News You Can Lose: Financial Page: The New Yorker

[Owen Densmore]

James Surowiecki has an article in the New Yorker on the failure of  
newspapers:
   http://newyorker.com/talk/financial/2008/12/22/081222ta_talk_surowiecki

He makes a few good points from the economic development standpoint.  
Here's an example:

<snip>
   In a famous 1960 article called “Marketing Myopia,” Theodore Levitt  
held up the railroads as a quintessential example of companies’  
inability to adapt to changing circumstances. Levitt argued that a  
focus on products rather than on customers led the companies to  
misunderstand their core business. Had the bosses realized that they  
were in the transportation business, rather than the railroad  
business, they could have moved into trucking and air transport,  
rather than letting other companies dominate. By extension, many argue  
that if newspapers had understood they were in the information  
business, rather than the print business, they would have adapted more  
quickly and more successfully to the Net.

   There’s some truth to this. Local papers could have been more  
aggressive in leveraging their brand names to dominate the market for  
online classifieds, instead of letting Craigslist usurp that market.  
And while the flood of online information has made the job of  
aggregation and filtering tremendously valuable, none of the important  
aggregation sites, to say nothing of Google News, are run by a paper.  
Even now, papers often display a “not invented here” mentality,  
treating their sites as walled gardens, devoid of links to other news  
outlets. From a print perspective, that’s understandable: why would  
you advertise good work that’s being done elsewhere? But it’s an  
approach that makes no sense on the Web.
</snip>

I'd read James' Wisdom of Crowds, but I hadn't realized how broad his  
writing was:
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Surowiecki

     -- Owen



============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

[Phil Henshaw-2]

Surowiecki, view is perfectly logical, but in terms of natural systems
rather unrealistic.   The standard bearers of the old order are unlikely
candidates for agile innovators in the new one.  There are profound language
differences, and lots of other things.  James should watch how real things
really grow.  It sounds much too much like he's thinking of businesses as
only columns in a spreadsheet...

Phil Henshaw  

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On
> Behalf Of Owen Densmore
> Sent: Monday, December 22, 2008 12:02 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: [FRIAM] News You Can Lose: Financial Page: The New Yorker
>
> James Surowiecki has an article in the New Yorker on the failure of
> newspapers:
>
> http://newyorker.com/talk/financial/2008/12/22/081222ta_talk_surowiecki
>
> He makes a few good points from the economic development standpoint.
> Here's an example:
>
> <snip>
>    In a famous 1960 article called “Marketing Myopia,” Theodore Levitt
> held up the railroads as a quintessential example of companies’
> inability to adapt to changing circumstances. Levitt argued that a
> focus on products rather than on customers led the companies to
> misunderstand their core business. Had the bosses realized that they
> were in the transportation business, rather than the railroad
> business, they could have moved into trucking and air transport,
> rather than letting other companies dominate. By extension, many argue
> that if newspapers had understood they were in the information
> business, rather than the print business, they would have adapted more
> quickly and more successfully to the Net.
>
>    There’s some truth to this. Local papers could have been more
> aggressive in leveraging their brand names to dominate the market for
> online classifieds, instead of letting Craigslist usurp that market.
> And while the flood of online information has made the job of
> aggregation and filtering tremendously valuable, none of the important
> aggregation sites, to say nothing of Google News, are run by a paper.
> Even now, papers often display a “not invented here” mentality,
> treating their sites as walled gardens, devoid of links to other news
> outlets. From a print perspective, that’s understandable: why would
> you advertise good work that’s being done elsewhere? But it’s an
> approach that makes no sense on the Web.
> </snip>
>
> I'd read James' Wisdom of Crowds, but I hadn't realized how broad his
> writing was:
>    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Surowiecki
>
>      -- Owen
>
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org