Robert Scoble compares old media's gatekeepers and expensive infrastructure to today's frictionless digital publishing. Distribution is no longer scarce, attention is. Amateur publishers move faster in real-time while professionals have resources and credibility, but monetization pressures push mainstream outlets toward sensational clickable coverage.
And new news happens here. And so I like this. This makes me feel like I'm seeing the news in real time, you know, up to date. So you take that, and then you get the iPad and you put it. Put the stream into Flipboard, and it makes it look like a beautiful newspaper. And the world has shifted. I can't imagine going back. I haven't read a paper. Newspaper and years. So that's. That's one way to look at it. The other way to look at it is, you know, if you look at TV or radio or news, anybody who owns a transmission tower, you know, which costs millions of dollars, and then you have to have an FCC license to spray the information through the airwaves. That's an expensive proposition. And it's a. A scarce proposition. There's only in San Francisco, there's only, you know what, four TV stations, really, that can do independent stuff. If I want to get my information on one of those four TV stations, I have to convince a committee. I have to convince an editorial board. Hey, my video that I shot on a camera like yours is good enough to go out in the real world. And convincing a committee is very, very difficult. I worked at Fast Company magazine. I know what that means. We have meetings to decide what goes in the magazine, what goes on the COVID what's the biggest article, how many words does each article get to have? Do we invest in a photographer to go cover that article? And even after all that, it's still three months before publication. It's still old when it gets done on Twitter and on blogs and on YouTube and on Facebook and Flickr and Quora. I don't have to convince a committee to distribute my information. If I want to put a video up like you're doing, I just put it up on YouTube. I don't have to convince a committee. That means publishing is frictionless, fast. And there's a lot more of it. Every minute, 48 hours of YouTube videos get uploaded. So there's far more videos to watch than you can possibly watch, right? So this supply. Now, there is no scarcity on supply because there's no scarcity on distribution anymore. So now what. What is scarce? My attention. My ability to pay attention to that tweet right there, because it's gone, right? In 10 seconds, that tweet, which is from Cirque du Soleil, is gone. And if you can't find a way to get me to care about it, then you're. You're not going to get read. You're not going to get you're not going to get distribution. And that's the new limiting thing. It's not the committee that's going to keep that tweet from getting on my screen. It's now you have to get me to care about that thing and that and that. And that's where the mainstream media is coming back. And there's this competition because people like me, I can publish a lot, but am I credible? Am I reliable? Do I have the best information? Do I have the best written information, the best produced information? If I have a photograph of a fire, is it the best photograph of that fire? Maybe not. Maybe somebody else who's a Pro has a $3,500 camera and maybe I'm shooting it on a little $300 camera. Maybe he has a press pass so he has access or she has access to the fire scene. Maybe he or she has built a relationship with the fire chief and so he or she can ask the fire chief what caused this fire. Did anybody die in the fire or was anybody hurt? I, as a guy who just is, you know, taking pictures with my iPhone, might not have the best story. And so there's going to be this friction back and forth for years between brands like the New York Times and people like me who are just putting stuff up on Twitter and Facebook and WordPress and YouTube, Flickr and stuff like that. But I'd much rather have this world where I can publish than have a world where there's gatekeepers and there's people who decide what's important to put out into the world. I'd much rather have this world of oversupply where I can see everybody's reaction in real time. I'd much rather have this world where I saw the Chinese earthquake 45 minutes before CNN reported it. And even after CNN reported it, it wasn't accurate or interesting or on the street or, or anything. Now after a day, they started doing better stories because they, they flew helicopters and satellite trucks and all the machinery that they have to cover stories into Chengdu, China and around, around China. So after a day, the amateurs were at a disadvantage to the pros, but that's switching. It's gonna be an interesting fight for another decade to see how this all works out. Okay, but the amateurs don't need to make money. Not necessarily, you know, not necessarily. But these professional journalists and they do need to make money. And that causes biases in their own reporting behaviors. And we're seeing this in the tech press for sure. The tech press will overcover Apple, you know, for instance, when Facebook's CEO spoke, there was one satellite truck. When Apple spoke, there was six or even more, maybe even 10. So why does Apple get six times more coverage than Facebook when Facebook has a billion users and Apple doesn't have a billion users, you know, they sold 100 million iPads, a few hundred million iPhones, right? So why is Apple being over covered? Because more people want to read news about Apple, so there's more payment for covering Apple. And this is why we get the news. We get, you know, why do we get Fox News? Why do we get the sensationalist news? Why don't we read it more stories about Syria or about Egypt or about the Middle east or about politics or about, you know, science. Why do we get more stories that are sensational about sex scandals and stuff like that? Because more people want to watch that news. And when they want to watch that news, they click on it. And when they click on it, the journalist or the journalistic organization gets paid because the ads on that page, you know, for instance, even on Facebook, right, There's ads, you know, the ads on that page. Every time I refresh that page, Facebook gets paid, right? And that's the whole game is to get you to refresh that page as often as possible. So it brings a bias to the work. Having to get paid brings a bias to the world of journalism, which is usually more sensationalist. And they have a very keen sense of what people want to are actually clicking on and they'll just give you more of that. And it leads our, our public discourse down a bad path because people get less educated and it's like feeding everybody McDonald's.
