1 Good Reason – Social Marketing

Today Mark Cuban (Dallas Mavericks owner) wrote in digiday:Daily that newspapers need to kill the vampires who are sucking them dry.  He was referring to Google and other search engines who steal their content and distribute it for free.  He said in part:

“Unless users are typing in your URL, “people just default to Google. You reinforce actions that hurt your brand and reinforce Google’s brand.” Mark Cuban digiday:Daily

In my opinion this is an old school mentality that hasn’t realized that it’s dead yet.  If the NYT, or the WSJ or any other paper puts their info behind a pay wall, someone will simply paraphrase it under the fair use doctrine and distribute the news for free. 

Newspapers, and every other news organization need to realize that they don’t have a monopoly on news anymore.  Anyone with a cellphone, and the intelligence to use it is a reporter.

This week at Social Media Week NYC I’ve met literally dozens of out of work writers.  Copy writers, feature writers, this writers and that writers.  The reason they are out of work is that quite simply the art and skill of writing is suffering from over supply.  As a matter of fact, I’m writing right this very moment.  And anyone can do it today.

Mr. Cuban, and the rest of you old school journalists need to realize that the future is in aggregation.  Follow my buddy Saul Colt and check out Thoora.com and Alltop.com and Mashable.com for the future of journalism.

Give me 1 Good Reason why newspapers are still relevant in today’s world.

Posted via email from ckieff’s posterous