Susan Mernit’s take on the ONA convention is more about print media than ONA.
I think this about sums her point:
Maybe it’s because I work with people in the industry, but I think most of the smarter people in online news grasp the sea changes going on–my sense is that the problems are not (just) about the people, but about the profitable, hard to refocus legacy businesses called print media that publishers are loathe to abandon till the money goings straight down the drain.
At the rate of change, it’ll take a Bubble 2.0 crash for the print media to hang in the race.
We’ve gotten good at shoveling and the bundled sell, but we haven’t moved much beyond that in how many years?
Yes, we have heard the “We’ll rule the World” hype from the Web 2.0 crowd before. Some of these three-geeks-and-a-Web-site folks should read Michael Wolff’s 1998 “Burn Rate” for the first time. Ninety percent or more of them are hot wood stoves for VC cash with hype for heat.
Who will be the survivors with sustainable business models? Any nominees?