Sounds like an interesting guy.<p>I think he’s slightly underestimating or misunderstanding the “VC backed frivolousness” though. No one knew that a search engine could generate 20-30bn p/a in advertising revenue until it did. Even Facebook, taking their advertising “stock” into a more mature existing market didn’t know what it was worth in advance. No one knew that TV advertising would be worth what it is/was until the American’s ‘National Brands’ complex matured. It was all nearly impossible to estimate beforehand.<p>So… I think VC’s are making some sort of a bet that news = attention = advertising revenue. It’s vague, but that’s to be expected. It’s also not an arbitrary connection being made between media and software. The economic difference between Gangnam Style and Charlie Bit Me is that Psy has something to sell that is valuable once recognizable enough. The exchange rate for popularity to money is fairly arbitrary and difficult to determine in advance.<p>In any case, I think they as a business are doing the right thing. We need companies doing their job for the most part. 5% chance at a 20X return can’t be the way everyone does business.<p>OTOH, I’m not sure that journalistically The Economist really does do some difficult task that no one else can do. I mean, the difficult part is investigative journalism is it not? Otherwise, it’s just writers clarifying and putting their own perspective on existing work. It’s investigative in the sense that they talk to experts, I suppose. But, I still get the feeling they’re in the section of the complex which is most easy to solve.<p>Right now you can read the economist and get up to speed on Yemen, The Iran Deal, British Elections, and various smaller topics in the same economist style. They are not in the business of exploring and upsetting and revealing. I’m not worried that this kind of reporting is something we’ll lack for.<p>Anyway, one of the things that did impress me is a lack of a common Old News complaint that people <i>should</i> pay for journalism, that it <i>should</i> be funded somehow and that things are not allowed to change in ways that jeopardise the way they do things. I spoke to a journalist recently that was all complaints about how no one wants to pay for news anymore.