I used to correspond with a man who was a self-professed Luddite. He's a great fellow, but he was born in the wrong century and hates computers, email and the internet.

Then one day, out of the blue, I got an email from him. I asked what was up, and he said he couldn't find ribbons for his typewriter any more.

The funny thing is that he probably could have purchased them online.

We all love to tease the technologically impaired, but there's another group we need to watch out for — i.e., the people who insist on using a computer to "solve" something that doesn't need solving. What do we call these people?

Computers have and will continue to change things, and everybody knows they've changed publishing rather substantially. But a level-headed approach to "digital transformation" can't, on the one hand, deny the transformation that's going on, or, on the other, exaggerate or misrepresent it. E.g., "print is dead."

Great intellectual property continues to sell — yes, even in print. See Chip and Joanna Gaines’ magazine increases circulation.

Often I fear that publishers are blaming "digital transformation" when the truth is that they're selling junk nobody wants. "The computer ate my business." Well, maybe it did, or maybe you've just forgotten some fundamentals.

Print is in decline, for lots of reasons. But print is still a huge part of the publishing business. Publishers need to optimize for digital, but they also need to optimize print.

There are some things print still does better. E.g., it's a lot easier to loan somebody a print copy of a magazine, or give it to them when you're done with it. And despite all the talk about "digital natives" doing everything on computers, students continue to prefer printed textbooks.

Next time you go to the newsstand, pick up the most tech-centric magazine you can find. I'll bet you a sandwich and a cup of coffee there will be blow-in cards in that magazine.

Yep. Dumb old printed cards. In 2017. Can you believe it?

You know why they're in there? Because they work.

A creative colleague of mine came up with a good name for the anti-Luddite.

Technophant.

Think sycophant, not elephant. As if they're always kissing up to technology.

I'm very far from being a Luddite. I love Star Trek and science fiction and technology and all that wacky stuff, and my kids will tell you I'm always saying things like "in the future we won't ____." The first thing I touch in the morning after turning off the alarm is my iPad.

But I also like to be practical. Most people read magazines in the dead tree version. Rather than bemoan that, and cry about it, and wish things were different, why not optimize it. Take advantage of the strengths of the medium and make print the best it can be. Use it in new and creative ways. Or swallow your pride and use it in some old-fashioned way that still works. Don't be so sold on "new" that you do the new thing that sucks.

For example, let's say you want your older audience to share an article with their kids. Why not perf the page and make it easy for them to rip it out?

Sure, it sounds old-fashioned, and some people will roll their eyes. "What? In 2017?"

But I'd bet you two sandwiches and five cups of coffee that perfed page will be a hundred times more effective in getting that article shared than giving them a URL or a QR code or any other tech solution.

In March of this year, Wired said …

“Facebook steadfastly resists categorization as a traditional media company. Instead, CEO Mark Zuckerberg insists on calling the social network a technology platform—even though nearly half of all American adults get their news on Facebook. ”

Facebook has — at least at times — wanted to be seen as a “dumb pipe” for other people’s content, and thereby avoid any responsibility for what appears on the platform. Which is probably a good idea, because when it comes to promoting accurate news, they don’t seem to be very good at it.

Facebook has two contradictory social goals. On the one hand, it wants to let people share their own feelings and be “connected” and teach the world to sing and all that, but OTOH it wants to be a “safe place,” free of harassment, hate and discrimination.

You can’t have that both ways, even if you are a tech genius billionaire.

Facebook is intimately involved in what people see and how they perceive the world. Its algorithms decide what appears in a user’s news feed. It intervenes to squelch undesirable speech. It seems to have been a useful conduit for “fake news,” and it’s possible the Russians used it to sew discord and exacerbate social tensions in the US. On top of all that, Facebook is trying to dominate video, which is where a lot of the growth is occurring in online content.

With all this going on, it seems increasingly absurd that Facebook is anything but a media company – and, as noted above, a particularly bad one. (Yes, I linked that story twice just to rub their noses in it.)

Why does it matter? Why is Facebook so intent to deny the obvious truth?
Scott Galloway suggests it has to do with their stock valuation. Tech platforms get a better valuation than media companies.

That seems reasonable.

The “responsibility” angle seems pretty likely as well. Along those lines, I found this article helpful.

The reason this distinction matters is that pure technology platforms receive greater immunity regarding the content they serve, both legally and in the public eye. This stems from the 1996 Communications Decency Act’s Section 230(c), or the Good Samaritan act, that states “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” Media companies are considered more directly responsible for their content.

