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February 24, 2005
How valuable is a cyber footprint?
Wired -- Whither The Wall Street Journal? and PressThink -- A Little Detail in the Sale of About.com to the New York Times both touch on the view that because neither of the WSJ or NY Times show up high onsearch engines, they are losing their standing in the evolving media world.
Adam Penenberg in Wired: "Since most people refuse to pay for WSJ stories, most bloggers are reluctant to link to them. It also has an impact on anyone who uses the web for research -- and there are a lot of us. As importantly, the next generation of readers is growing up by accessing news over the internet, and one place they are not surfing to is WSJ.com. With their habits being formed now, there is little chance the Journal will become part of their lives, either now or in the future."
Jay Rosen in PressThink: 'More and more, we hear about a big battle that is either here or coming inside the Times over whether to charge users for online access, as the Wall Street Journal currently does. If that happens and the Washington Post remains free, the paths of those two great news organizations will, I believe, diverge."
Related piece in Forbes -- Stopping The Presses. "The Internet has changed the economics of the publishing industry in a way commercial television never did. The price of news and information has irrevocably been pushed way down the supply/demand curve. The Web has also destroyed the functional monopoly of the local daily newspaper with the very high barriers to technical entry. Anyone can be a publisher, and, it seems, these days, most anyone is."
Posted by eubie at 8:26 PM permalink
A Martian sea
NY Times -- Images Suggest 'Recent' Ice on Mars Sea. Ancient sea boosts confidence that bacteria may still live on planet. Also Space.com -- Ice Packs and Methane on Mars Suggest Present Life Possible, European Team Says
How hardy are bacteria? LiveScience -- Creatures Frozen for 32,000 Years Still Alive
Posted by eubie at 8:04 PM permalink