Five Things Old Media Still Don’t Get About The Web
Today the internet seems to have changed the information aspect, it just actually smashed the monopoly of the old media. Newspapers, television networks, and magazines once had the whole say in the news cycle. A viral tweet, a blog post, or a YouTube video can create public opinion faster than any front-page headline today. Yet, even after being around for more than a couple of decades, most of the traditional media still do not get the basic essence of the web.
They still hold on to old business models, underestimate the power of algorithms, and completely fail to grasp that audiences today require interactive engagement with the content and not just passive consumption. The web is a fast-moving, vibrant flux, whereas here credibility is built through engagement and interaction rather than just by authority. Those refusing to either change or adapt will be left behind in the dust of obsolescence.
Far removed are the old dictatorial paramount of media still out of touch with five things concerning the web.
1. People Never Wanted to Pay for the News
Traditional media has long assumed that because people once paid for newspapers, they would be willing to pay for digital news. But the reality is, that people weren’t paying for the news itself, news was just one part of a larger package. Newspapers bundled news with classifieds, weather updates, stock prices, and entertainment sections, all of which are now available online for free and in real-time. This makes selling digital news subscriptions a tough challenge.
Readers today have countless free options for news. Social media, blogs, and independent news sites provide instant updates, often faster than traditional outlets. The old model of paying for access to journalism simply does not align with modern consumer expectations. Unless media companies offer something significantly different and more valuable, people won’t pay.
- People Pay Only for Something Special: If a news site offers unique, high-quality content, some people might pay, but it has to be worth it.
- People Want Free News: If the same news is available for free elsewhere, no one wants to pay for it.
- Old Newspapers Had More Than Just News: People bought newspapers for job ads, classifieds, and entertainment, not just news.
- Social Media is Faster: Platforms like Twitter and Facebook break news instantly, often before big news websites.
- Trust Issues with Big Media: Many people think traditional news is biased, so they look for independent sources.
2. Paywalls Break the Web and Annoy Your Customers
Paywalls create a frustrating experience for readers. Imagine coming across an interesting article, clicking on the link, and immediately being blocked by a paywall demanding a subscription. Most people will simply close the tab and move on.
The web thrives on openness and sharing, but paywalls restrict access and limit the spread of information. Instead of encouraging engagement, they push readers toward free alternatives. While some premium outlets can sustain a paywall because they provide unique and valuable content, the vast majority of news sites struggle because their audience isn’t willing to pay when free sources are just a click away.
- Only Exclusive Content Can Justify Paywalls: Sites with deep investigative journalism or unique insights might succeed, but basic news won’t.
- Readers Hate Paywalls: Most people won’t subscribe just to read one article, they’ll leave and find free news elsewhere.
- The Web is Built for Sharing: Paywalls block content from spreading, making articles less influential and reducing traffic.
- Free Alternatives Win Every Time: When so much news is available for free, most people won’t pay unless the content is truly exceptional.
- Paywalls Kill Engagement: Instead of building loyal readers, they push visitors away before they even start reading.
3. The Web Needs New Solutions, Not Digital Replicas of Print
Many media companies assume that converting print articles into digital formats will attract paying subscribers. But the internet demands more than just text, it thrives on interactivity, multimedia, and innovation.
A digital newspaper that merely mimics the print experience offers no additional value. Readers expect engaging visuals, interactive elements, and real-time updates. Successful digital media outlets embrace video content, podcasts, and immersive storytelling instead of relying on static articles.
- Innovation Drives Success: The best digital platforms experiment with storytelling, AI-driven recommendations, and interactive infographics to keep audiences hooked.
- Static Text is Boring: Readers expect interactive content, not just scanned newspaper pages on a screen.
- Multimedia Wins Attention: Videos, podcasts, and animations engage users far more than plain text.
- Real-Time Updates Matter: Unlike print, digital news must evolve constantly to stay relevant.
- Readers Want a Two-Way Conversation: Comment sections, polls, and live discussions create engagement, not just passive reading.
4. People Pirate Because They Get a Better Experience
Piracy isn’t just about getting content for free, it’s about convenience. When legal options come with restrictions like DRM limitations, region locks, and excessive advertisements, piracy becomes the more attractive alternative.
The best way to combat piracy isn’t through lawsuits or crackdowns, it’s by offering a better user experience. Streaming services like Netflix and Spotify have shown that people are willing to pay for content when it is convenient, affordable, and high-quality. Instead of making access difficult, media companies should focus on making their content more appealing than the pirated version.
