Why Chris Anderson Is Right

Recently Chris Anderson (Editor of Wired Magazine) has been making the rounds in the various news sources - I saw him on the Colbert Report, heard him interviewed on NPR's Marketplace, and then read another interview with him in Spiegel. Most of this press has to do with his new book - 'Free' - that basically says that the price of online content will be (and is being) driven to zero.

That doesn't mean that it'll be completely free - just that there will be free and paid versions. For example, on a streaming video site you could pay a monthly membership to avoid commercial interruptions, or watch the same video for free with a commercial intro (or even breaks at certain points within the show). I agree wholeheartedly with this notion.

However, in his Spiegel interview Anderson mentions that 'media will become a hobby.' This seems a little asinine at first glance because well, the news is the news! Trusted source of journalism, accuracy, hard hitting investigative reporting, etc! In many cases, this will likely still be true (then again, TMZ.com did break the news that Michael Jackson was dead - hours before the news networks would later confirm it). Does this mean that TMZ is as accurate? Well, in this case, yes. In all cases? Doubtful.

In another example is the recent Yahoo-Microsoft deal, which the NY Times wrote about today. However, as early as last Friday, some sources were reporting that the deal was basically done. Yesterday, it became clear that the deal was official and would be announced. Of course, the actual announcement only came today - so is the NYTimes really 'behind the time' or are they just waiting until they can 'officially' report the news (after everyone else is already aware of it?).

Because I follow other search people on Twitter, I found out about this news relatively early in the cycle (and snickered at the people trying to jump on the news bandwagon later - c'mon, if we're all working in search, you should've known about this a little sooner than today people). And Anderson mentions that the people he follows on Twitter (within his industry/interests) are the same type of people who will socially link stories to their friends/followers that he'll also trust as well.

So for announcements like this, I think the news is dead as the go to source. I still think that they'll be a good place for insight and analysis on some issues that very few are qualified to address (ie - international politics, etc.) - but the question is - how many people truly care about that kind of news?