Mainstream Press Finally Realizing That Kids Want To Share News, Not Read News

from the it-took-them-this-long? dept

Fri, Mar 28th 2008 5:47am — Mike Masnick

In an interesting followup to our earlier post about the state of the news business, Robin writes in to point us to a NY Times article all about how a younger generation of news readers now focus on sharing the news, rather than just consuming it. Mathew Ingram highlights the key sentence in the article, from a college student: "If the news is that important, it will find me." Very few mainstream publications have grasped that concept, even if some folks have been saying the same thing for years. It's time for those in the newspaper business to stop thinking of readers as straight consumers. They're distributors, promoters, creators and analysts of the news as well. Once you recognize that, you start to change how you approach the news business. You certainly get rid of paywalls and registration walls, and you start enabling your users to do more, rather than less, with the news.

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Filed Under: generations, journalism, news, sharing

16 Comments

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Haywood, 28 Mar 2008 @ 6:55am

paywalls and registration walls
When I was in school and had to find acceptable sources, I'd actually work to get past a registration wall. Now that any interest in what is behind them is only for my curiosity, I just look elsewhere. Bug-me-not is my friend, but really, who cares what is behind those walls. I can always find other open sites with enough content to get the story. Those who hide behind walls will perish, those with open formats will prosper. Like celebrity, usefulness is fleeting, & only works when they remember who you are.
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- Ron, 29 Mar 2008 @ 7:15pm
  
  Re: paywalls and registration walls
  When I was in school and had to find acceptable sources, I'd actually work to get past a registration wall.
  OMG!! You had to get past registration walls!!
  Cry me a fscking river, boo hoo!
  How did the world survive, how did people get their news, how did we leave the cave? How did Newton and Copernicus and Heron of Alexandria accomplish anything, if accessing knowledge was sooooo haaarrrdddd????
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  - Jake, 31 Mar 2008 @ 5:59am
    
    Re: paywalls and registration walls
    I don't think anyone was implying that they're anything but a fairly minor inconvenience, Ron. Don't give yourself an aneurysm over it, eh?
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Crosbie Fitch (profile), 28 Mar 2008 @ 6:57am

Invite sponsorship
And one of the new ways to earn a living from news is to enable those who value your news to commission its further research, collection and analysis.

This is as opposed to charging them to see it or prosecuting them if they share it.

Funnily enough, I'm currently working on http://1p2u.com as way for a blogger's audience to commission the blogger.
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- Word Nazi, 28 Mar 2008 @ 7:34am
  
  Re: Invite sponsorship
  Funnily? Did I miss that word in school?
  
  Maybe you meant "curiously"?
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  - Anonymous Coward, 28 Mar 2008 @ 7:48am
    
    Re: Re: Invite sponsorship
    I may have missed your point, but it seemed you were implying "funnily" is not a word.
    
    http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50091012/50091012se14?single=1&query_type=word& queryword=Funnily&first=1&max_to_show=10&hilite=50091012se14
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    - Chronno S. Trigger, 28 Mar 2008 @ 7:54am
      
      Re: Re: Re: Invite sponsorship
      "The Oxford English Dictionary Online is a subscription service. Access to the Dictionary is only available to users with valid licences."
      
      Ha Ha.
      
      How about this one
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    - Pilotman28, 28 Mar 2008 @ 8:56am
      
      Re: Re: Re: Invite sponsorship
      I find this superbly ironic seeing how we were just discussing about news sources hiding behind walls and people just say "eh the heck with it" and going somewhere else.
      
      I hope for your sake that was on purpose. If so it's muy funny-o
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    - JB, 28 Mar 2008 @ 10:31am
      
      Re: Re: Re: Invite sponsorship
      "Funnily" might be a real word, but we'd all be more comfortable if you had used "humorously".
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      - Crosbie Fitch (profile), 28 Mar 2008 @ 10:39am
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Invite sponsorship
        I'm dismayed at the poor standard of grammar Nazis these days. The deliberate grammatical error that I had introduced was not the word 'funnily', as various people have noted, but to omit the word 'a' from "as a way".
        
        Come on. Get with the program guys!
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        JB, 28 Mar 2008 @ 12:21pm
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Invite sponsorship
        I clicked the link, never made it to that part of the sentence.
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Troy Social, 28 Mar 2008 @ 8:17am

Bubbling up the best
Sites like Digg and Reddit have been doing a great job at bubbling up the most "interesting" news at any given time. The big challenge in this space, though, is better customizing to different audiences (e.g. kids) and then getting that news better distributed via widgets, apps, Facebook, etc.

Will be neat to see if some of the more "mainstream" sites (like Yahoo!'s new Buzz product) will be able to execute on all of this...
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Steve, 28 Mar 2008 @ 9:05pm

headlines
It goes like this, read the headline, feel appropriate emotion (usually outrage), pass on to friend so they can agree with you. But I only read the headline....
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Nicole Chardenet, 29 Mar 2008 @ 8:30am

Duuuuhhhh....
Glad to see the MSM has finally caught up to the....20th century. I figured out years before Y2K that part of the reason why I was more up to snuff on current events than I had been in years past is because my friends and I had been sharing news articles with each other in mass quantities. I have a friend in particular in California I can credit with passing on some of the best and most insightful news articles, and from obscure news organizations like Al-Jazeera and the Asian Times that North Americans don't often see. I probably don't qualify as "young" anymore, but I was when I got on the Net so I learned good habits early on.
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Gary Zulauf, 29 Mar 2008 @ 10:16am

...it is still "garbage in, garbage out"!!
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World peace And Prosperity Mandate, 31 Mar 2008 @ 6:58am

Kids Want To Share News, Not Read News
That is my conclusion too. The internet is now awash with news. There are more news than people reading them! This can be understood because there are many new gadgets and activities that take people's time making it impossible for most people to find enough time in the day to do all the things they wish to do. And I am number one on the list of those people!
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