Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
“The Gambler” (sf about future journalism)
Paolo Bacigalupi, pyrsamples.blogspot.com
Paolo Bacigalupi is one of the most exciting of the new breed of short story writers, one whose ecological focus, unflinching penchant for hard truth, and exacting prose is garnering attention inside and outside of the genre. Speaking of “The Gambler,” he says, “Given the unfavorable market forces currently swamping the print news industry, it seems like an opportune moment to consider what a new media landscape might feel like if/when its technologies become completely ascendant. ‘The Gambler’ was partly inspired by my work as an online editor at High Country News, where one of my jobs was to plan for a digital future. The promises and perils of the technologies I was working with turned out to be fertile ground for a story.”
(24 November 2008)
A scary story, but it isn’t really about the online future.
It’s about a news & entertainment system which is driven by ratings, advertising revenues and passive spectators. In other words, it’s about TELEVISION!
Despite the online jargon and gadgets in the story, it doesn’t capture the real nature of the Web, except in one section:
“Only those of us who are Lao exiles from the March Purge really read these blogs. It is much as when we lived in the capital. The blogs are the rumors that we used to whisper to one another. Now we publish our whispers over the net and join mailing lists instead of secret coffee groups, but it is the same. It is family, as much as any of us now have. “
In the real online world, the hero (Ong) would have a website with a small but devoted readership, on which he could post his articles on checkerspot butterflies and Thoreau. The biologists and environmentalists would contribute articles and discuss them in a forum. Ong would probably not be able to earn a living from the site at first, but if he kept at it, he would develop a reputation and opportunities would open up.
End Times (for the NY Times?)
Michael Hirschorn, Atlantic
… But what if the old media dies much more quickly [then currently envisioned]? What if a hurricane comes along and obliterates the dunes entirely? Specifically, what if The New York Times goes out of business—like, this May?
It’s certainly plausible. Earnings reports released by the New York Times Company in October indicate that drastic measures will have to be taken over the next five months or the paper will default on some $400million in debt. With more than $1billion in debt already on the books, only $46million in cash reserves as of October, and no clear way to tap into the capital markets (the company’s debt was recently reduced to junk status), the paper’s future doesn’t look good.
… Most likely, the interim step for The Times and other newspapers will be to move to digital-only distribution (perhaps preserving the more profitable Sunday editions). Already, most readers of The Times are consuming it online.
… What would a post-print Times look like? Forced to make a Web-based strategy profitable, a reconstructed Web site could start mixing original reportage with Times-endorsed reporting from other outlets with straight-up aggregation.
… Regardless of what happens over the next few months, The Times is destined for significant and traumatic change. At some point soon—sooner than most of us think—the print edition, and with it The Times as we know it, will no longer exist. And it will likely have plenty of company. In December, the Fitch Ratings service, which monitors the health of media companies, predicted a widespread newspaper die-off: “Fitch believes more newspapers and newspaper groups will default, be shut down and be liquidated in 2009 and several cities could go without a daily print newspaper by 2010.”
… In this scenario, nytimes.com would begin to resemble a bigger, better, and less partisan version of the Huffington Post, which, until someone smarter or more deep-pocketed comes along, is the prototype for the future of journalism: a healthy dose of aggregation, a wide range of contributors, and a growing offering of original reporting. This combination has allowed the HuffPo to digest the news that matters most to its readers at minimal cost, while it focuses resources in the highest-impact areas. What the HuffPo does not have, at least not yet, is a roster of contributors who can set agendas, conduct in-depth investigations, or break high-level news. But the post-print Times still would.
Clearly, over the short run, there would be a culling of the journalistic herd. If 80 percent of The Times staff ends up laid off, many of them won’t find their way to new reporting jobs. But over the long run, a world in which journalism is no longer weighed down by the need to fold an omnibus news product into a larger lifestyle-tastic package might turn out to be one in which actual reportage could make the case for why it matters, and why it might even be worth paying for. The best journalists will survive, and eventually thrive. Some will be snapped up by an expanding HuffPo (which is raising millions while its print competitors tank) and by the inevitable competitors that will spring up to imitate its business model, or even by smaller outlets, like Talking Points Memo, which have found that keeping their overhead low allows them to profit from high-quality journalism. And some will succeed as independent operators.
… Ultimately, the death of The New YorkTimes—or at least its print edition—would be a sentimental moment, and a severe blow to American journalism. But a disaster? In the long run, maybe not.
(January/February 2009)
New website — Mother Nature Network
MNN
About Us
Welcome to Mother Nature Network – environmental news and information that makes sense.
MNN wasn’t designed for scientists or experts. It was created for the rest of us, the regular person who wants information written and created in a way that everyone can understand – both in personal pursuits and business decisions.
We’re your one-stop resource and an everyman’s eco-guide offering original programs, articles, blogs, videos, and how-to guides along with breaking news stories.
(January 2009)
A professionally produced commercial effort. One of their bloggers, Jim Motavalli, is aware of peak oil: Cheap oil: Don’t count on it
