will never have advertising on the Internet. So it seems strange that people like Chris Anderson project the present into the future.
Posted: August 5, 2009 2:03 PM
Greg; Nice find!
Posted: August 5, 2009 2:04 PM