The more you self-reference, pick feuds and talk about the failure of TimesSelect, the better you’re doing. If you make it sound like you’re the one who figured out newspapers are dying, you win. I mean, the point’s not to fix anything. It’s to describe the problem more dramatically than the next guy… Basically, imagine a group of people watching a building burn down and bickering amongst themselves about whether it’s a conflagration or an inferno. It’s like that, but with consulting fees.
It seems the more time I spend on Twitter and such, looking at what people are saying about my industry, the less new I find. Not because I’m better informed. Because, like Paul Dailing makes humorously clear, most people are just talking rather than thinking. And too many of those who are thinking are thinking more about how to create a new business model rather than a new reader model. They are more concerned about sustainable audience rather than sustainable journalism.