Numi – "Say Everything!"

Media execs make case for online fees at FTC panel

WASHINGTON -Media companies need to deliver compelling information on a variety of electronic devices and overcome readers’ resistance to paying for material online, news executives said Tuesday at a government-sponsored journalism conference. Rupert Murdoch, News Corp.’s chairman and chief executive, sees a promising future for publishers that can adapt to the Internet age. Key to survival, he said, is giving consumers what they want, how they want it — be it on a computer, mobile device or e-reader — and then charging for it, as his company does with The Wall Street Journal. “We need to do a better job of persuading consumers that high-quality, reliable news and information does not come free,” Murdoch said. “Good journalism is an expensive commodity.”

via Media execs make case for online fees at FTC panel by AP: Yahoo! Tech.

I was a young boy sitting on my fathers lap, another lazy Sunday morning. What could be better than good coffee and hot fresh Italian bread with butter, while reading the comics. I couldn’t have been more than four or five. It was at this tender time in my young life I was told one of the most important rights that being an American holds. How the “News” worked.

My father said that even though the paper cost almost nothing to buy. The people that owned the paper companies still made a good dime. See all those pretty pictures and fancy designs that I loved to look at; advertising! That was the money giant although I didn’t know it at the time.

He never really got into the economics of it all. I could have cared less because this little guy named Ziggy was my new best friend. I remember I wasn’t much older when it all came together for me, all my good common sense. But it’s what he said next that I always took in literal context. He said; mostly the reason newspapers were so cheap, was so that everyone could know what was going on in the world around them; not just the socially and financially elite.

I walked past a Library today wondering if pushing things out of print was really a smart thing. After all what youngster today wouldn’t much prefer streaming a report while they lay on the lawn in New York City’s Central Park. Than spend their day in some old Library thumbing through dusty text books. No cut, no paste. No drag & drop?  WTF??

Now here we are as the literary world is a buzz debating the fate of the printed word, and if indeed it will become extinct, as it almost once was. I guess the pro’s to the Con’s are that readership is way up. So we know there’s no shortage of those big corporate advertising bucks.

I’m not quite sure how to take this so feel free to help me out. Moguls like Rupert Murdoch are advocating market strategies directed to inflict addiction to digital media; why because the mountain of money that advertising builds up is no longer high enough. They decide now to milk the cow at both ends, standing on the backs of their constituency to nudge their way up.

Once the News is taken out of print and we can’t even read what’s been thrown in the streets, what becomes of those who can’t pay to read. I guess the income potential is so great it really doesn’t matter anyway, or so they think.

So do you suppose we are going to take the bait. Allow them to lead us all down the road into “Information CyberWaste”  Once the Murdoch’s and those squanderer’s have us in their clutches, will you be afforded the luxury to Read, Write, and Wonder.

“Yes, how times have changed; but the story remains the same.”

If you ask me whether I think writers/journalists are entitled to be paid for their talents. I tender you a resounding yes! Like any artist lives more-or-less. Free to earn whatever the demand for their discipline may earn them. Out for hire to the highest bidder.

But I believe as artist, like doctors we have a higher obligation to those within whom we are able to practice our craft. Not to place wealth one could not spend in ten generations above your art, compassion and humanity. Do they really need to take the last fuckin can of “Who Hash” away?

As most of us sit here day to day struggling to survive. Taking benefit and wage Cuts into the double digits. The fact is, if the aristocracy earned just one percent of their Profits less, say nineteen instead of twenty percent. There would be enough to save the whole world from this awful mess; and we could all move together steadily up the chain of progress. With greed being so unique to humanity; I wouldn’t hold my breath…

Those who posses skills and use them for power, are not in fact artists; they are merely talent for hire.

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