The other thing to consider is advertising.

When you’re trying to create a corporate culture with idealistic young tech geeks, the notion that you are empowering people to share and connect make the world more open sounds nice. (“Can I have some baby kale with that, please?”)

When you have to admit that you’re chasing advertising dollars, it’s not so hip any more. Working for a “media company” that’s trying to make a buck like everybody else doesn’t put you on the road to Shambala. (Yes, that’s an old song, but you get the point.)

Anything that’s (1) old, (2) an important part of the culture, (3) a big source of money and power, and (4) sometimes regulated is going to have some weird stuff going on, and that’s certainly the case with media. We have a strange mix of rules for “media companies.”

Broadcast companies have to get licenses and show that they’re acting in the public interest – because they’re using the airwaves, which are a public resource. In the past, we had this weird thing called the Fairness Doctrine, which “required the holders of broadcast licenses both to present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that was … honest, equitable, and balanced.”

As a silly side note, The Fairness Doctrine was assumed cultural background when All in the Family’s Archie Bunker demanded equal time after hearing a gun control story he didn’t like. I don’t think a modern-day Archie would get far if he called Zuckerberg and demanded that he “fix” Meat Head’s deceptive timeline.

The Fairness Doctrine is no more, and cable TV never had the same restrictions because it didn’t use a public resource. And — as we all know — the internet is the Wild West compared to cable TV. You can post anything you like.

Still, there’s a perception that media has an obligation to be fair.

Tying it all together, why does it matter if Facebook is a “media company”? I see three reasons.

• Valuation
• The sense of responsibility that comes with being a “media company”
• Feeding the idealism of the Facebook workforce

But that’s just my opinion. Chime in with your own if you like.

I’ve been reading a bit recently on how to improve the online shopping experience, and how to solve the dreaded cart abandonment problem.

You’ve probably seen calculations along these lines …

You have 100 transactions a day that are worth $50 each, but 50% of the people who start a transaction in your store don’t complete it. If you could eliminate the problems in your cart, you’d double your revenue. Whoopee!.

No, you won’t.

Those calculations assume that everyone who adds something to a cart intends to buy, and it’s just your lousy cart that stops the sale.

We all know that’s not true. Visitors add things to carts for all sorts of reasons that have nothing to do with an intent to buy. They might only want to see the full cost — e.g., with shipping — to decide if they’re interested. They might want to save the product and go look at some other options. They might want to recommend it to their spouse as a good gift idea, and your site doesn’t have a wish list.

Even the most genius, perfectly designed e-commerce site in the world is going to have some cart abandonment.

That doesn’t mean we should be complacent about it. We should try to reduce cart abandonment even though we can’t eliminate it.

Here are some of the top tips I’ve seen.

Avoid unexpected costs, which is one of the top reasons people abandon their carts. Heavy shipping fees can ruin the sale.

Make the site mobile friendly. That should go without saying, but … it doesn’t. A lot of sites look horrible on mobile, and many people make purchases on their phones.

Use trust badges. Norton is the most trusted name, but a security badge is better than no security badge.

Include as many payment options as you can. This can be a big hassle on the back end, so you’re going to have to make a compromise between “what’s good for my cart” and “what makes accounting want to kill me.”

I have a suspicion that adding Paypal or Amazon checkout helps sales on mobile — since who wants to enter all their data on a silly phone keyboard? — but I haven’t seen any confirmation of that theory.

Allow guest checkout. If you make visitors join your club or create an account, you’re going to lose some people. That might be okay, depending on your business model. Just be aware that the more you ask, the more people you’ll lose.

Use product thumbnails if that’s applicable to your business.

Use proper calls to action. “Checkout” should be bigger and bolder than “update cart” or any other functional badge on your page.

There are other things you can experiment with, but those seem like the big ones to me.

The main cause of the decline in print magazines is not consumer demand. It’s advertising.

Survey after survey shows that consumers continue to like print. There are some people who read digital editions, and some people who find what they used to find in print magazines on web pages. But the main reason print magazines are suffering is that advertising revenue is drying up.

Advertisers are leaving print because digital ads are easier to target and easier to track. With digital ads, advertisers can get the precise niche they want.

