Is he serious? Search engines will only direct users back to Murdoch’s websites.

So everyone knows: websites can very easily opt out of being indexed by search engines. It’s just a matter of putting a statement in the website which is hidden to the viewer, but visible to the search engine, saying that it doesn’t want to be indexed.

Who cares? He is already a Billionare

News? What Murdoch and the MSM spews isn’t news, it’s propaganda. Google that ’til hell freezes over for all I care.

I primarily read the NYT online (something I never thought I would do) and listen to NPR. I think I should pay for both, even though I am very aware of the advertising on the NYT website, which is more in my face than NPRs ads are in my ears. Currently I only pay for NPR because the NYT hasn’t really come up with a model to propose to me. I think it is essential that we all support real, objective news gathering, particularly investigative reporting. If left to corporations, we get exactly what we are getting in the way of FOX, etc. That’s not journalism. The concept of “the fourth branch” should be much more emphasized in the education of our population– at all levels.

This is less of a comment and more of a suggestion.

It sounds to me that your sound levels are set way too high. Everyone’s voices are breaking up when they get loud.

Advertising as the financial support of content worked in the days when Mr. Gimbel couldn’t figure out which half of his advertising was wasted. That “fat” made the business possible. Digital technology, with its transparency, makes it impossible to hide the “fat” — and unfortunately it is that “fat” that supports a news operation (which is more muscle than fat but this is an imperfect analogy). Google kills the margins for everyone except Google.

The question you need to ask is: are Jeff Jarvis and Michael Wolfe prepared to work for free? I doubt they are, but in advocating “free” as a business model the are contributing to the downward pressure on what news content creators get paid until it reaches the point where only free workers are left.

Newspapers may not be dead yet, but civility certainly is. Micheal Wolff seems determined to prove this by rudely interrupting everyone on the show.

I don’t care how informative these guests may be, if I wanted to listen to grown men bitch at each other, I would turn on fox news. Do not have them back, PLEASE!

I don’t forsee paying for online content being viable as long as there is a disconnect between seeing it immediately, and ‘buying’ it. Perhaps when some form of online an payment account is implemented, it will be more possible. For example, a system built into the web browser; the user pre-loads real money into an account that they have set up, and when they go to view a document or article, it has a price attatched. Click, confirm “yes, I want to pay ‘X’ for this” and read away. Keep a display of the current account balance on the screen, and people can control their spending, accessing content immediately without everything having to be free.

I read the Washington Post online. The advertising there requires me to sit through 15 second commercials to get a story. Is this online newspaper having success in funding their online content with their advertising?

Mr. Wolf,
I humbly suggest you learn something about effective communication. To paraphrase Ralph Waldo Emerson: “You’re speaking so arrogantly I can’t hear what you’re saying.”

the behavior of these two guests is profoundly obnoxious. the content of their arguments is irrelevant: i can’t stand to listen to them.

Mr. Wollf needs to learn how to leave his ego at the door and speak respectfully. He is taking away from his points and does not help clarify the debate.

How about some turnabout? How long would it take Murdoch to shout “Uncle,” should Google block access from Google to any Murdoch site!?

I wish the speakers, especially Michael Wolf– would stop interrupting each other and Mr. Ashbrook. I’m turning my radio off now– definitely not the level of discussion I expect to hear on NPR.

Michael Wolff may have some good points, but he’s a horrible guest – wasting air time by acting like a child. I had to turn the show off.

Sorry – but if they talk over one more listener in an insulting way I’m turning it off.

Don’t forget that with the internet, competition will bury those who stand in the way. When I read news on-line, it is usually from a link external to the news organization. If I have to *even think* about registering to view the web side, let alone paying for it, I immediately go elsewhere. In the heyday of the newspaper, I was stuck with whatever my city papers provided, not anymore.

I think it’s very ironic that all these people are yelling much more than I have ever heard on On Point, mimicing the tactics of many pundits on Fox News.

Relieved to see the listeners feel as I do – please don’t ever invite these men back – send them to Fox. They’re horrible guests and no matter how important the conversation is, it’s not worth the discussion or lack of with these men.

Please don’t have Mr. Wolff back on this show. He’s a blow-hard and bully. And like all such people, evinces a brittleness and defensiveness which undermines his position, and underscores his intellectual dishonesty. Plus, he’s just an insufferable prick. I don’t tune in to On Point for food fights. Tom’s a great moderator, but sometimes he needs to send the little kids to the kids’ table.

