Media, Regulators, and Big Tech; Indulgences and Injunctions; Better Approaches

I like to say that I write about media generally and journalism specifically because the industry is a canary in the coal mine when it comes to the impact of the Internet: text shifted from newsprint to the web seamlessly, completely upending the industry’s business model along the way.Of course I have a vested interest in this shift: for better or... See more

That meant there were three strategies available to media companies looking to survive on the Internet. First, cater to Google. This meant a heavy emphasis on both speed and SEO, and an investment in anticipating and creating content to answer consumer questions. Or you could cater to Facebook, which meant a heavy emphasis on click-bait and human i... See more

"This is what regulators have to get through their heads is people are going [to Google]. No one is forcing people to go to Google. No one is forcing people to go to Facebook. They're going there by choice...People using Google instead of using Yelp is a problem of you not liking what customers chose to do. But there's nothing you can really do abo... See more

Tech’s Yin and YangThat there are two philosophies does not necessarily mean that one is right and one is wrong: the reality is we need both. Some problems are best solved by human ingenuity, enabled by the likes of Microsoft and Apple; others by collective action. That, though, gets at why Google and Facebook are fundamentally more dangerous: coll... See more

That doesn’t mean they can’t change, but so far, there has been a general unwillingness to look at the real problem. Rather than throwing out audacious claims like Facebook and Google should pay us for the right to send us traffic, we should, instead, be looking at finding ways to deliver value to our readers and ad partners in a way that platforms... See more