If you work in print media, at least: read Walter Isaacson’s cover story in Time Magazine, “How to Save Your Newspaper.”
See, it’s the cover story in Time Magazine., written by the former managing editor of Time. And after a fairly promising start summarizing the importance of journalism and how we got into this mess, the solution proferred is, essentially, that somebody should figure out a way to make micropayments work.
To put it another way, Time magazine’s cover story solution to the crisis in journalism: somebody should do something!
This is not an industry in crisis. This is an industry in its death throes.
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In the same article, we learn:
One of history’s ironies is that hypertext — an embedded Web link that refers you to another page or site — had been invented by Ted Nelson in the early 1960s with the goal of enabling micropayments for content. He wanted to make sure that the people who created good stuff got rewarded for it. In his vision, all links on a page would facilitate the accrual of small, automatic payments for whatever content was accessed.
File that under Things That Did Not Work Out as Planned.