- Convenience Always Wins: When platforms make content easy to access at a fair price, piracy naturally declines.
- Piracy is Faster: No forced ads, no region locks, just instant access.
- No DRM Hassles: Pirated content doesn’t come with restrictions that limit how and where users can watch.
- Better Accessibility: Legal platforms sometimes remove content, but pirated versions stay available indefinitely.
- High Prices Push Users Away: Many people pirate simply because legal alternatives are too expensive.
5. Filesharing and Piracy Do Not Always Represent Lost Sales
Media companies often claim that piracy causes massive revenue losses. However, not every person who pirates content would have paid for it otherwise. Many people download content they were never planning to buy in the first place, meaning those aren’t truly lost sales.
In some cases, piracy even helps media companies by increasing exposure. Shows like Game of Thrones gained massive popularity by being widely pirated, ultimately benefiting HBO in terms of brand recognition and merchandise sales. Instead of focusing solely on preventing piracy, media companies should look for ways to convert casual viewers into paying customers.
- People Pay When It’s Easy & Affordable: Many former pirates now subscribe to platforms like Netflix, proving that convenience wins over restriction.
- Not Every Pirate is a Lost Customer: Many people who pirate wouldn’t have paid for the content anyway, so there’s no real revenue loss.
- Free Publicity Can Drive Sales: Pirated content often increases awareness, leading to more paying customers in the long run.
- Merchandise & Spin-offs Make Money: Shows and movies gain loyal fans through piracy, who then buy official merchandise, tickets, and subscriptions.
- Piracy Shows Demand: High piracy rates indicate strong interest, which media companies can capitalize on by improving accessibility.
Also Read: The Currency of The Internet Is Personal Data
The Web Demands a New Approach
The internet isn’t just another distribution channel, it has fundamentally changed how people consume information. Old media companies that cling to outdated models will continue to struggle, while those that embrace new digital strategies will thrive.
Successful media businesses adapt to online habits. They prioritize accessibility, shareability, and user engagement over rigid paywalls and traditional publishing formats. Instead of forcing outdated business models onto digital audiences, they evolve to meet modern expectations
Adapt or Get Left BehindThe media industry faces a choice: continue fighting against the way the internet works or embrace change. Those who resist digital transformation will fade into irrelevance, while those who innovate will define the future of news and content distribution.
The question is, who will adapt before it’s too late?
AI: The Game Changer in Digital Media
Artificial intelligence is reshaping the media landscape. It’s not just about automation, it’s about personalization, efficiency, and smarter content distribution. AI helps media companies:
- Deliver Personalized Content: AI-powered algorithms curate news feeds, recommend articles, and tailor content to individual interests, keeping audiences engaged.
- Enhance User Experience: Chatbots, AI-generated summaries, and interactive tools make consuming information faster and more intuitive.
- Optimize Ad Revenue: AI-driven analytics help media companies understand reader behavior, allowing them to target ads more effectively and increase revenue.
- Detects Trends in Real Time: AI scans social media, forums, and search trends to predict viral topics before they even break into mainstream news.
- Automate Content Creation: AI can assist in generating news reports, writing summaries, and even producing video content, speeding up production without compromising quality.
Resources:
- https://www.bspcn.com/2010/06/11/5-things-old-media-still-doesnt-get-about-the-web/
- https://agital.com/blog/what-is-traditional-media/
- https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-things-that-people-did-before-the-Internet-that-they-no-long
Also Read: 5 Reasons That Social Media May Never Die
What new media doesn’t get about the news industry:
1: There was a time when people actually paid for news. The industry supported journalists, editors, copy editors, pressmen, paginators, pressmen, carriers, newsboys, newsstands and corner stores. They paid for the news because they had no other choice. There was a day when newspapers weren’t so stupid that they gave their product away for free. People want the news. They need the news. It’s a product of value, and it can’t remain free.
2: A lack of paywalls break the news industry and dumbs down the populace: People have been grousing about a lowered quality in journalism for years, and then gripe when companies try to erect paywalls on their websites. I shouldn’t even have to spell out that there is a direct correlation there. there are a decent amount of bloggers making money off of our product, and neither they nor their readers give the people who actually gathered and wrote and distributed the actual information a dime. The internet breaks the fundamental way the news industry supports itself. Y’all are going to have to choose between quality journalism and blogs.
