The LA TImes is Dead, Long Live the LA Times

Is it to early to start an LA Times deathwatch? News of the upcoming collapse of the California section, tales of 70 newsroom layoffs -- atop the news of the Tribune bankruptcy -- are making me pessimistic indeed about the overall health of the industry. Of course, people have been predicting the downfall of newspapers for nearly a century. First radio was going to kill newspapers, then television, and now the Internet.



But radio and television-news companies, though they have their non-profit iterations, are still largely profit-driven. The Internet is based on an open-source model: Information ought to be free. My impression is that this comes from the phreakers and hackers that helped to build the foundation of the modern Internet. If you didn't share your code with other programmers, hackers would find it, steal it and post it.

On some level, this continues. There are plenty of open-source programs and operating systems. Only those with the technical knowledge use them. However, since hackers never had much use for the geek-ignorant, that does not likely bother them.

For us end-users, there's still a ton of free applications out there. If you have an iPhone, you've almost certainly downloaded some free applications. There are a ton of free ones, many of which "lite" versions which effectively serve as test drives for the paid versions.

On the illegal side, there's a ton of stuff out there. If you lack the technical knowledge to hack or the $1,200 to buy Adobe CS4, you only have to look on Craigslist to get a drastically reduced copy. Only the ignorant or the self-deceptive don't know what's going on here.

In a facsinating way, though, this is okay for programmers. Adobe spends millions on its security and anti-priacy systems. Hackers make money off selling hacked copies. Everyone wins. I'm sure Adobe doesn't feel this way, but the coders certainly seem to continue to get work regardless.

Newspapers, on the other hand, are stuck. Even in the golden days of newspapers -- whenever that was -- subscription costs barely covered the cost of delivery. The product was worth somewhere between 25 and 50 cents. It seemed like such a low cost that it must have made sense for newspaper executives to decide to simply give away their product.

This fateful decision may have doomed newspapers. If, a decade ago, most newspapers decided to charge their customers for online subscriptions, I believe we would be in a different world. As it stands now, people believe that information should be free. Providing it, however, is not. My guess is that more and more newspapers are going to collapse, and the ones that are left will start to charge online subscription rates.

Why? Because, without a competitor giving away news reports for free, why not charge?

***
Shameless Plug Alert
I run a wedding, event and portrait photography business. If you have any need for such services, please think of me. Samples of my work can be viewed at www.danevans.org and at danielevans.smugmug.com.
***