Yet Another Newspaper Publisher Blames Internet For His Own Failure To Adapt To The Times
Okay, this is really beginning to get tiresome. We thought that the newspaper industry had figured out that it needed to adapt to the times a few years ago when they finally started ditching subscription fees and registration gates.
Context & Ripple Effects
This piece extends an argument Techdirt has been making since at least February 2006, when it asked whether newspaper owners could really be that clueless about the web. The industry's own adaptation playbook was visible by then: publishers had dropped subscription fees and registration gates to chase online readership.
First-order effects
- The unnamed publisher's public blame-shifting marks him as a laggard within an industry that had already made the obvious first moves online — abandoning paid registration walls years earlier.
Second-order effects
- Publishers who internalize the 'blame the internet' framing cede the advertising migration to competitors willing to rebuild around free distribution, since ad dollars follow audience wherever the paywall used to be.
Third-order effects
- If enough executives treat the web as an external villain rather than a distribution shift they control, the industry's response stays reactive — setting up a split between papers that restructure and papers that simply run out of runway.
The trend: Newspaper publishing is splitting between owners who treat the internet as an excuse and those treating it as a distribution model to be rebuilt around.