Sometimes there's nothing good about good news. Sometimes good news can piss you off. Sometimes all you want is for everyone's life to be as crappy as yours. You read the obits, follow hurricanes on the weather channel, don't shower. There's something a little sickening, even embarrassing, about too much good news. Everybody smiling all the time, genuinely happy. So I found some bad news.
According to Wired, online newspapers are a failure. They don't make any money. There you have it — proof that everything ain't golden out there in cyberspace. Media technology analyst Denise Caruso takes the failure-mongering a step further: Not only should newspapers get offline, newspapers shouldn't've gone online in the first place. According to Caruso, newspapers were duped by fear, uncertainty, and doubt and scrambled online without a solid game plan. They've paid the price, and now, Caruso says, it's time to "look at the landscape with fresh eyes." How about bypassing the Web and its "freebie culture" and selling the news? (Oh, cynicism, I missed you so.)
And how's this for good bad news: New launch or no new launch,
Wired's got problems. A main instigator in the infectious optimism meme — epitomized in their July cover article, The Long Boom — Wired is finally getting its comeuppance. Providence Equity Investments played Santa after their high-profile IPO failure, but the Webmonkey's collar is still a little tight, and the organization most responsible for the Nasdaq miracle may need a little trimming.
Truth of the matter is, I like Wired. In fact, I like online newspapers and I like optimism. I wish them all well. But sometimes you just gotta draw the line.
Aaron Dubrow is a cynical guy. He's also from Jersey. Draw your own conclusions.
