Breaking newspapers apart, one column at a time…

My friend Sam, who I’m in Gamages Model Train Club with, mentioned this in email conversation…

“do you read helen lindvall’s columns in the guardian? i think they’re fascinating, and i suspect you might find them interesting too:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/heliennelindvall

[Disclosure… The Guardian are a beloved PHD client, of course (they were our founding client in 1990)]

So off I pop to the link, have a wee read through a column or two, and take the RSS feed and drop it into my reader…

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It’s another great example of how newspapers need a new model to support their future

Sam likes something, sends it onto me.  I also like it, so we’re now both signed up, and we’ll probably tell more folk.  The ease with which the site allows you to

But neither of us are buying the paper because of it, nor actually visiting the website where we might see some ads which would help pay for it.  Yet we now both very much want the column to continue…

…how’s that going to work, then?

From the Clay Shirky article again:

“The old stuff gets broken faster than the new stuff is put in its place. The importance of any given experiment isn’t apparent at the moment it appears; big changes stall, small changes spread. Even the revolutionaries can’t predict what will happen. Agreements on all sides that core institutions must be protected are rendered meaningless by the very people doing the agreeing.”

I think there’s very probably a model out there already, being used somewhere for something that’ll eventually become the new model to support journalism…

…the trick of course is spotting what it is.  In order to do that, you’ve just got to try lots and lots of new things out.

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