Googlezon Update

[One of the reasons I do cover print media in this blog at times is that newspapers are an important glue for local communities. Local television covers little other than "murders, accidents, fires, sports, and weather" so it is difficult to garner much in the way of coverage on issues that matter in a community or a neighborhood. Also, activists tend to score highly on newspaper readership. ]



1. Today's New York Times (and Ad Age online), in "NYTimes.com to Offer Subscription Service," reports that in September, the Times will start charging for access to certain online features, in particular for access to their columnists, such as Tom Friedman (note: Friedman's new book The World is Flat is nothing new, e.g., see the book Global Work from 1994 or Competing for the Future from 1996, in 1997 maybe I heard C.K. Prahalad speak and he made the point that not only in an increasingly connected global economy you have "global customers" but also "global competitors"). They will join with the Wall Street Journal which also charges for online access, and the Los Angeles Times, which charges for access to its entertainment coverage.



2. Riots in Afghanistan and other countries over Newsweek's report that U.S. soldiers flushed a Koran down the toilet in guantanamo as part of interrogation practices shows that print matters and so does accuracy. (See "Newsweek Retracts Account of Koran Abuse by U.S. Military", from the New York Times.)

3. The New York Times reported on Saturday, in "College Libraries Set Aside Books in a Digital Age," that university libraries are moving more to digital publications, and away from books. Today's paper has a number of letters to the editor, under the title "Without Books on Paper, So Much is Lost". One, by a professor from Boston University, makes the point that his students that rely on the Internet for research rather than books produce weaker, less in-depth papers.

This shouldn't be a surprise. I've written about this for many years. It takes thousands of hours of research to produce a book, to hone the arguments and analysis, that in the end takes maybe 4-6 hours to read. But our investment of reading for 4-6 hours takes advantage of the thousands of hours expended by the author. This is but one area where intellectual property issues are important and why it's reasonable to spend money for a book because you are buying the analysis. It's just that people connote the value with the physical aspect of the book, when really it is the content that matters.