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That's an interesting point, Daniel -- I don't know enough about UK papers to know whether that's true, but it's an interesting theory.

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Ha ha I am not puting my site on this comment good luck catching me! Hack/crack the planet! You think some stubid law is goig to stop us. She is just asking to be ddosed infact who wants to jion my Ddos party on her!!! Get your bot nets ready skiddies. This law shall have no effect we keep on cracking any new shareware open source 4 ever! >_>

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What strikes me about all of these discussions is that they are, understandably I suppose, so US-centric. UK newspapers, as I understand it, are far less precarious than their US counterparts, because they are and always have been relatively less dependent on advertising. The most recent circulation figures I could find show a modest decline for most UK papers from late '07 to late '08 but nothing cataclysmic.

I'm speculating here, but perhaps it's because, love them or hate them, the UK papers have always been a bit more blog-like in their approach. That is, they are opinionated, outspoken, take a moral and ideological stance, and are unafraid of upsetting, for example, the Prime Minister's handlers, in the same way that US papers generally act in a subservient way to the White House, etc.

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i spending my life infront of computer, sometimes my wife jealous

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Thanks, Rebecca.

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As a former journalist, I watched coworker after coworker get laid off and magazine after magazine shut down. We finally had to really focus on our online sites, SEO, keyword discovery and our content aggregation, which made our online numbers skyrocket. Our reader were receiving up-to-date info almost immediately after it broke, making them better informed and making us industry leaders. I definitely agree with you that the forcing of industrial media to make the move to online is absolutely producing better journalism. Excellent post.

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ewwwwwwwww

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Hello, for a long time I read your blog, thanks for that that write interesting and
useful posts.I consider that blogers it is possible to name many journalists.

Good luck

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I couldn't agree more -- the focus on the "paper" part of the equation
is no different than the railways' focus on the "rail" part of their
business. There are other similarities as well -- high fixed costs for
infrastructure, for example :-)

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Back in 1960 when marketing was the new big thing, Theodore Levitt wrote his classic piece in HBR: "Marketing Myopia". In it he used the example of the decline of the railroads and their failure to realise they are in the transportation business not the business of railroads.

The fixation on the "death of newspapers" represents a similarly myopic view. As long as newspaper organizations focus on defending their newspapers rather than defining their real business, they are doomed to be replaced by those that do.

Not suggesting it's easy or simple. Nonetheless, it's the critical issue to those companies' survival.

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That's a good point, Brian. Those two parts hit me as well. Thanks for the comment.

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Thanks for the comment, Darren. I fall into much the same camp myself -- and I may just start looking at iTunes again as a place to shop.

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Two things that stood out most for me in the Atlantic article were a) Hirschorn's suggestion that we underestimate the possibility of an instantaneous crash (as we saw happen to investment banks... oh those black swans) and b) newspapers have "trained" readers to undervalue journalists and "undermined the perceived value of serious newspaper journalism," so the papers' profit centres (and therefore business models) consist of content people enjoy a lot when it's there but "isn’t the sort of thing you miss when it’s gone."

Now that I'm writing it out like this I wonder how much of an analogy there is between the news industry and the banking industry -- both shifting too far away from their core businesses and getting too bloated with stuff derived and repackaged.

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He's right about nearly nobody caring, and that no Normal Humans know or care about DRM. I'm the geeky exception, having bought precious few songs from iTunes. On the other hand, I've bought over 1000 DRM-free songs from eMusic. As eMusic mostly features independent artists, this has the added benefit of supporting bands that most need the money.

Now that iTunes is going DRM-free, I'll be able to pay a little more attention to the major labels again. Possibly to the detriment of my eMusic subscription.

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Thanks -- not surprisingly, I disagree on the "disgusting blood-sucker" part of your comment. I'm just interested in the issue itself, not the traffic.

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I think you're a disgusting blood sucker, looking for drama to drive clicks to your site.

The illusion of Apple's credibility problem is invented by the media, and by relationship, you. There would be a credibility problem if Apple had blatantly lied. I don't think they have. A hormone imbalance isn't deathly sick, it's something *millions* of people suffer - sometimes making them TOO FAT, not just too skinny. I suppose millions of executives with Thyroid conditions should be making SEC declarations now?

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Thanks for the comment, Trevor. I think you are right about the pressures a company faces, and the red tape that is often involved before something is said -- but I think people are somewhat less forgiving about that kind of thing than they used to be, now that virtually instant communication is possible. Even a simple statement could have saved the company a lot of pain.

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Thanks, er... Emperor :-)

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That's an excellent point, Gillie -- thanks for the comment.

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I totally agree with your premise (and also have admiration and respect for Jobs and the company, and hope the health issues are resolved as simply as Mr. Jobs suggests they will be).

It is not just the share price that is at stake here (although it's a compelling argument that Apple should consider being honest about the health of its CEO). Many of us learned in rudimentary economics that goodwill is often reflected in the share price of a company, and by the premium consumers are willing to pay to get the brand.

There is also another type of goodwill at stake here: the communications "goodwill" of the company. It can be easily eroded by companies that change the story from week to week, and by spokespeople that are not empowered or who clearly are not trusted enough to be given the truth.

Having a charismatic, proven leader (like Steve Jobs) may help companies who ignore the tenets of good communication to weather certain storms, but if and when that leader steps aside, for any reason, there is a danger that there is no communications "goodwill" left in the kitty, which can make it very hard for companies to generate the kind of "press" and feedback required to hire the best people, generate excitement among buyers, win the trust of bankers, etc etc .

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It’s not surprising that Apple has been slow to reveal the exact details of Steve Jobs’ health. These types of material announcements need to be carefully managed by the communications team which includes the oftentimes slow navigation through the C-suite, legal department and Board. But as you accurately point out, the slow unveiling of bad corporate news impacts credibility.

Big, publicly traded companies, and government, for better or for worse, tend to slowly release bad news. This drawn out method of releasing important news certainly gets in the way of credibility, authenticity and transparency. However, I don’t think the objective is always to obfuscate the truth. Few people hurry to share bad news, including the leaders at big companies and government. This is a fact of life. That said, whether the internal foot dragging is meant to hide the facts or is the result of human nature and denial, taking too long to share bad news impacts credibility.

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Charles, for me the key point in this whole thing was the decision for someone other than Steve Jobs to deliver the keynote at the Macworld Expo. I just re-read Apple's press release at the time, and it simply stated "Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, will deliver the opening keynote for this year’s Macworld Conference & Expo." That's it. In my view, there was a clear omission of information there.

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Zach, there is a pattern of past stretching of the truth or whatever you call it. Previously Apple said that Jobs was fine, but that's not the case. Now Apple says that Jobs should be fine by the spring; once burned, twice shy?

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I got here via Steven Hodson's post on The Inquisitr, and I agree that this was material information that should have been disclosed back in 2008. Even if the doctors didn't know the cause of Jobs' weight loss at the time the Macworld keynote decision was made, it would have been better for Apple and Jobs to say something rather than nothing.

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Thanks for the comment, Brian. Well said.

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