The late and great Bill Hicks on "Marketing"

1. are you aware that newspaper were dying before the web ? they were mostly financed by advertising which owned them, also they pretty all been bought by rich people or giant corporations. Then out of the content available on the web (I'm not talking of the internet because I've never seen a journal publish on newsgroups or other parts of the internet that are not the web) newspaper are but a really tiny tiny fraction of the content available. The web was designed as a non-commercial sharing space, so it's no surprise that people expect it to still be used that way. At some point advertisers and marketers (who should suck on tailpipes [1]) invaded the web by the selling the idea that you could make money out by hijacking the traffic of a website. The internet and the web built on top changed the rules of the game and your failed business model is not my problem is the attitude you have to deal with from now on. That said on the matter of independent (read no advertising) investigative journalism publishing online the number of available spots are limited and the first to move will seize the better place on the market. Look at how mediapart.fr established itself in France and how many stories they get out compared to the other newspapers. They are a success established on initial funding giving no power to the funder and now entirely paid by the readers. Lesson here is there are people willing to pay and support a truly independent online newspaper, the demand is here and the

Bill Hicks, quoting [link] with original video at [this video] : > By the way, if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself. [audience laughs and claps] ... there's no rationalization for what you do and you are Satan's little helpers, okay? Kill yourself, seriously. You're the ruiner of all things good, seriously. ... > I know all the marketing people are going, "he's doing a joke..." there's no joke here whatsoever. ... I know what all the marketing people are thinking right now too, "Oh, you know what Bill's doing, he's going for that anti-marketing dollar. That's a good market, he's very smart." [audience laughs] Oh man, I am not doing that, you fucking evil scumbags. > "Ooh, you know what Bill's doing now, he's going for the righteous indignation dollar. That's a big dollar. A lot of people are feeling that indignation. We've done research. Huge market. He's doing a good thing." Goddammit, I'm not doing that, you scumbags. Quit putting a goddamn dollar sign on every fucking thing on this planet! > "Ooh, the anger dollar. Huge. Huge in times of recession. Giant market. Bill's very bright to do that." God, I'm just caught in a fucking web.