We all know that we leave an incredible trail of bread crumbs on the internet, rich with information on our likes and dislikes, what we buy, when we buy it, what articles we linger on, and so forth. All this information is used by advertisers to target ads to the right people.

It’s very hard to do the same in print. There are no very reliable metrics for which articles people read, how much time they spend on the ads or on the stories. And it’s hard to get people to go from printed media to online.

That’s going to change.

When everyone is wearing Google Glass — or, as I predicted decades ago in my sci-fi book, The Intruder, when everyone has an implant in their eye — reading a printed magazine will be just as trackable as web activity.

Right now it’s hard to get people to transition from the printed page to a website. It was hard with desktops, for obvious reasons, but it’s even hard in an era when people have a mini computer in their pocket.

Some people thought QR codes would solve that, but they haven’t. People seem to be in a different mode when they’re reading print. You can provide a URL, but most people won’t do anything with it.

That will change when people are reading a printed magazine through a smart lens. The transition from print to digital will be easy, and you’ll be doing it all the time, e.g., looking up ingredients for a recipe while you’re in the grocery store, or checking the reviews of a bottle of wine before you buy it.

Alexa is another technology that will revitalize print. (So will Google Home.)

You’ll be sitting in your arm chair with an adult beverage at your elbow, reading the latest issue of Brew Your Own magazine, and you’ll realize you really need that plate wort chiller after all. Conveniently tucked in the corner of the ad will be a special phrase you can speak to order it.

“Hey Alexa, buy the 4710 plate chiller from Maryland Homebrew.”

Both these technologies will make print media far more attractive to advertisers.

***

Somewhat along these lines, see this story: Print Books vs. Ebooks? (We’re Asking the Wrong Questions)

Making the print edition the hub of a physical + digital experience will be easy once we integrate Google Glass, Alexa, Google Home, and similar technologies.

I’ve heard that saying many times over the years, and there’s some wisdom to it. You want to make the best possible offer with the customer in mind, not the offer that makes your systems people happy.

But … the more I get involved in the back end — either from the IT side or the fulfillment side — I realize it’s not so simple, and that ignoring the back end as if that’s going to help you on the front end doesn’t work.

Systems aren’t creative or flexible. They’re designed to do certain things. As a programmer colleague told me, systems (computers) are very good at doing one thing a million times. Marketers often want to do a million things one time.

Another way to look at this is something I call the Frank Rule (although it’s not really a rule): “We’re going to do all this set up and create all these special rules and exceptions and churn and we’re going to get one order.”

When you add exceptions and special rules for weird circumstances, two things are likely to happen: (1) you create lots of manual work to force the system to do your bidding, and/or (2) your system becomes a mind-boggling mess that nobody wants to touch.

For example, let’s take one very narrow slice of the publishing pie. Renewals.

It starts off very simple. For every order on file, we want to send out renewal notices 3 months before expire, then again at 2 months, 1 month, at expire, and 1 month past expire. Easy peasy.

Until marketing says they want to make an early bird offer for the first effort, or they want to attach the renewal notice to the issue, or they want to add a free issue, or ….

There’s no end to the creative sorts of offers that can be made, and that’s just for one product at one company. When you start to mix in different kinds of products with different terms, different prices, different special offers, club discounts, etc., it can get very complex.

The system needs to try to accommodate all these variations, but it also needs to be stable. If the programmers change the system to accommodate Company A’s quirky renewal series, they don’t want to mess up Company B’s series in the process. After a while, the system starts to look like a very complicated house of cards, and everybody’s afraid to do anything with it.

So how do you work in that sort of environment?

Clearly you start with the offer. What do you want to do, irrespective of the system’s constraints? Then you see if the system accommodates that offer. In those cases where it doesn’t, you have a few choices. (Which don’t include pitching a fit and screaming “why can’t you just ___?”)

1. Do a workaround. E.g., the system can’t take an order without a proper postal address, but you want people to be able to sign up with just their name and email address. So you supply a generic postal address with all these orders. (How does that happen?)

Unfortunately, that messes up your reports, which sort based on zip code, so somebody has to manually export the data and redo the reports.

You can do this sort of klugy thing, but you need to stop and ask if you’re going to spend more in manual workarounds than you’re going to make with your genius offer.

2. Use a different system. When system A doesn’t do exactly what you want, it’s tempting to use system B — just for this offer. But this often creates lots of other problems.

Will orders placed through system B go into the same customer service / account management areas on your website? Will customers be able to login with their regular credentials? Will these orders report properly to accounting? Will you have to build a new interface with your email system?

