Anthony Bradley

There is a great article here by Clay Shirky on the plans of major newspapers to counter the trend of sharing information (copyrighted information to be specific). They failed, or are failing. He makes one (at least one) very profound statement,

“The curious thing about the various plans hatched in the ’90s is that they were, at base, all the same plan: “Here’s how we’re going to preserve the old forms of organization in a world of cheap perfect copies!”

This plainly exemplifies an industry that did not recognize a fundamental paradigm shift. The question should have been, “How can we best leverage our assets to adapt to and profit from a world where information sharing is rampant?” This is, after all, how emerging competitors will think (but they most likely don’t have the assets yet).

Clearly, the practice of people paying for news is waning. With the Web, news is everywhere and comes from everyone (gossip is news and news is gossip). With Twitter (microblogging), blogging, facebook, etc. we all become news reporters for personal, local, national, and international news (as individuals or in aggregate).

So for what information will we pay?

• Aggregation and filtering?
• Personally tailored?
• Analysis?
• Private (limited distribution)?

There is the old adage that, “Information wants to be free.” There is also the argument that free and widespread information is the grease of capitalism. But some would say that, “You get what you pay for” and free information is bad information. There is no blanket answer. Each case must be individually examined for information value and monetization.

But one thing is clear, if it is good, people will share it. Plan on that.