http://www.opiniaoenoticia.com.br/interna.php?mat=2888
Um novo livro escrito por Glenn Reynolds diz que a existência de blogs fiscalizando diariamente a imprensa escrita causa medo e respeito aos jornalistas. É só cometer um pequeno erro e as acusações chegam imediatamente.
____________
O GLOBO
por Helena Celestino
12-mar-2006
http://oglobo.globo.com/jornal/economia/192237984.asp
‘Blogs’, a nova mania que
dá dinheiro nos EUA
NOVA YORK. Como milhares de universitários, Jen Chung, 29 anos, mandava
e-mails para seu grupo de colegas no curso de Economia da Columbia University,
com histórias interessantes de Nova York, fazendo críticas de restaurantes,
listas dos melhores shows de rock, descobrindo bares novos, contando o dia-a-dia
da cidade. Já formada e entediada com seu trabalho numa agência de publicidade,
criou um blog com seu ex-colega de faculdade, Jacke Dobkin, também de 29 anos.
Com a contribuição de milhares de “olheiros” pela cidade, acabaram fazendo um
completíssimo serviço de Nova York: “Gothamist” virou uma referência e hoje
ocupa o 90 lugar no ranking de 27 milhões de blogs que povoam a internet e
chegam a faturar US$ 1,5 milhão por ano.
Jen e Jacke são hoje blogueiros profissionais, ainda uma raridade nesta
congestionada nova mídia. Eles têm um escritório no Upper West Side, estão
montando uma rede de blogs cobrindo 15 cidades e vêm investindo pesadamente em
infra-estrutura e manutenção. “Gothamist” está ligado a centenas de outros
blogs, é visitado por 65 mil pessoas por dia, recebe de 1.500 a duas mil
contribuições diárias e tem entre seus anunciantes até o poderoso “The New York
Times”.
— Vasculhamos as várias mídias e postamos o que achamos interessante. Nos
últimos seis meses, nosso público cresceu 20% ao mês — conta Jen, evitando
detalhar quanto cobra pela publicidade de restaurantes, hotéis e do mercado
imobiliário estampada no seu site .
Eles fazem parte do blog boom , um fenômeno mundial. Tecnologia, sexo, política,
fofoca e serviço são as grandes atrações nesse planeta que primeiro
popularizou-se como espaço para adolescentes expressarem emoções mas já virou um
negócio capaz de fazer novos milionários e mexer com a mídia tradicional. A
grande maioria dos blogs é irrelevante, mas no meio de muita bobagem, há um
poderoso grupo de blogs Classe A com valor comercial e repercussão na vida
nacional, especialmente nos Estados Unidos.
Claro que os números ainda são modestos se comparados a outros ramos da
economia, mas o maior negócio já fechado por um blog chegou a US$ 25 milhões,
não exatamente uma soma desprezível: foi a compra pela AOL da Weblogs, uma
companhia guarda-chuva para vários blogs , cujo carro-chefe é o Engadget,
segundo no ranking da blogoesfera, editado pelo skatista punk Peter Rojas, um
obsessivo decifrador dos gadgets de nova tecnologia. Ele não conta quanto ganhou
nessa transação mas reconhece que tecnicamente não precisa mais trabalhar,
embora continue passando 80 horas por semana postando sem parar informações no
computador.
— Qualquer um pode começar um blog e fazê-lo crescer, mas é um trabalho
infernal. Começo antes do dia nascer e não paro até a hora do jantar — disse à
revista “New York”.
Os blogsmais importantes têm audiência equivalente a de revistas e jornais de
cidades de médio porte. Conseguem impor aos anunciantes uma tabela de preços que
varia muito mas a maioria tem como base o número de leitores.
Jornais e revistas perdem leitores, gravadoras são prejudicadas pela pirataria, cinemas perdem bilheteria. Na bolsa de valores de Nova Iorque as ações da Google já valem mais do que as da Disney, News Corporation e Viacom, três gigantes tradicionais, somadas.
http://www.opiniaoenoticia.com.br/
Old media
Jan 19th 2006
The Economist
“PAIN is temporary, film is forever.” That hopeful thought, which found its way into the original script of Peter Jackson's recent re-make of “King Kong”, might be seized upon by today's beleaguered entertainment industry. Media companies are suffering intense pain — and it is starting to seem worryingly permanent. In America shares of “old” media firms such as News Corporation, Comcast and other giants of television, film, radio and print, have fallen 25% behind the S&P 500 in the past two years, despite some heroic financial results. Meanwhile, the market value of Google, which made its debut on the stockmarket in 2004, is now equal to the combined worth of Walt Disney, News Corporation and Viacom, three beasts of the old media jungle. One investor, who recently moved two-thirds of his $1 billion fund out of American media and into emerging-market companies, moans that “the market thinks something's going to get them, whether it's piracy, personal video recorders, or Google.”