Mr. Jarvis and Mr. Wolfe need to note that humans have two ears and one mouth. Gentlemen, and I use term loosely after listening to this hour, note the ratio. High-speed bloviation isn’t the same as discussion. Please let the listeners speak. If voices like Jarvis and Wolfe’s are the future of news creation, we are in for dark days.

I love On Point and listen to it whenever I can. I’ve never before been compelled to comment on this site before today’s show, but I feel I must add my voice to the many here who have already complained about Mr. Wolf’s behavior this hour. He has shown no respect for the other contributors to today’s show, and has distracted from the important conversation I tuned in to hear.

(For what it’s worth, I’m a liberal who generally despises Rupert Murdoch. Oh well.)

Tom,
Take back your show! I’ve never turned a program off before, but I am doing so now because you aren’t controlling your guests. It’s as simple as “I will call on you when it’s your turn to talk.” Michael Wolff, in particular, is walking over everyone, and attacking people personally instead of their ideas. He’s even interrupting callers in mid-sentence. Someone needs to wrangle these inflated egos if they’re going to be allowed to speak on the show. I didn’t know this was one of those programs where the point is to malign one another at top volume. I expect more from On Point and from Mr. Ashbrook as a moderator. Please consider setting up guidelines with your guests before beginning a conversation so this doesn’t happen again. Today’s show was a train-wreck and a wasted opportunity to discuss an important topic.
-Simon Joyner (Omaha, Nebraska)

Interesting discussion this morning, though Mr. Wolff has done himself no favors by his antagonistic sparring /interrupting of Mr. Brill.

I happen to believe we are willing to pay for content, but do have problems with the way Mr. Murdoch does so with his WSJ.com. I’m a paid subscriber to both his paper and the online edition, and have been more than aggravated when I(and it’s an option on the site) share a story on Facebook, only to have friends who are non-subscribers not be able to read past the 2nd or 3rd paragraph. In this regard, I think you’re more likely to alienate/turn off potential customers.

I am not a fan of Mr. Murdoch’s.
I am a fan of civil discussion.
There sure wasn’t a lot of it during the show this morning.
Mr. Wolff came off as extremely arrogant.
He mentioned that he teaches at CUNY, glad I am not a student in one of his classes.

Robot.txt — One file is all that Murdoch needs to add to their domains. All this media frenzy is about putting one file on the domains. Is the general public so stupid to think that this is a hard thing to keep search engines from grabbing content. You do not need to do anything more than add Robot.txt with a few lines of code to keep your content from Google, Bing, Yahoo or any other searching function app on the internet.

Jeez people. Seriously, just one file.

Wolff may have a point through all his bombast–it’s hard to see any long term future for most major newspapers, but as much as he decries the religion of newspapers, and points out the decline of objective, in-depth and original reporting in newspapers, so his site Newsers dumbs news down to microbits that are as noisy as he is.

The Boston’s Globe subscription rate hikes have forced me to cancel delivery, and I tell ya I miss that daily newspaper as much as I miss civil discourse. That was a religion I could believe in.

That the rate base model doesn’t work anymore for newspapers is intriguing, in that it isn’t working for most online news publishers either–yet. If the inflection point isn’t reached soon, walled content may re-appear as a measure of desperation. That will be a self-defeating move, as NYT and others have discovered.

So I have to agree with Wolff’s major premise, even though he’s clearly a schmuck.

All that shouting, I don’t work at the pork belly market so my ears couldn’t keep up. Hearing aids don’t help when the crosstalk is in the radio. What did they say? Nothing about how easy it is for Rupert to pull his content off the net.

What fool calls Googles content “free”? “Free” content has to be predicated on the access point. For which I pay my internet provider. When I watch TV, I pay for the access to the cable company. They are the distributor. When I want to use the internet, I pay the provider (distributor).
RADIO is the only access provider (distributor) that I consider “Free.” I pay NPR what I want to, when I feel I can afford to compensate them for the service of distribution.
If Murdoch thinks I get it “Free” then He is misinformed on how the process of distribution works.
Advertizers pay for the distribution, and I pay them when I purchase the product.
Newspapers are just the delivery system. I stopped paying for newspapers because they are not efficient and I have to wade through too much of what I do not read.
I hope the billionaire can make the profit he feels he is worth. But the magic is already done. The genie is out of the bottle. Someone more inteligent will make the profit. And that will be the next evolutionary phase of distribution for profit. I am not an economist, but I think that is the nature of free market capitalism.
Murdoch has not a clue as to find a way to make the business model produce a profit and that is His frustration. Who cares? Bury him.

