Man, if Garret can’t hack it in the slowly diminishing, open news ecosystem, it’s a really bad sign:
So, to sum up: I soon may not be able to get the information I want in a form optimized for linkblogging. I can’t offer ‘added value’ because the most-worthy ‘valuables’ are hidden behind paywalls. Trying to overcome these two issues to maintain quality is already taking more time than I can spare. The few items I can succeed with to my satisfaction, are not enough to attract and keep an audience. Quality and volume were a hallmark of my blogging style. The internet is now actively working against me on those two points. I can’t go back to having long lists of links on my site — I just can’t. That was so time-consuming as to be idiotic. It was only the excitement of the early metacosm that kept me going in that fashion.
I’ll also toss in the pernicious creep of embed culture, a kissing cousin of animated GIFs, as another factor, even though I’m a judicious offender myself. Cedes a lot of control back to the content provider and breaks “fixity”.