Skip to main content

What's really killing newspapers: They're no longer the best ...

Popularity Report

Total Popularity Score: 0
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...

Rank

Public Sticky notes

Whether by design or chance, the social currency found in a newspaper has a relatively short shelf life. If you don't think so, try bringing up a pivotal play from a week-old baseball game over coffee or invoke a weather story from two days ago. Newspapers thrived, in part, because reading just one edition provided only a few cents' worth of social currency. Compounding your earnings requires that you read the damn thing nearly every day. Ignore a couple of issues, and you get left behind.

Highlighted by joethink

Not that long ago, the daily newspaper was an indispensable coiner of social currency

Highlighted by olifante

Not that long ago, the daily newspaper was an indispensable coiner of social currency, and it gave its readers piles of the stuff in each edition. The phrase, which comes from sociology, is often used to describe the information we acquire and then trade—or give away—to start, maintain, and nurture relationships with our fellow humans.

Highlighted by lampertina

Even folks who don't care for sports skimmed the sports pages for a little something about the games and athletes so they could engage in essential small-talk.

Highlighted by lampertina

on 2008-08-06 by lampertina

- "currency"

For as long as anybody can remember, the newspaper has been the primary info-hub through which people interacted. Oh, people might have talked to the shoe-shine man or their broker about what they heard on the radio or saw on television, but nothing could beat the newspaper as a source for socially lubricating conversation. How many times have you heard a conversation start, "Didja see that article ..."?

By sniffing the bits of social currency an acquaintance had withdrawn from the pages of his daily and was trying to cash—say, a quip about that picture of an egg frying on a city street the paper published; or a comment about a movie review or comic strip; or an opinion about local government based on a piece by a political columnist—the sniffer could learn reams about his social contact.

Highlighted by adukuri

nothing could beat the newspaper as a source for socially lubricating conversation. How many times have you heard a conversation start, "Didja see that article ..."?

Highlighted by lampertina

the social currency found in a newspaper has a relatively short shelf life.

Highlighted by olifante

By sniffing the bits of social currency an acquaintance had withdrawn from the pages of his daily and was trying to cash

Highlighted by lampertina

Newspapers thrived, in part, because reading just one edition provided only a few cents' worth of social currency. Compounding your earnings requires that you read the damn thing nearly every day.

Highlighted by olifante

the sniffer could learn reams about his social contact.

Highlighted by lampertina

news can "be used in a variety of interpersonal situations—to look smart, connect with friends and family and even move up the socio-economic ladder" and "maintain relationships."

Highlighted by lampertina

the social currency found in a newspaper has a relatively short shelf life.

Highlighted by lampertina

Newspapers thrived, in part, because reading just one edition provided only a few cents' worth of social currency. Compounding your earnings requires that you read the damn thing nearly every day. Ignore a couple of issues, and you get left behind.

Highlighted by lampertina

Other institutions do far better jobs at issuing social currency these days. What is Facebook but the Federal Reserve Bank of social currency?

Highlighted by olifante

to read a newspaper and then keep your trap shut is to miss the point: Newspapers are designed to be read and argued over. You've got to spend social currency to make social currency.

Highlighted by lampertina

on 2008-08-06 by lampertina

Well, and perhaps there's the rub: the places where you can "spend" your currency (and also create more currency yourself) have become distributed. That is, it used to be that newspapers were the one-stop shop you went to for acquisition of currency, which you then spent, and in the spending, compounded. But now you can acquire currency in several places, and furthermore, your "spending habits" have changed: they're distributed now.

Other institutions do far better jobs at issuing social currency these days.

Highlighted by lampertina

A well-executed Facebook presence, like a superb pontification at the bar or a great phone-in to sports talk radio, demonstrates one's status within one's existing social network.

Highlighted by lampertina

on 2008-08-06 by lampertina

- see last note (above): you (consumer) aren't just getting social currency by spending what you bought at the newspaper; you get it by creating your own, which also means that the creation of currency is distributed. Widely.

The social networking that takes place via instant messaging, microblogging, or e-mail further steals from newspapers the mindshare they once owned.

Highlighted by olifante

And the newspaper isn't the only media hub suffering in the new era. Radio, which once served a similar social role with its menu of music, news, and talk, is plummeting.

Highlighted by lampertina

the decline of newspapers has nothing to do with journalism and everything to do with the changing world.

Highlighted by lampertina

on 2008-08-06 by lampertina

Right! don't blame the bloggers (citizen journalists) or whomever; it's the structures/ contexts