global voices, one world

In an interesting forum on the future of newspapers and the net, hosted by the Britannica that (admittedly, in a to me a bit of a strange twist) picked up blogging, Nick Carr is arguing that the new economics of culture have led to a decline of newspapers.

In quite-to-the-point style, he asks: are newspapers doomed? He points to the newspapers’ continuing decline of circulation and advertising revenue and argues that one phenomenon, among many others, is a driving force: the unbundling of the newspaper. In other words, whereas the newspaper in the past was a collection, a package of content sold to you – a set of daily comics, weather forecasts, classifieds, domestic news, foreign news, sports news, book reviews etc – the newspaper is now being disassembled and sold as separate parts. Think of a stolen car – instead of being sold as a whole – it is often worth more to sell the parts separately. This trend of unbundling has caused advertising revenues to drop – as the audience scatter around the different disassembled, unbundled parts, so do the advertisers.

Unbundling also gives rise to another concern that Carr does not mention: the public no longer is served what I call ‘serendipitous’ content – content that you don’t know you would want or could not know in advance that you find interesting. We should not overstate this – many people selectively skim the newspapers or only turn to the sections that they are interested in (sports section ..). But still, if you were bored or had more time, it was only a page turn away to see what the rest of the newspaper had to say. Related, reading the frontpage and other sections of the newspaper often fueled the so-called water cooler conversations – those conversations you have when you run into someone and that creates what Putnam has called social capital.

Carr’s story pretty much ends here and it is a stark and dreadful story. But does the story really ends with the unbundling of the newspaper? I suggest that we should consider the many ways a trend of re-bundling is taking place. We can ask on what principles these acts of re-bundling are taking place. Personal interest is one of them – and it is this principle of self-interest that most people turn to when selecting blogs and other online feeds for their RSS reader. Serendipity can be another principle – and this is the principle that guides Global Voices – how it selects the news it produces. It is trying to give you a story you would not have heard about, or a perspective you would not have considered. In many ways, it is that foreign news section in the newspaper – but instead of a page turn away, it is now a click away. While Carr is painting a depressing picture, the good news is that the potential for serendipity is certainly not much worse off than in the past – is it less effort to click than to turn a page? The bad news is that even that one click might be too much – how do we get people to click? What drives serendipity? Is this something public policy should be involved with and/or be concerned about (one can think of public media taking an active role in this, a la BBC)? One thing for sure is, the story does not end here. Exciting times ahead.