Is it all worth the churn?

3. Change your offer. Or, in other words, let the back end drive the front end.

It’s frustrating. Even maddening. But it’s often the right choice.

There are times when you can do a workaround or use a different system without making of mess of everything, but … not all that often.

Why are advertisers putting so much of their money in digital and generally leaving print?

One big reason is that advertisers can do so much more with digital ads, both in targeting and in tracking.

But why is that limited to online? What if we could change printed magazines to make them more like a page on a website?

Targeting ads on web pages is enabled by all the spooky demographic and psychographic data the ad system has on the visitor. As you know, you’re being tracked all the time, and your online profile says a lot about you — what you buy, what you read, where you spend your time, what you’re interested in, what you’re likely to click on, etc.

All this data is being collected so advertisers can find exactly the right audience for their product or service. If the advertiser wants an audience of 50+ year old men with a net worth over $1 million and an interest in retirement, the ad system can easily accommodate that because it has access to that data on a huge number of prospects. (I’m glossing over the details, but you get the gist.)

This is how Facebook and Google attract all the advertisers. They have tons of data and can create very targeted audiences. Especially Facebook, since you have to login to Facebook. Their spooky analytics know way too much about you.

But what if a publisher had all that spooky demographic info in his print fulfillment system, so he could target print ads just as precisely as a website can target digital ads? To make the concept a little easier to follow, imagine Facebook wanted to do a print magazine. Just as they customize everybody’s feed online, they could customize every issue of the magazine to the individual user.

I’m not sure any printer currently offers that level of print customization, but there’s no reason why it couldn’t be done.

Now, take this little thought experiment to the next step. What if the price of the magazine depended on whether or not the subscriber is a good prospect for advertisers?

Yes, yes, I know we’re all equally valuable in some cosmic sense, but we’re not all equally valuable to advertisers. Advertisers want to get their ads in front of people with specific interests, who are willing and able to take some action. Usually that action involves buying something.

The imaginary Facebook magazine that’s sent to a very valuable prospect — e.g., just to make it crude and obvious, somebody who buys a lot of stuff — will make a whole lot more ad revenue for Facebook than the magazine that’s sent to another person — who doesn’t buy anything.

The business model for this magazine would change for each individual customer. The guy who buys lots of stuff might get the magazine for free, since Facebook would make more than enough from ad revenue to pay for the production, printing and mailing of each issue. But the miser who never spends any money has no value to the advertisers, and therefore none to Facebook, so he’d have to pay for his magazine.

This new business model would be a mix of the controlled circulation model and the regular subscriber model. When a potential customer goes to the magazine subscription page, the spooky analytics in the background would check to see what audience niches he fills. If he’s a very valuable prospect, he might get the magazine at a low price, or even for free. But if he’s not in any of the niches the magazine wants to advertise to, he’d have to pay full freight for the subscription, since the magazine won’t get any ad revenue from him.

I don’t know if anybody can do this in the real world, but it’s an idea to ponder.

Right now we’re in a weird place in this print / digital question. It’s become quite clear that readers like print, but print has a hard time paying for itself, so print is … dwindling. There’s no reason it has to.

As you know, advertising is in a slump, and it’s hurting many publishers.

While print should be doing just fine, because readers continue to like print, print advertising is not doing very well, except in some small niches.

Most of the ad money is going to digital, so some people want to abandon print and follow the money into digital. But … that’s not necessarily a good idea.

Digital ads have also fallen on hard times. The combination of programmatic ads (with lower CPMs) and ad blockers has been a drag on publisher revenue, but the trajectory of ad spending has been a problem as well. The vast majority of new ad revenue is going to Google and Facebook. Advertisers are often choosing not to advertise direct with the publishers.

Publishers are trying to cling to some of the remaining scraps with ad blockers and — sometimes — with paywalls. So far it’s not been a grand success.

If you listen carefully, you can sometimes hear the collective groan from the publishers. “Who will invent some magic technology and rescue me?”

Enter Google and micropayments.

The headline in a recent Financial Times article is very telling. Google to allow publishers to charge users who utilise ad-blockers. (Link is to search results for the article.)

Isn’t that so very nice of Google, to “allow” publishers to do that?

Okay, I admit it. I’m being deliberately unfair about the headline. They’re using “allow” in the sense of “enable,” not “give permission.” But I find the double meaning amusing.

