Independent Publishers Challenge The News Establishment

"In the mid-1960s, when the Free Speech Movement drew national attention by disrupting the Berkeley campus, the idea of a group of people using inexpensive tools to compete directly against traditional print or broadcast media was ridiculous. With the exception of magazine publishers, publishers or broadcasters back then would have said entry barriers were too high for new competition. That's held true for almost 50 years. Not anymore. Most traditional publishers and broadcasters still believe these entry barriers prevent new competition. ...They don't realize a steady flow of new media technologies over the past 10 years eroded many of those barriers. ...Broadcasters and publishers can use inexpensive (even open source), off-the-shelf groupware, instant messaging, VOIP telephony, content management software, blogware, and collaborative publishing or broadcasting software. A team must no longer operate out of brick-and-mortar offices hardwired with expensive, proprietary front-end and typesetting hardware. Equipping a content team costs one-quarter to one-third less than what it did five years ago. ...The difference now is writers and editors, individually or in groups, use these inexpensive production technologies to compete directly with established, traditional publishers and broadcasters."