3: In my opinion, reading news on the web is annoying: Yes, I’m a traditionalist for a 24 your old, but I love sitting on the subway with a broadsheet. I love the layout of a newspaper, giving each story its due weight. I hate the internets ads. pop ups, pop over, pop under. God damn it, if i wanted a pop I’d be at the bar. The newspaper doesn’t start playing videos or ads I didn’t want to hear. I can see where the ads are and properly ignore them. And they will ignore me. They won’t follow me down the page or cover my news until I click something. This is what the news industry has been reduced to because they don’t have the balls to charge for their product any more.
4: We’re not suing our customers. If they were customers, we wouldn’t need to sue them. I’m not going to defend DRM. I’m a news man, not a movie person. I’m not going to go all Nancy Reagan or make a PSA on you, but it is stealing.
5: File sharing doesn’t always represent lost sales: Are you out of your damned mind?
“New Media” needs the old: While there have been a lot of good things to come out of the internet explosion, snot-nosed brats everywhere need to realize that without at least some legitimate arbiter of information, the whole system goes to pot. While it’s nice that there are more voices out there, a lot of those voices are garbage. Your cultural assumptions are based on a business model that only works when blogging after your day job or from your parents basement. I can think of a handful of websites that actually produce news (not commentary) in the private sector and do so with quality. If we don’t start paywalls, there will be no newspapers in a decade or so. Where will all of the bloggers get the links to rail on? If you can program a better way to tell a news story, we’d love to have you on board to help us with this revolution. If there’s a better way to tell a story and impact our readers, we want to do it. Oh wait, we can’t afford to do that right now. In fact, we can’t afford to pay good reporters to generate content any more, because nobody wants to pay for news anymore. Sorry. have fun with your blog.
Sincerely, an unemployed reporter.
No, copyright infringement is not, has never been, theft. Nothing is taken from anyone else. It is copied. If you can’t understand the difference, you shouldn’t be in the business.
Similarly, if you can’t understand how not all unauthorized copies are not lost sales, you shouldn’t be in the business. Here’s a clue: libraries.
1. As an unemployed editor, shoudn’t you know that newspapers don’t come close to covering the costs of reporting and printing the news by subscription fees? Newspapers sell ads to make the vast majority of their revenue and always have. This just in, advertisements exist on the Internet, too, and people do click on them especially if they are done tastefully, socially, and cleverly.
2. The problem with paywalls that on the Internet people read news from varying sources. Anyone who uses Google news would be completely screwed if every news outlet needed $1 just to read an article.
Subscription money NEVER supported the news industry. You make more money on ads if you have more readers, and I fail to understand how the Internet breaks that model.
3. You seem to have a very low opinion of bloggers. I have seen better journalism on many blogs than I have seen in years in my local newspaper. Bloggers, who are enthusiasts of their topics, write much more in depth about specific subjects.
For example, I’m interested in things like video games and cars, but if I read my city’s newspaper they assume I’m aware of Mario and GTA and want to compare a Toyota Camry to a Chevy Malibu. On Jalopnik.com I read a fascinating two-part article about a group of guys placing highly in a Mexican rally using a $500 car, complete with video and interviews. It was original journalism, and it was much better than what the best car magazines have to offer.
Your grievances with reading news on the web seem to stem from the old media mentality itself; old media outlets are exactly the kind of people who would make you view an ad for 10 seconds before getting access to an article or by placing obtrusive, or un-clever ads, or forgetting to interact with social networks.
You REALLY enjoy sitting on the subway with a broadsheet that much? Personally I hate fumbling around with 10 sheets of paper that aren’t attached to each other, aren’t searchable, trying to fold them every which way just to read the different articles. My 60-year-old dad reads his news on his smartphone like the other 45+ million (growing every day) smartphone users in the US.
75% of US citizens have internet access, including you, and you still prefer having a guy deliver a stack of loose paper to your house at 3 AM every…single…day. It’s mind-boggling how stupid that is.
“This just in…the Celtics Lakers game last night went into overtime…but we don’t know what happened because we’re a NEWSPAPER and this news is 8 hours old by the time you read it.”
4. and 5.
You think it’s crazy, but file sharing and/or giving content away for free can often increase revenue for content creators. I just read an article today about how posting a sorted catalog of Monty Python clips on YouTube resulted in a 25,000% increase of DVD sales. I hear up and coming music artists preaching the need for YouTube and file sharing to promote their music all the time. Where would Soulja Boy be without YouTube and Limewire?
The problem is that old media is making it difficult to resist piracy. Like this article said, it’s easier to find higher quality versions of media with less DRM on file sharing networks. So much content isn’t even available to customers for digital purchase. Even worse, lots of content is exclusive to certain subscription services or online stores. Why bother with the hassle and time it takes to just find what you want, when file sharing offers an easier alternative? If the big media companies knew what they were doing, they would realize that file sharing is still risky, difficult, and oftentimes slow and that people only resort to it because somehow old media makes legitimate purchases even more difficult, and with DRM, more risky.