I agree with the others, these guests are rude, obnoxious, narcissistic and juvenile. I’m surprised that OnPoint invited these people.

Mr. Ashbrook,
I love your show and great job you handled the situation well today. Its hard to control when kids fight.

You have had other rude people on your show before but these three were exceptional. Please don’t invite them again.

The Wall st journal subscription model works because people value its content as in the content can help them make money. Will people see the same value in Fox news? I doubt it, pay walls for those services will fail.

Yowza! One of the “guest’s” quoted Dylan Thomas early on; I think the “guest’s” phrase was “‘rage against the dying of the light…’” and there certainly was a mentality of raging against something today! A “‘do not go gentle into that good night’” going on here, to say the least! Of course, the poem from which these lines come is about dying…

Their opinions were completely obscured by their rudeness. Tom earned his pay today! He was more of a “referee” than “moderator.” The show degenerated into an audio version of spectacle, and it was reduced to a Fox-style, passive-aggressive, dig fest.

Rupert seems to be ginning something up here. Is it to make Google blink and fork over a quarter of a billion dollars? Is it a kind of Teabagger astroturf charade to sway opinion toward Murdoch and his ilk? Perhaps Rupert is just an old man looking for one last fight against a newer paradigm unraveling an outmoded business practice? The old ways will never be revived. Maybe old Rupert is just looking for a blood bath and wants to push the whole business of bringing people news over the cliff? Many of his media outlets have already succeeded in that regard! I’m sure old Rupert has many ways to protect his content already. Let him wall up! He’ll shoot himself in the foot for lack of creativity in playing hardball mogul. He’s not quite savvy enough to make his ‘robber baron’ persona last.

…With all of the insults and pot shots, there was little time–or proper decorum–to tackle the larger questions: how are modern forms of media going to earn a buck? When is there going to be a better business model for advertising within the context of online media?

And let Wolff, and even Brill (for starting the degenerating tone by saying the two other “guests” were “‘from another planet’” in his first sentence on air) go spew to their hearts’ content on Bill O’Riley.

I agree that this was a difficult exchange, but remember that this is a very important issue. Unfortunately, we, the people, are not talking about it or worrying about it. We suffer to lose the most if all content is free, because the quality is going to continue to suffer for that trend. So instead of letting these “insiders” debate it, we should debate whether we are going to lie down and let them decide our future.

The newspaper industry really lost their power years ago when they allowed AP and Reuters to take over the creation of news and then paid them for it. Right now, the people only have the NYTimes, the Wall Street Journal, the BBC and NPR for any real news. I even heard NPR credit a website for their facts the other day. Shame! We are not going to get the real story from people who do not have the funds to pay for reporters with (hopefully) no axe to grind.

Don’t be fooled by the “new economics” of the internet. All of the brokers said the economics had changed prior to the dot-com crash. They were proven wrong. Google and other content aggregators are not “creating” wealth. They are just finding places to steal value from others. Don’t worry about Murdoch, worry about whether a real journalist will get a paycheck from somebody. If Google and aggregators do not sign the paychecks, then eventually the paychecks will go away because Google has stolen from those who could afford to write them.

I too was highly offended by Mr. Wolf’s mean-spirited interruptions and turned off the radio a couple of times. But you have to wonder: if Mr. Wolf is so confident he is the future of web news, why is he so put out by Mr. Brill? I think I found an answer by looking at Mr. Wolf’s web site, http://www.newser.com. He’s peddling mostly trash and smut! It’s pure tabloid junk. He’s right to feel threatened by someone with some class and some ethics. It’s ironic that when he says newspaper reporters are all hacks and the lowest of the low, he seems to be referring to his own sources!

I loved the lively discussion this morning! Finally! To have three guests so passionate about the topic was wonderful. More like this.

