Dave Winer, who writes the Scripting News page and has been a big supporter of Napster, emailed me these questions: Has the newspaper industry suffered because they’re giving away their copyrighted content on the Internet? Can the experience in this industry compare to what the music industry is experiencing?
Here’s how I replied:
Has the Net hurt newspapers? Depends how you look at it.
The Net is ideally suited to the news business as a medium of delivery, and it creates fabulous opportunities to do better journalism. Personally speaking, I can tell you it has also helped turn the Mercury News from a well-respected regional paper into an internationally recognized publication. In another era I might have left the paper by now, moving up the traditional food chain. In this era, where my column has a global audience that I often find astonishing and where I work in an organization that encourages experimentation (e.g.this eJournal), I’ve found great satisfaction in remaining where I am.
Conversely, the Net