In other cases old media loses out to piracy by pricing digital media too highly. Customers expect lower prices for digital media. In the customer’s mind, they think “You don’t have to print the CD/DVD/Newspaper, you cut out the brick and mortar building containing hundreds of paid middlemen, and yet you still charge me the same price or sometimes even higher for this digital content??”
Are you serious? You’re going to tout the merits of blogs over newspapers? Newspapers may not be as exciting and ‘passionate’ as some bloggers, but that’s because they have to print things that are true and verified (by at least 2 independent sources) or else they will be charged with libel. Anyone could make the world’s most exciting newspaper if it didn’t have to be true. The ‘news sources’ online can say whatever they want (http://news.cnet.com/2100-1017-275782.html)… the more ridiculous, the more traffic they will get and the more revenue they make from advertising. There is no accountability or verification system in place, which immediately throws the validity of any story into question.
While an earlier post here mentioned that newspapers make their revenue primarily from advertisers, they overlook the important fact that the advertisers only buy newspaper space because of the subscribers. The more subscribers, the more advertisers will pay for the ads. The newspapers need some tangible gauge to convince advertisers to buy ads.
Newspapers also don’t make much money on online ads. They get undercut at every turn. Every random blog or website is more than willing to copy the newspapers story and throw an ad in at a fraction of the price. The newspaper does all the work and then a blogger will come hit ‘ctrl+c’ and ‘ctrl+v’ and steal it from them. Don’t try to argue it’s not stealing, US courts have consistently held there is a property right in news (at least timely news) since 1918 (see: International News Service v. Associated Press, 248 U.S. 215)
With the lack of solid advertisement revenue, the quality of a paper will suffer. That’s the bottom line. Reporters can’t work for free and editors like to be able to feed their families. Don’t treat them like evil people because of that.
Also, someone copying and pasting the story in its entirety does absolutely no favor to the newspaper. That’s why DRM’s exist. I certainly won’t argue that it’s a good system, but it’s something. They have nothing better yet and no one seems in a rush to create anything else.
TL;DR: Online news/blogging sucks and most people in my generation (I’m 23) feel they are inherently entitled to free quality news reporting and that it is criminal to make them pay to support a reporter. Also, I second Brett on enjoying having a solid newspaper in my hands. I already stare at glowing screens too long everyday.
This is idiotic. I have no involvement in the news media in any way but know that just like with everything else in life you get what you pay for. If you want garbage news from bloggers with no real diligence and no understanding of journalism than by all means go get your news from bloggers. But real reporting costs money and is worth paying for. Watch some of David Simon’s interviews on this very subject. It’s moronic bloggers that think they’re journalists who are creating the uprising in the market geared to the lowest common denominator.
Close. It’s the lowest common denominator that is driving a market geared to the lowest common denominator. Bloggers rarely drive the market, but rather observe and comment.
Perhaps your assertion is correct in one tiny fraction of the issue, but it is the lowest common denominator (those cheap bastards!) that also buy low quality products enmasse so they can brag about what they have amongst their peers (whom also have to same worthless crap they have).
The underlying theme of the article is correct. Media needs to provide a new model that gives customers sometheing exclusive. What that is? I certainly don’t know, but perhaps media moguls can get off their fats arses and innovate. That is the only way you can get in front of the New Media Evolution.
Good call!
I totally agree on the points made in your post. Finally you hit the spot. Time after time we have major discussions with ‘old media’ ambassadors on the fact that a new era needs new interpretations of the word media consumption. They think they can use the same business models over and over. But wake- up. The web is about interaction and sharing personal interest not just sending and collecting money. And most of all not about abusing defenitions like social media, new media, etc. But it’s about remodeling or even reinventing together.
Great article! In addition, whose to say that there even needs to be a “news” industry? If people want to share things online free, let them! It’s the new age. If everyone just contributed and shared, then perhaps capitalism would be forced to evolve and become more suitable to the mass public??? I have a feeling the internet age will bring the largest installment of Bartering that we’ve ever seen. I like.
The older generation will never get it. The digital age came to quickly for them and any one above 45 couldnt adapt. Now they are making the rest of us suffer and holding the world back.
We need to move forwards not backwards.
WERE making you suffer??
Wow. Cant wait till you get ‘old’ kid…..