It is a rare treat for me to be able to tune in to “On Point”. The show offers up delicious food for the mind. Today’s show, peppered with Mr. Wolff’s vitriolic diatribes, instead made me feel nauseous. I, too, almost turned it off but I was compelled to listen hoping that someone would be able to shut him up and/or instruct him on the nuances of mature and enlightened conversation.

Pondering the information and ideas in this segment, i begin to suspect that the discussion went mostly wide of the dynamic at play. Mr. Murdoch, in phrasing his statements in terms of “stealing” seems to me to mis-cast (deliberately or otherwise) the nature of the market and the transactions or potential transactions under discussion. The host and guest of this radio segment, in following the false trail set out, apparently blundered down a whole range of blind alleys (not uninteresting in their own right) that maybe didn’t quite put a finger on the button of what Murdoch’s gambit could end up meaning for the online media environment.

On the face of it, the idea that search engines (Google and Co.) somehow “steal” from news organizations (Murdoch et al.) is a bit absurd. It’s like a publisher leaving a thousand copies of the newspaper in Times Square with a “FREE” sign on them, and then complaining because someone starts going around telling people, “Hey, there’s a bunch of free newspapers in Times Square!”. It’s the content provider’s decision about what and how to charge for access to their content. The fact that news media hasn’t been able to come up with a successful model for generating revenue from what they have to offer is so not Google’s responsibility (ethically or legally speaking).

That said, however, it is true, as an earlier poster noted, that Google has made quite a lot of money, partly by telling people where to look for “free” newspapers. I’d guess that Murdoch is betting the chunk of money Google makes from linking to his sites (by whatever metric google might have to measure these things) is large enough that Google would be unwilling to lose it. Another earlier poster blythely asserted that if Google lost access to Murdoch sites, they’d easily be able to “fill the pages” with something else. Maybe so, but on the other hand, maybe the loss to google would be more significant than that. Maybe it would be significant enough that Google actually would be willing to pay off Murdoch, rather than lose that access.

Thus (if this line of thinking is correct), while the line the Murdoch feeds the public is, “they’re stealing from me and I deserve to be compensated,” the message to Google is more along the lines of, “you need me more than I need you, so cut me in on your profits or I walk.” One way of looking at this is that he’s trying a new business model in which he attempts to generate revenue by selling his content to the search engine instead of to individual users. The idea behind such a move would be essentially something like, “I (Murdoch) can’t sell news online, but you (Google) can, so go ahead and sell it, but first you have to buy it from me.”

If Murdoch were able to get Google to go for the arrangement, it could very well bypass entirely the conversation about whether or not it is possible, profitable, or desirable to charge people for access to online news. The cost of access would be rolled into the cost of using Google (whatever that is???). I got the impression, however, that some sort of conversation along these lines has been ongoing between Murdoch and Google, and that Google hasn’t been interested. Murdoch’s public statement strikes me as a ploy to bully or shame Google into rethinking its position.

This is sort of an off the cuff analysis, but it’s the only way that i can find to make rational sense out of the situation.

Ean Koenig’s analysis makes sense to me. If Google pays Murdoch to point people to his content (and collects revenues from ads or from internet providers or however that works), then I suspect every poster of content would be wanting to be paid (paid off). And Google is well situated to know exactly how many eyeballs have gone to which content and so could pay with extraordinary fairness. There could be a sort of Dow Jones average hourly posting to list a certain special select few news sources, to show whose content is getting the most eyeballs and therefore commanding the highest fee that day from Google.
So all the news “hacks” would wind up working for Google? I’ve got to think about this.

Great show. The power of the media is flow of few sources to many minds. The vision of the future of the media as a many to many mediated by “filtering” agents really gets us from big old media to big new media with a stage of hyper competition and rapid innovation in between. If you look at the history of communication, you see these cycles in the past. Your guests were correct that it is a wonderful time to be in the media business! But their view of the future seems ahistorical. RBW http://www.conferencedepartment.com

Those of you who think the guests were “rude” and obnoxious are sissies. I thought the heated debate was awesome! I have never donated money to NPR before but now I will.

I listened twice (online, for free) and I really appreciated both of your guests’ perspectives.

Paying for news online makes no sense. I would never do it an neither would 90% of the people I know. Remember when the LA Times tried to do that? They must have figured out that it didn’t work. Media companies make their profit from advertising, not the token 25 cents per copy. That money just goes straight into these media moguls’ kids’ trust funds.

