in 2014 Americans will be spending $1.5 billion on online newspaper subscriptions and $5 billion on imaginary objects. Maybe I find this ridiculous because I’m a reporter and my sympathies lie with the newspaper industry.

via MediaPost Publications Virtual Goods Worth More than Real News: Curmudgeon 08/27/2010.

So this does sound like “amusing ourselves to death,” “fiddling while Rome burns,” doesn’t it? Folks will spend money in virtual worlds, to buy everything from a hot avatar to a pig for their Farmville, but they can’t or won’t pay for news. Hmm. Time for some kind of new model. Perhaps that ought to be a model of civic engagement or citizenship education, not necessarily another business plan.

http://static.zemanta.com/readside/loader.js