From the article …

Google will enable publishers to ask readers who use ad-blockers for micropayments….

That’s what we want, right? If we can’t get 10 cents from ads, let’s charge the reader 10 cents for the article. Brilliant, huh?

No, it’s not. Let’s break it down.

Publishers can already do that. Technology to detect ad blockers already exists, so it’s not terribly difficult for a publisher to set up a paywall for people who choose to use ad blockers.

So … what’s unique in Google’s offer?

First, they’re doing the technology lift, and publishers are usually not also technology companies and don’t want to be in that business. Second, people may be more likely to want to create an account with Google than with some small publisher. After all, from the user’s perspective, the prospect of creating an account to pay $0.25 on 17 different web sites is not that attractive. Centralizing it makes sense.

Then what’s the problem?

Since Google will be taking the payment, Google will be getting the customer information, not the publisher. Or, in other words, publishers — who have been repeatedly suckered by the big platforms — are about to be suckered again.

Let me rewrite the headline for this grand new development.

Desperate publishers can now earn pennies on their expensive content while helping Google build its empire.

Or how about this?

Publishers sell the chance to collect their readers’ names — for a pot of lentils.

It’s the same old story. This is yet another sucker play, which means publishers will probably fall for it.

We are way past the time for publishers to abandon this idea of making money off “free” content. At least as a primary revenue stream.

It was a mistake from the start, and it’s not going to get better. Publishers need to use free content to create relationships that lead to a recurring relationship with recurring payment.

But this is the important part. The big platforms do not want to help with that. They want the names, and the credit card numbers. They want the recurring payments. And they want to sucker content providers into doing the hard work for them — i.e., making valuable stuff for people to read. The platforms don’t really even want publishers to exist. They just want “content providers” to keep feeding their model.

What publishers really need is a solution where they get the customer names. If Google wanted to help (hint: they don’t), that’s what they would be offering.

(As a side note, the link above is to the Google search results and not directly to the article because FT has a paywall. If I were to link straight to the article, all you’d get is an invitation to subscribe. But since the FT has implemented Google’s “first click free” policy, you can get the article if you google the headline and click to it from the search results.)

This is worth your time. I don’t agree that online advertising in inherently corrupt, but he makes some good points. Online Advertising Is Corrupt At Its Core.

I hate to disappoint my loyal readers, but this is the rare Krehbiel Report where I don’t suggest an answer. Not even a half-baked one. I’m curious what you think about this.

Yesterday I was listening to a podcast a couple of my kids said they liked. It was sponsored by Audible — the audio book company. That struck me as a rather odd choice.

The podcast is called “Welcome to Night Vale,” and it’s essentially a quirky short story. Kinda like The Twilight Zone. (It wasn’t my thing. But if you like Twilight-Zone-ish stories, you might like this book of mine, which is free today on Kindle.)

I found it strange that Audible would sponsor a podcast like that because it seems like such natural competition for audio books. In fact, it seems that sort of podcast is one of the primary free alternatives to the paid product. So why would Audible sponsor it?

Since the two products are similar, people who listen to that sort of podcast might be a good market for audio books, so it makes some sense from that perspective. But people who are downloading free stuff aren’t (in my experience) a good market for paid content. So … again … it’s an odd call.

More importantly, by sponsoring the podcast, Audible is helping their competition. (Or, on the other hand, perhaps they’re encouraging more people to get interested in audio stories.)

I suppose it’s working, because Audible has a standing affiliate deal for podcasters.

If it is working, it’s an interesting model for the free to paid transition.

This question reminds me of something else near and dear to my heart. The old Facebook issue, and whether publishers should participate.

I think publishers who put their content on Facebook are (among other things) selling Stalin the rope he’s going to hang them with. But if Audible can make a living selling their paid content through free channels (like podcasts), then maybe not.

What do you think?

A lot of interesting currents in popular culture are raising questions about the ethics of publishing. The two most obvious are (1) free speech issues, and (2) whether profit or management drives content in the daily news.

The main free speech question is whether a publisher should censor what it publishes based on some moral or social rules. This isn’t a new question, but it has a new importance in an era of “social justice warriors” (aka “cry bullies”) who throw tantrums if a contrary view is given a platform.

An example along these lines is the conflict over Simon & Schuster’s decision to publish Milo Yiannopoulos — a self-described provocateur.

