Andreessen’s Advice To Old Media: "Burn The Boats"

http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/06/andreessen-media-burn-boats/

by hn • 16 years ago

15 10 16 years ago

In the commentary there is a lot of talk back and forth about whether old media understands tech or whether tech people understand media and journalism. I think this misses the point.

I subscribe to The Economist and New Scientist, as reading them online just isn't very user friendly. With the Economist and New Scientist I get full access to the archive and the online edition when I subscribe, but I don't want only the online edition, it is a hard reading experience compared to the magazine. Will the iPad change that? Time will tell.

I have recently dropped my newspaper subscription, which I actually miss. Their website is good, but not at all a replacement for the paper edition. The content is structured differently and more importantly, hard to browse quickly. Wherea the newspaper is very good to allow me to quickly get an overview of what is going on. But I dropped it as an experiment because I don't read it enough and I get a ton of paper to recycle.

I am looking forward to news delivered to me electronically in a way I will consume as willingly as printed news. The web as it looks today is not it.

anthropocentric• 16 years ago

Out of curiosity: how old are you?

samdk• 16 years ago

For what it's worth, I have a pretty similar opinion, and I'm 19.

hexis2• 16 years ago

Is there an example of any news organization like the New York Times that is purely web based? I don't mean in terms of size, or even prestige, but just in terms of content. Does there exist a self-sufficient, general interest, maybe high-end, news organization that is not a part of the old media? There seem to be lots of profitable and high quality niche news sites on the web (obviously a huge niche on the web is tech/gadget news), but I'm coming up blank for anything like a general interest news organization.

Retric• 16 years ago

Wikipedia is the closest thing I can think of. Fark/Slashdot etc, don't generate their own content.

Granted people don't normally go their for "news" but it keeps up with major news stories like earthquakes, the Olympics and other sporting events, economic issues etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007%E2%80%... (ongoing) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Haiti_earthquake (recent) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Summer_Olympics (future)

pronoiac• 16 years ago

The Christian Science Monitor (a really informative paper, not evangelical, despite the name) shifted online in 2009, ceasing print for the daily issues, at least.

Salon & Slate come to mind.

hexis2• 16 years ago

The CSM is a really interesting case, as they did seem to transition from old media to new. But, after looking around their site for a minute, I noticed this subscriptions section that offers a weekly print edition. I wonder how much they make off of that - http://www.csmonitor.com/About/Subscriptions

Relatedly, Politico, a US politics site, makes a lot of money from its print edition - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politico#Distribution_and_conte...

andrewtj• 16 years ago

I think http://www.crikey.com.au/ fulfils your criteria

dsplittgerber• 16 years ago

Sometimes, I do get angry with myself for reading stuff like this, despite suspecting beforehand that there is no newsworthy reporting whatsoever in pieces like these. Andreessen said nearly exactly the same a full year ago - http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10093.

Andreessen’s Advice To Old Media: "Burn The Boats"

Related Stories