Print incumbents’ caution ceded web attention to new entrants

Evidence

One would have thought that the traditional news media—newspapers and magazines—were in the best natural position to capture the attention lavished on all those connected screens at work and at home. After all, such media were originally designed for such slivers of attention, the little breaks that people take during their day. But newspapers were particularly slow and resentful about adapting their content to the web; they fretted about unreliable Internet reporting, erosion of revenues from print, and other typical concerns of an incumbent business being disrupted. Their hidebound attitude did not excite new users of the web. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 904

Categorization

• XREF: Classic disruptive-innovation incumbent inertia, as in Christensen; parallels the record industry’s early internet response. — connects to: Early web attention circulated person-to-person without commercial resale, undercutting attention merchants. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 919

Broader Connections

• Early web attention circulated person-to-person without commercial resale, undercutting attention merchants. #corroborates (0.80) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 919