Think about what that means. The amount of money being spent to produce content of interest to IT readers has been cut in half, and then maybe cut in half again. Can that content be as good? And, yes, I believe in the blogosphere and I believe in citizen journalists, so maybe that same content that an InfoWorld or one of its competitors might have published ten or fifteen years ago will today be posted by somebody who does it for free. But will you find it? And if you do find it, why would you trust it compared to other things that are posted that may contradict it?
Of course, it's not that there isn't still a lot of money being spent to advertise to IT readers - it's just that a lot of those advertising dollars are going to Google and Yahoo and others who don't actually have anything to do with producing the content. And your local newspaper has probably found its classified ad revenue decimated by eBay or Craigslist. Other kinds of print publications - maybe all kinds of print publications - face the same conundrum.
I'm not saying that the way ad revenues are distributed in the new paradigm is a bad thing - hey, that's just the way the world works now. Google, Craigslist, etc. are too valuable to all of us to say their revenue models have to take a backseat to how an InfoWorld used to make money. But doesn't it also mean that, more and more, that some of the content we used to love is soon to be out of print? Be it on dead trees or online, either somebody pays for the creation of the content or, ultimately, it will not be created.
Are you worried about who pays for the creation of content in the Google era? Write me at Foster@gripe2ed.com or phone the Gripe Line voice mail at 1 888 875-7916.
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