Desperate to rescue its share price, Viacom broke itself in two on January 3rd. Time Warner, the biggest media group of all, is under attack from Carl Icahn, a corporate predator perfectly adapted to sniff out the weak and vulnerable. The big groups have seen their newspapers and magazines lose readers and advertising to the internet; their music businesses suffer piracy and falling sales; and someone else's video games captivate new generations of consumers. Now come fears about film and TV, the bedrock of their business.
Hollywood took 7% less at the box office in 2005 than in 2004 and growth in sales of DVDs has slowed. Internet video threatens the satellite and cable systems of companies such as News Corporation and Time Warner. Dozens of advertisers are shifting budgets from television to such places as the internet and billboards. Brand-owners hate it that people are using digital video recorders to avoid their pitches. And if media firms move on to the internet themselves, they risk losing their films and television programmes to pirates.
No wonder that on media island they are downcast. Yet, if Hollywood teaches one thing, it is that stories can be re-made and dreams can come true. Rather as big retailers, including Wal-Mart and Tesco, have discovered advantages online, so too will big media companies.
True, the internet and digital devices will eventually break those companies' grip on distribution. But they gain something else: a digital world in which what you supply matters far more than how you supply it. In satellite radio, for example, Sirius has crept up on XM Satellite Radio thanks chiefly to its content, in the controversial form of Howard Stern. And this world holds another promise, too: an abundance of virtually costless ways to supply consumers with what they want to watch, whenever they want it—things established media are ideally placed to provide.
The internet is still in the digital equivalent of the silent-film era. It has been formidable for text, still images and music, but is only now, with broadband access, entering an age of high-quality video. As it does so, Time Warner, News Corporation, Disney and other media companies will be able to cash in on their film and television archives. Selling video direct to consumers, without distribution getting in the way, lets media firms, and viewers, mine their vaults for old episodes of “The Outer Limits”, Johnny Carson, or whatever: minority tastes, to be sure, but taken together, a vast new market.
Moreover, old media will command audiences for many years yet. New media understand this: Google has just bought dMarc, which sells old-fashioned radio advertising. Websites, such as BabyCenter.com and AlwaysOn, have recently launched print-magazine versions of themselves, to capture advertising that was out of their reach online. As the best remaining source of a mass audience, TV and film are the best places to create and promote the next “Simpsons” or “Narnia”.
Some people worry that new media companies may over time shunt old ones aside as producers of content. Certainly, digital media will create new stars and new businesses, but making high-quality video content will always be a daunting and expensive task. Music or a blog can be composed from a bedroom, but not an episode of “Friends”. Just last month DreamWorks, Hollywood's youngest studio, sold itself to Viacom, despite its strong financial backing and the talent of Hollywood luminaries. It made some money, but could not afford a billion-dollar investment in films year-in, year-out. Yahoo! has a media unit, but so far it hasn't had any hits. Responding to the news this week that Yahoo! intends to spend up to $10m on a reality-TV concept called “The Runner”, analysts complained that the investment would damage its margins.
By contrast with Yahoo!'s dabbling, old media is now investing in digital media in earnest. It all went terribly wrong before 2000 when bewitched executives squandered money on the internet and Time Warner sold itself to AOL in one of history's worst-ever deals. But now they are back. Rupert Murdoch, chief executive of News Corporation, made a series of acquisitions in 2005 (see article). Disney is supplying two hits, “Desperate Housewives” and “Lost”, using Apple's iTunes download service. Last summer Viacom bought Neopets.com, a virtual-pets site. Old media is well placed to steer its huge offline audiences to its websites.
Helpfully on cue, piracy now seems less of a threat. The music industry now has a healthy business in legal downloads. Operators of peer-to-peer networks, such as eDonkey, are going straight. And Hollywood is realising that it has no equivalent to a big musical weakness—that many albums consist of a few decent tracks padded by dross.
Any media business has two products to sell: its content (to readers and viewers); and its audience (to advertisers). The task for old media is first to protect its advertising revenues by amassing audiences online and, second, to offset their viewers' intolerance of mass-advertising by making them pay more for content—which they are increasingly willing to do. It will not be easy, but then saving the heroine never was.