Extraordinary Observations: Economics of the News

Rob Pitingolo.org:

"...(W)hat the internet has done is glut the market for editorials. Where it used to be that you had to be a hired columnist or get past the gatekeepers of the editorial page to get your work published; now anyone with a computer and some opinions can disseminate their thoughts instantly to the world. The market for editorials has indeed become a perfectly competitive market; and this in and of itself isn't necessarily a bad thing.

The market for news, on the other hand, is a natural oligopoly. Even the best bloggers and citizen journalists simply don't have the resources to engage in investigative reporting or break news stories on a consistent basis. This type of operation has huge barriers to entry; it requires large amounts of capital, and it requires time to build credibility and gain access to places typically reserved for traditional media. For bloggers whose primary career is something other than full-time journalism, we can't ever expect them to fill in these gaps.

The problem , perhaps, lies with the fact that economists are still lumping these two markets together and trying to analyze it as such."