It’s the same with news and media. The traditional media companies (news, television, newspapers), etc all had to be massive brick-and-mortar businesses with huge capex (printing presses, broadcast equipment, etc). Very high barrier to entry, high cost to play, and you had to organize all of it under a real brand tied to real plants and offices… which meant you had to care about your reputation… which meant you had to make sure your editorial department was doing a good job.

Now the web is full of bootstrapped digital media outlets that have no skin in the game in terms of real-world presence. They don’t have printing presses to run. They don’t have delivery trucks. They don’t have inventory to manage. It’s just air. There’s nothing there. Maybe a single open-plan office, or just a group of digital nomads working out of a corner of a coworking space. You can build and tear down an outfit like that in a week. Whereas to spec out, order, install, house, operate, and amortize/depreciate a single printing press would be a multi-year to multi-decade undertaking by a real business.

It’s all fluffy clouds now.