On Fri, Nov 27, 2009 at 9:19 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
2009/11/27 Durova nadezhda.durova@gmail.com:
It's hard to understand the conjecture that Wikipedia ties in with those plans. If anything, Wikipedia's habit of referencing historic news
articles
would help Mr. Murdoch's bottom line because it sends traffic to old articles, which can generate advertising revenue from old news that would otherwise be valueless.
Dunno about Murdoch, but the NYT was making similar noises about Google and in fact claimed that Wikipedia was ripping them off by referencing their articles:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/22/technology/internet/22wiki.html
"So, in essence, many Wikipedia articles are another way that the work of news publications is quickly condensed and reused without compensation."
This is more than a little rich considering Wikipedia is the number-one universal backgrounder for working journalists. A number of us shouted WHAT ON EARTH rather loudly:
http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2009/06/22/technology/...
- but we've yet to hear a peep from Noam Cohen explaining just
precisely what the hell he was playing at. I urge the next person he calls to question him closely on this one.
Last year I discussed this with a Washington Post reporter. His industry's
fundamentals have changed in ways that threaten its future. The New York Times has taken out multiple mortgages on its building; The Christian Science Monitor ceased daily print issues earlier this year.
Wikipedians have been in the habit of treating reliable sources as a deep well that we can tap. The well is worried about running dry.
Wikipedia really is that big and influential.
When the typical business manager is losing money, that manager's response will be efforts to protect existing income streams. Businesses tend to be much smarter about exploring new revenue opportunities when they are doing well and think they can earn more money. When they're losing money they often act irrationally. Bold and innovative ideas are less likely to get implemented or even discussed because individuals take a political risk by proposing them. The reward for setting up any non-normative person for layoff is that one's own neck is less likely to feel the axe in the short run.
So that Washington Post reporter hadn't considered the advertising revenue his newspaper was getting from Wikipedia's links to historic articles. It hadn't been discussed among his colleagues and nothing was being done to optimize it. He sounded intrigued and wanted to share it with his editors. A few months later he was working for the Huffington Post.
-Durova