Two Takes On The Future of Media: Rubert Murdoch and Clay Shirky

Today I happened upon these two videos in which two experts share their take on (among many other things) the future of the media. The two experts are old-school media magnate Rupert Murdoch, often called one of the most influential people in the media industry; and NYU professor Clay Shirky, who I think is one of the most brilliant thinkers on the topic of how media work nowadays and will be working a few years from now. (You can tell I’m biased, and strongly so.)

What you’ll see in the videos are two judgments (or rather: worldviews) that couldn’t be more different. Murdoch argues that the audience should be charged for news, and that search engines shouldn’t be allowed to “grab our content and run” (i.e. to index it). Shirky on the other hand says that newspapers probably can’t be saved and moves on to save journalism instead, and putting up a paywall certainly doesn’t enter the equation there.

But watch for yourself, you’ll be entertained (by the first video) and enlightened (by the second).

(via boingboing)


(via netzpolitik.org)

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