It’s an interesting question, mostly (to me) because the politics of censorship seem to have flipped. Speaking broadly, it used to be the left that advocated free speech (e.g., the dispute over Lady Chatterly), and now it’s (parts of) the left that want to shut down speech — albeit by private protest and not usually with the strong arm of government.

The success of some conservative writers has incentivized many publishers — whose staffs usually skew liberal — to (perhaps cynically) decide that the money is more important than the message. So … Yiannopoulos and Coulter and others may have views the publishers hate, but they love the sales.

Publishing is a business, after all.

The second issue is similar in that it gets to the motive that lies behind the publishing decision.

This article, for example, raises the specter of a rich, globalist elite at war with the common man.

China’s president will preach the advent of a new world order in Davos next week before the high priests of globalisation, who are facing an uprising from voters against their orthodoxy of open markets and borders.

Some people believe that a cabal of globalists is trying to force a new attitude on the public to help the globalists with their transnational business interests. The trouble — for the globalists — is that a lot of people aren’t buying it. Brexit and Trump are taken as signs of the revolt.

How does the media fit into this picture? Is Big Media a tool of the globalists and the purveyors of elitist propaganda?

The question reminds me of other conversations about the news. Does the media answer to the public (e.g., how many clicks on an article) or to the boardroom (e.g., the people who pay the salaries)?

As with most things, it’s certainly some combination of both. But it’s interesting to see how it plays out in popular opinion, where we seem to have two competing memes going on.

The first is that the media is being pulled in one direction by the tyranny of clicks and advertising. As I like to say, “All’s well, details at seven” doesn’t get eyeballs on the evening news, but “the new threat your kids face at the bus stop” does. That well-established reality pushes news coverage towards the sensational and the scary. (Along the lines of Dirty Laundry.)

Fear sells papers. So does sex. So do crazy conspiracy theories. And if that’s the stuff that pays the bills, that can become the yardstick by which journalists are measured.

“How much traffic did your story get?,” not “was it accurate?” (or helpful).

The second meme is that these media empires — and their content — are controlled by rich people with an agenda. I see this stuff all the time on Facebook. People try to discredit a source because it’s funded by Soros, or Big Oil, or whomever.

Which is it? Does the globalist cabal control the media, or is it all “give the public what they want”?

Perhaps that’s too either/or. Why can’t it be both? E.g., the globalist elite doesn’t care what the public thinks about most issues, so … fine. Let extremism and sex and crazy ideas drive that part of the business, but when it comes to trade deals, or immigration, or … whatever they talk about at Davos … then the Big Boss steps in and tells the editors how to cover the story (if they know what’s good for them).

It would be an easy thing to believe, but I don’t buy it. At least not to that extent.

I’m sure there are journalists who would sell their soul to get the 8:00 spot, and I’m sure that when some rich guy with an agenda buys a media empire, he hopes to use it to push that agenda. But there are also plenty of decent people who would blow the whistle on such editorial control, and it’s no longer possible for the Big Boss to control all the sources of information.

For good or ill, we have this crazy, wild-west thing called the Internet — and, for that matter, 10,000 cable channels — where anybody can say (or read) what they want. Sure, Twitter and Facebook censor people from time to time, but it’s not as if they’re able to stop anybody. Milo Yiannopoulos seems to have survived his Twitter ban. In fact, it might have helped him.

The Big Boss might control the big platforms, but (1) his ability to shape the news is limited, and (2) there are plenty of other sources not controlled by the Big Boss. And these other sources are growing daily.

All of which has to be enormously frustrating for this alleged conspiracy of globalists who want to fashion the world to suit their business needs. They think they should be able to sway public opinion with all their power and influence. Just buy out the media and get some bubble-headed beach blonde to ridicule the opposition (with a twinkle in her eye).

But … it doesn’t seem to be working, does it? The swarm warfare of the public is overwhelming the carrier-based approach of the elite.

Which leaves us with an important question. Do publishers have a responsibility to police their content?

I’m not talking about accuracy, or grammar. I think that goes without saying.

Rather, do publishers have some sort of social responsibility, or mission? Or do they just publish whatever the people want?

Is news a commodity, like the candy bars in the vending machine? Stock the ones that sell. Or is journalism a calling to something more significant?

I think it is and has always been both. You’re going to have organizations that want nothing more than a fast buck, and you’re going to have organizations that stick to principle. And it seems to me that is a very good thing.