(Toronto, Canada) The intractable crisis in the newspaper business reflects “generally a failure to evolve” on the part of the publishers, phenomenally successful top blogger Mike Arrington of TechCrunch said today here at the Mesh conference. It’s pointless to blame Google and other content aggregators and bots on the net; to the contrary, Google actually drives traffic to the newspapers’ web sites, Arrington pointed out.
If any trend can be fingered as the cause of the newspaper industry’s downward spiral it’s blogging. “Where they’re getting their lunch eaten is the blogs,” Arrington said. Arrington’s solution to the newspaper industry’s problem is to turn all journalists into bloggers. When asked what advice he might offer to The New York Times, for example, Arrington said the company should let all the journalists go off and do their own thing.
Actually, his full answer was to tell the Times to first return all capital to shareholders and then set all the journalists free. It’s clear, however, that Arrington really believes that talented journalists can get richer on their own. “The journalists should go out and do their own thing. The best journalists can make far more money on their own,” he said. “Start writing on the side, start delivering your own brand.”
As extreme as that prospect sounds, I have to admit that I’ve often thought the same thing. If the advent of blogging proves anything, it proves that strong individual voices are capable of generating a lot of attention. I suspect that most newsrooms are chock-filled with nothing but strong individual voices.
In any event, the entertaining Arrington (“if I say outrageous things that are more controversial, I make more money”) offered up several other pearls of wisdom:
—On the future of MySpace: “No one over there understands how new media works. If MySpace really screws up there’s a chance they’ll really implode.”
—On a Pay Per Post Attendee in the Audience: “He is the most evil person in this room.” (Arrington thinks the service, which pays bloggers to write sponsor reviews, sometimes without acknowledgement of that fact and sometimes under contractual obligations that the review be positive, does a disservice to society.)
Arrington warned, however, that folks shouldn’t take what he says too seriously. His posture when speaking at conferences such as Mesh is to answer wide-ranging questions tossed his way. But he also warns listeners that he’s not an expert on everything having to do with the Internet, media or technology. “Here’s my opinion, but I’m an idiot,” he said.
Update: More on Arrington’s Mesh talk here and, of course, at the official Mesh blog.
Cynthia Brumfield at 10:16 AM|Comments(0)
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