Down with Rupert Murdoch and let’s get on with the real business of democracy.

These people are horrible! What an insufferable gaggle of blowhards.

Just listened to the podcast, and have to disagree with the majority of comments. I enjoyed the give-and-take. Brill is generally the more defensive of the three voices heard on Google vs. Murdoch, primarily because, as Michael Wolff correctly pointed out, he’s had very visible failures and is now eager to regain the limelight with Journalism Online. I’ve heard both Wolff and Jarvis in many other contexts (podcasts, mostly), and wasn’t surprised by what they said. The problem, I fear, is the compressed timeframe of the On Point hour doesn’t allow enough time for either of them to completely explain the Google/Murdoch issues. It sounded to me like both were trying to get all their normal talking points out during the limited time available. Brill would have needed the entire hour to explain and defend Journalism Online, by the way, and in the end would not have been able to present any evidence of the initiative’s potential success, any evidence that anyone is willing to pay anything for online news sites.

And that’s the real bottom line: We’ve known for about 10 years that news consumers aren’t going to pay for news online when there are so many freely available alternatives (forget Murdoch’s claim that “we had it wrong, we should have been charging all along”. People would have abandoned newspaper/magazine websites more quickly in that case). Jarvis had it right, and elaborates in What Would Google Do?: the new link economy generates value through links and the audience that follows the links. The newspaper industry has been unaware of this and hasn’t reacted fast enough, and it may be too late for some to re-invent themselves.

Great show.

Times Select had 220,000 subscribers paying $50/year. There’s a canard that it failed. The NYT panicked at the decrease in page views and pulled the plug. If your host and guest had not become so over-excited at bashing the old media business model, as represented by Brill, you might have learned something. The end of your show was like listening to science fiction fans declaiming on some dearly held plot point. Please take a breath! http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23050

The Wall Street Journal charges for it’s content.
They always have, it seems to be working.

I agree Wolf is a bit much, but he was right in what he was saying about the news and content.

Tom was out matched here, but I do feel for him he was dealing with a cad. Michael Wolff is the Addison DeWitt of media.

Come to think of it, there is great line from “All About Eve” when Margo Channing (Bettie Davis) says; “Buckle your seat belts; It’s going to be a bumpy night!”
How appropriate for this show.

But – my God! – whatever caliber of his pedigree, Wolf comes across as a bombastic bully in this format.

Yes, we get it, Brill’s “the bad guy”, but let the man speak and then – when it’s your turn – respond.

Wow. Emotions are high tonight…

Yes, but a “cacophony of voices” is typically of lesser quality than (solid) expert opinion. Been on YouTube lately? There’s no smorgasborg of great programming, just a cacophony of dreck.

Your guest are amongst the rudest and most beligerent I have EVER had the displeasure of hearing. Their approach at the arguement only served to demonstrate the low quality which we will see as the fate Of journalism.

i thought this was npr, not wrestling. who allowed this pig michael wolff on the air? and why can’t the moderator cut him off? he’s a blowhard who has never gotten anything right about anything. wow. what a loser.

I will donate a year’s salary to the BBC and Tom before I give one red cent to Murdoch’s organization, or any organization that deliberatly attempts to mislead those that come to them for answers or information. Google should drop the news links to Fox and MSNBC. It isn’t news anyways. I hope this move brings down his company while he’s alive to see it. Karma will get you eventually.
This should have been part of the Onion show… Topic: Murdoch requests Google drop news links on internet. Reply: whoops we never noticed how your stuff made it into the news page in the first page. We’ll fix it for you.

I lost track of the argument, Mr Wolff totally too obnoxious to listen to. Must be a strategy because he has nothing to say…tw st louis

Interesting, the fact google most likely traffics people to Mudrdoch sites is normally could charge a fee themselves to do so. They always ways for Murdoch to bloke or stop such content but i’m guessing since its Murdoch he has a agenda in his attempts. Remember Murdoch may be a lier, cheat, propagandist but he’s not dumb not at all. And since he controls the Wall street journal, Foxs, sky news,the republican party, officials he can easily spin this into something totally different, maybe like a war against wall street, spying, or anti-trust laws. Sounds Silly but foxs has spun things far easier.

As a former freelance print journalist (I covered the arts and culture), I want to make a few points.

