I’m questioning my choice for the Quote of the Day for today’s Online Publishing Update*.
Here’s what it was:
Quote of the Day: ‘Til the Cows Come Home…
“We live in a post scarcity economy (a.k.a. abundance economy) now. Now, grass that’s already been eaten by some cows still has value to cows, forever. The grass never goes away and grass grows every day. It’s always green for the cows that want it, so long as you don’t put up a fence (which is futile). But this new world gets crazier; your cows can now occupy more space faster. They can be two places at once. Your patch of grass can also be your neighbors’ patches at the same time. These cows can teleport, man. It’s nuts out there.”
-- An essay by Zac Echola called “Generosity as a Business Model: In order to compete you must cooperate.” In it, Echola uses a cow analogy and others to illustrate the economy of abundance in online news, and what it may mean for news publishers.
Great quote, right?
But, it’s not really indicative of the tone or content of Zac’s essay, which is really quite good and definitely gets “worthy read” status. Instead of choosing a summarizing quote, I decided to go with something that would prompt readers would say, “What?! Huh?” and click on the link. We’ll see if it works.
I wanted to promote Zac’s essay in a more serious (and perhaps more fair) way by giving you a better idea of what it’s about.
“Generosity as a Business Model” focuses on the proliferation of online news sources and content, and what it may mean for online publishers going forward in terms of how to attract both readers and revenue.
Change happened to our industry and now we can’t continue making the same decisions. If we continue to keep quiet, we’re making a bad decision in the long run. We have to adapt our way of thinking to a new world model. We shouldn’t ask how change happened or what we could have done to stop it–the world we live in is a much more mathematically complex place than these games–we should ask how we can leverage our situation now.
Leveraging the situation involves making a number of decisions. Those decisions include:
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whether to share information and become a hub in the World Wide Web network, or hoard information and close your site off (hint: the answer is to share);
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how to – or whether to – collaborate with competing sites to maximize audience share in your market;
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how to look at the relative costs of distributing information (with a reference to Scott Anderson’s recent Wired article on this);
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and retooling ad models to maximize relevance, making advertising easy, granular and unbundled.
Zac’s essay details his thoughtful deliberations on all these decisions. By using rationale-based (crime) and economics (cow) analogies, he both aptly illustrates what has happened to the news industry online and puts a new and interesting spin on the conundrums publishers and online GMs are facing.
(Note: Zac works for Forum Communications and is a founding member of Wired Journalists.)
* The Online Publishing Update is a thrice-weekly e-mail newsletter that is just one of many benefits of becoming a member of NAA’s Digital Media Federation. To learn more,
click here. The archives are available here -- if you like what you see, please call NAA Member Services at (800) 656-4622 and ask to sign up!