burn the boats!
Excellent article on TechCrunch about new media and the difficulty that established players have in taking risks that threaten their existence. Comments from Andreessen.
I actually pay $0.75 to read the Times on my Kindle once-a-week or so. It's cheap, has no ads, and Amazon makes the process simple. But increasingly I'm finding that the only exclusive content worth reading from the NYT is the OpEd section. Their news articles are better than AP, but increasingly, I just don't care. If I want in-depth articles, I read The Economist.
Actually, with so much ink spilled about the sad state of newspapers, I'm surprised that The Economist gets so few mentions. Their print circulation is actually increasing. I think it's simple: there really is no substitute for the quality and exclusivity of the content. I've never once chosen not to read an article in The Economist because I had read a similar article from another source AP, Reuters, NYT, etc.
I'm glad Rupert Murdoch and company think that their content is so great that people will pay for it online. One thing I've learned from reading Seth Godin, though: never underestimate people's power to ignore you.
If the New York Times wants to live another hundred years, I think they have to accept this: the daily paper is dead. It died a while ago and nobody noticed.