I am not a fan of Murdoch by a long shot since his empire killed real local newspapers. Nor do I care for the Internet news model. Online journalists often work for free (I can attest to this), or work for slave wages (take a look at all the online media companies and their wage structure for journalists).

The problem with allowing the newspapers and print publications to fade out and replace them with free online news content is that journalists are losing their jobs in large numbers, and many of these journalists do not know another trade because they have worked in journalism for 20+ years.

When I lost my regular freelance gig with a newspaper arts supplement last winter, at the same time, the Seattle Post Intelligencer discontinued the newspaper and kept only 20% of their staff. The Seattle Times cut I believe, around 500+ jobs throughout the newspaper, local newspapers in my region laid off staff and cut wages, and throughout Oregon I saw the same thing. I was not able to find another newspaper job anywhere and I am a freelance writer, with no health insurance and I paid my own taxes. Other freelance journalists I came in contact with were in the same boat.

So unless online news sites come up with a model that pays journalists the same wages they earned with print publications, there will be another huge dent in our economy and a lot of talented news people standing in bread lines.

I also want to comment that the guests seemed rude to me, cutting each other off and not allowing others to make their point. I realize that this happens with the uglier side of journalism, but these guests made a bad case for themselves. I personally, wanted to hear both sides of the argument rather than listening to Mike Wolf lord over the program.

And the final point I want to make, the guests made a huge generalization saying that journalists are hacks. Yes, some journalists write from press releases, because their plates are full and they have many stories to turn around and some journalists are lazy, but to bring down the entire profession by saying journalists are hacks, does some of us a dis-service. I never wrote from a press release. And even though I wrote about the arts and not hard news, I was thorough with my research and asked in depth questions. I personally, don’t like being called a hack nor do I feel that other journalists enjoy the label either.

I think it went ugly when the third guest came on and made a snide comment at the first two, setting off Mike W. and the other the rest of the show.

If you listen when tom invited the 3rd guest to speak, his first sentence were a attack on the others setting the stage for what we saw today.

There was lively debate on this show about the future of journalism with one of the guests suggesting that bloggers will replace newspapers — and that reporters are hacks who rewrite news releases.

As someone who is often written about in a local paper (the Gloucester Daily Times), I wonder whether I am a hopeless romantic to assume that there is still room for editors in the grand scheme of things.

I have first hand experience working with an excellent editor, Ray Lamont, at Gloucester Daily Times. Since he took over, the writing, investigating and reporting have all improved.

I know for a fact that his reporters don’t just rewrite news releases. They’ve never done that for me. If they print anything inspired by a news release I send, they always have their own angle. They call me and ask questions. Then they print a quote from that interview — never any of the quotes I slaved over in the news release.

Is Gloucester an anomaly? Has the journalistic ethic really vanished elsewhere? Do I live in a time-warp?

Are there truly no more Ben Bradlees out there?

I kind of agree about the comment of re-writing the news stories. Just look at any news station say foxs,cnn, msnbc, cbs and even NPR, it seems many of if not all the journalist are just repeating what they got from the AP, with a slant, example would be KSM, Fort Hood,Going rogue where it was recycled what foxs said, and foxs took what cbs said and cnn took what cbs said npr even onpoint to what foxs said.

All the journalist repeated and wrote about the same thing, than the next day, did the same thing with journalist writing about it almost the same thing except a little slanted.

Even NPR regurgitates the same news over and over again. Our media has become sensation seeking whores, who will report or aggravate anything that can get them higher ratings, and once one station rating go up the others follow suit.(bubble boy) ( Nicole Simpson), (birthers) How long did the media milk these stories?

Journalism like it once was objective and fact base has been replaced with Balance and opinion base, where emotions often trump facts. Along with Expert opinions were once objective of political or ideology line are now used to push a political or ideology agenda.

Of course, reading and repeating news from the AP wire isn’t anything new…I worked in broadcasting over thirty years ago, and that is mostly how we did it.

Most annoying show in a long time. I turned it off after a while. Please don’t have those guests back, and don’t waste website space by archiving it.
It sounded like a couple of arseholes arguing in a pub after they’ve drunk too much.

The great thing about print journalism is that you don’t have to listen to people yelling at each other. If somebody’s being foolish, annoying, and uncivil, you can just turn the page. Not so with radio.

