Two pictures can say 10,000 words.
The one on the left shows New York’s Park Avenue at Easter 1900.
The one on the right was taken on the same thoroughfare at Easter 1913.
The juxtaposed photos tell us a lot about the advent of the automobile more than a Century ago, when horse-drawn conveyances rapidly gave way to what was then called the ‘horseless carriage’ (the automobile).
A lot of people didn’t like the automobile back then. It went too fast, put pedestrians at risk, and represented unwelcome change.
Today, many critics, including our Parliamentarians, don’t like the notion that social media giants (like Facebook, Instagram and Google) are delivering newspaper (and other media) content to their users – for free.
Bill C-18 was designed to fix this. The legislation, which received Royal Assent on June 18, would force social media giants to compensate news organizations for links to their work.
We Crows Nest watchers sometimes have to swallow our sentimentality when considering these massive social and cultural shifts, and while none of us is old enough to pine for horse-drawn manure carts, we’re half tempted to wax sentimental about the good old newspaper business.
Too bad it was so darned slow to adapt to new technologies. Google’s been around since 1998, and it felt so cool at first that many newsroom people were flattered to see their work shared globally. And then it all happened. Social media platforms poached advertising dollars from traditional media outlets, which were way too slow to erect paywalls around their content.
The carnage followed, as newsrooms – particularly newspaper newsrooms – first shrank and then disappeared by the dozen.
And guess what? The market changed. Digital publications like allNovaScotia.com were launched, grew, and prospered by leveraging new technologies instead of blaming them. (The owners knew from day one that getting the paywall right was crucial to their success.)
News ‘content creators’ started channelling their stories through platforms like Substack. Quality newspapers like The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and The Globe and Mail adapted by signing up hordes of digital subscribers.
Like most people who ply the seas, we believe in commerce. Voids get filled. Market needs are met. Entrepreneurs will consolidate the thousands of streams delivering news digitally into new media companies that succeed or fail spectacularly.
That brings us back to Bill C-18, a well-intended but Luddite-like piece of legislation designed to protect legacy media companies that didn’t adapt to the digital age.
Sorry, but that horse left the barn long before Parliamentarians closed the door, and it didn’t have the strength left to pull a cart full of newspapers no one wanted to buy.