July, 2009

The Transaction Costs of Creating a Public

by Philip Meyer
The Conversation
July 21st, 2009

Has the Internet drastically reduced transaction costs as Paul Starr suggests? Let’s think about that. To an old print person like me, it seems that the drastic reduction has come in the variable costs of distribution and raw materials. Variable costs were like a tax on growth: double your readers, double the newsprint consumed. For [...]

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Abandon Old Strategies to Survive in a New Era

by Steve Yelvington
Reaction Essay
July 20th, 2009

Steve Yelvington argues that much of the hype about the death of the newspaper business is simply the product of journalistic myopia, in two different forms: First, the news business as a whole made a series of bad business decisions that left it ill-prepared for the information age. And second, the effects of these decisions are all too apparent to reporters, who see them up close in their professional lives. Yet let’s be skeptical of the claim that the newspaper is dying, he says: We are in the middle of a very serious recession, and many other industries are also suffering. No one, however, suggests that we will stop banking, say, or driving cars. Tax breaks, subsidies, bailouts, and laws forbidding hyperlinks to copyrighted content are not only unnecessary — they are harmful, because they will prevent the news industry from developing the new strategies it desperately needs.

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