This was the worst episode of On Point, I’m willing to assert, that has ever been on the air. Michael Wolfe belongs on one of the Fox TV shout-fests, but not on your intelligent, open-minded program.

We all make mistakes. You made a mistake by inviting this screaming meanie onto your show. Your producer made a mistake my not cutting off Wolfe’s microphone. I made a mistake by not turning off the radio.

What a horrible morning. I look forward to better ones with you in the future.

As a fiercely loyal On Point listener, I’ve listened to almost every show since 2001.
Rarely have I found a show where each of the three guests are such arrogant, rude jerks (to each other, to Tom and to the callers). I hope none of them are invited to participate again. Frankly, I couldn’t bare to listen to them for one moment longer.

“Respectful response? Do you have one?” Tom — you are wicked awesome.

Please don’t ever, ever, ever have Michael Wolff on your show again. I will turn it off immediately. Jeff Jarvis was not much better.

Unfortunally no news organization has figured out yet a way of charging fairly without either losing readership or revenues. Until it happens debates full of fury and love like the one today will be not uncommon.

If I had wanted to listen to a show like this, I would have turned to Murdoch’s own Fox News, not NPR or other public radio. I had to stop listening midway through the show. I’m glad to see that the vast majority of the comments for or against this kind of show were against. Judging by the time when these comments started coming in in droves, it must have gotten a lot worse after I quit listening.

I have heard other guests on public radio programs (On Point and others) who interrupted and talked over others, but never have I heard anyone as bad as this.

Again, if I had wanted this, I would have turned to Fox News, not public radio.

Wow, I just listened to this podcast and I almost couldn’t make it through the whole thing. These guests were nearly the rudest I’ve ever heard on On Point (possibly barring the interview with that horrible woman who writes the Sex in the City garbage, and the interview with the awful founder of Maxim), and by far the rudest and most infuriating people I’ve heard on NPR in quite a while. When even Tom Ashbrook, the most graceful referee in broadcast, can’t keep you in line, then you are a serious, total, inexcusable jerk.

Jeff Jarvis, Michael Wolff, and Steven Brill — I haven’t heard such pompous, demeaning, disdainful arrogance in quite a long time. You could have scarcely shown more contempt for your audience and everyone else in the conversation, and I’m not sure you once bothered to hear anything anyone said. You are all complete disgraces to knowledge and discourse, and you’ve got utterly zero credibility with me now. I will be sure to speak ill of you and your ventures at every opportunity and in every relevant venue. Shame on you, and please stay away from NPR — you are suitable for little more than the likes of Fox News and MSNBC.

Steven Brill’s comments and perspective were most interesting. It’s too bad that Michael Wolff’s childish – and extraordinarily rude – behavior took the show to a low level. Perhaps Mr. Wolff could learn that personal attacks directed to another guest don’t strengthen his own argument.

While I’m sympathetic to warnings about mythologizing the American press and the potential for new media to give voice to new people and perspectives — if Michael Wolff is representative of ‘new journalism’, I’ll take a pass.

The subscriber base and the advertising do feed off one another. Many of us journalists lost our jobs because subscriptionship and ad sales were too low to keep a publication afloat.

People, like me, who don’t want to see ads don’t have to.

There are only two ways to solve this (both for NPR and the newspapers):

Pure subscription, as many medical and scientific journals already do, and as the Wall Street Journal also does.

Automatic micropayments. Internet micropayment schemes have been around for a decade or more but none of them have caught on because they are cumbersome, make people nervous about security, and have too much overhead.

This last point is worth noting: The NPR program Car Talk has literally millions of listeners and is cheap to produce. So in theory the per-listener cost of one episode of Car Talk is a fraction of a cent. Internet micropayment systems have too high a transaction cost to handle that – Even if the listener paid 1 cent per show the majority of that money would go the to micropayment system, not to mention the cost of the distribution bandwidth!

…Same thing with a newspaper article. What’s the production cost of one newspaper article divided by all the people who would read it? Again, it might be a fraction of a cent. Currently there’s no cheap way to bill for that.

So a subscription model seems like the only feasible model, but you must have VERY compelling content. I am a subscriber to the Wall Street Journal, and several scientific research journals, but I can’t imagine any other daily newspaper I’d be willing to subscribe to with their current content.