What’s wrong with CNET?

I dont know what 'else' is wrong. I do think i know why - CNet pays its content creators. But all others in your list don't. Not that paid content is inferior. Just that Cnet has to approach things in a totally differnt way that others.(The fact that CNet is lagging addds more substance to my question in your "Google makes my head hurt" post)

Blogger: I'm paid to do content. So are a lot of other people who show up on my link blog and on TechMeme. Well, if you count having ads on your page as "paid." Quite a few of my friends who blog are getting more than $1,000 a month. That sounds like "getting paid" to me.

:-( My earlier comment came out all wrong. I guess i succeeded in putting across the exact opposite of what i wanted to say. I was trying to imply ( and am under the impression that) CNET actually pays their bloggers(shoot me if i am worng) while none of the other sites do so. They just aggregate content.

Blogger: huh? Lots of other sites pay bloggers. Or, they get paid by making their own advertising deals with folks like PodTech, PodShow, FM Media, Google Adsense, B5 Media, AOL, ZDNet, TechCrunch, GigaOM, or others.

I'd say that a high percentage of what you see on TechMeme is paid someway or another. Just maybe not in a way that CNET does.

"Just maybe not in a way that CNET does."

That's exactly my point.

CNET cannot have an article without paying for it. Essentially they have to generate revenue to pay for content while a site like techmeme needs revenue only to 'administer' and point to contents.

(Damn! my sentence formation is really horrible and it takes atleast 3 iterations to get the point across. That's why i dont blog. )

I see what blogger is trying to say. By moving away from the aggreggator model used by others, where posts are current, and added as it happens, to the producer of content, they have limited their timeliness and relevance. Which I think is what Scoble was trying to indicate..., sorta...

Since the early days of the public web, CNet has always tried to be a newspaper and TV network. Now they're still stuck in that slow moving model and we all know how well those two areas are doing today.

It's one of those victim of their own success stories. They've become the big company that the founders and investors of 1996 wanted them to become.

I dont see why it is assumed that the aggregator (digg) style sites are more successful. They are cetainly more sexy and have some of that indie street cred that can only last so long, but CNet is more of a traditional publication style model. This isn't necessarily a weaknes, when would can deliver quality over quantity you are still in a good place. If you can make a core group of users love what you deliver you are in a great place. Digg is more of a firehose, relying on the users to filter out what is good enough to read on the homepage. The only problem with that is the home page has about 200 items streaming through it every day. The filter isn't tight enough, especially for those of us who can't afford to watch it all day long to catch some little tidbit of news that might be interesting buried in amongst all the crap. I don't know that CNet is successfully filtering the intersting news stories more effectively than the community can, but I applaud the decision to stick with edited, controlled content over the blind mob mentality.

Tim: you missed my point. It's not the aggregator sites themselves that are causing CNET's downfall. It's the content ON THOSE SITES!!!

Hint: I'm seeing CNET's name less and less over time. That's not a good trend.

CNet really no longer reports, it reacts. It regurgitates press releases, stokes the Mac-PC "holy wars" almost daily, misleadingly titles articles to get cheap clicks, and seems to pressure a certain editorial bent. (When was the last time you saw anything resembling a "counterpoint" there?)

I think they can correct it:

- Let go of some of the senior people and find new ones to nurture a more "news-like" reporting environment.

- Expand on its "found" content with actual journalistic work.

- Encourage full-on debate (meaning publishing reasoned arguments on two sides - NOT leaving debate up to the commentors) in its editorial content.

In essence, tune up the high-school newspaper writing style that currently abounds, to make it more, well, news-like. Kinda like it was back in the day, when people considered it a serious news source.

Compareing CNEt with digg and slashdot is idiotic. First, slashdot and digg post stories linked to CNEt articles, so one is the leader while the other are followers.

Second, slashdot posts stories with a distinct slant, so much so, that the site is not credible as a news source. Digg's story submissions are better but the threads are full of know-it-alls that don't know anything.

I almost feel sorry for CNet these days. Back when they were buying up print publications like Ziff Davis I wondered what must they be thinking. The dead tree folks all seem to have a big problem with the transition to e-media don't they?

But there may yet be a time when we will miss the, shall we say gravitas that a big company can bring to certain types of coverage.

Oh anybody can have an opinion on some new gadget, and in fact we've learned to value these man-on-the-street reviews of many consumer products more than the advertising influenced opinion of some big-name.

But with a few exceptions when it comes to analysis of corporate directions, anything involving actual number crunching research I think organizations such as CNet still serve as a valuable resource. The question is: is that enough to keep them in business?

I'm going to cancel all of my print subscriptions this year (and I have quite a few). I'm reading everything online and rarely even open up the mailed stuff. Recently I told one of the magazines this and they offered to switch me to an online format. What they promised was a PDF version of the magazine, which was OK, but I had to wonder, since all the content is probably on web pages anyway, why did they need to bother with this format conversion?

Today I found out that the file you download is actually an EXE file, not even a raw PDF. Are they monitoring which pages I read? No support for Linux and Apple users? I e-mailed them and told them to not bother notifying me of future issues. Only the e-mail bounced. They can't even keep their "contact us" page up to date.

Will we see a domino effect of these companies closing shop in the next couple of years (my guess is yes). Will the online-only media pick up some of the slack, all of it, or will there be a lot of tail chasing looking for someone with an actual story rather than just a regurgitation?

I'm not completely optimistic.