Like newspapers, portals like AOL and Yahoo are confronting the cold fact that there is less general interest in general interest news. Readers have peeled off into verticals of information — TMZ for gossip, Politico for politics and Deadspin for sports, and so on.
Part of the problem is the result of a fundamental shift in Web behavior. Media stalwarts erected a frame around the Web and organized, and sometimes produced, content. Now the frame around content is the Web browser itself, and consumers do their own programming and are more inclined to see news consumption as a kind of voting, selecting smaller brands that reflect their sensibilities.
Many of the news sites that are now having success on the Web — Business Insider, Gawker and Mashable, to name a few — are built on sensibility, which is generally a product of a small group of like minds.
There are exceptions. TMZ has thrived as a division of Time Warner, College Humor continues to crack wise as part of IAC/InterActiveCorp and CBS seems to have done well by CNET after acquiring it.
There are some parallels with the television world. The name NBC communicates very little other than generic bigness, while right now, FX, HBO, AMC and Showtime each convey a cachet that the big networks lack.
Business Insider has become marginally profitable in a short amount of time, Politico has begun to make money and TMZ has a sturdy enough Web brand that it was able to successfully build a television show of the same name. But all of them are hemmed in by the tyranny of small numbers.
Read more at the New York Times
