Everybody Forgets The Readers When They Bash News Aggregators

I remember way back before the Internet when I got most of my daily news via the San Francisco Chronicle and CNN. If it wasn't reported by either of those outlets, there was a good chance I wouldn't hear that news at all. Those days are over. The problem is that most of the people running legacy news sites today are way older than I am, and still can't get their arms around the fact that the world has fundamentally and irreversibly changed. Today I get my non tech news via scores of sources. I'm led there via social sites like Twitter and Facebook, and from aggregators like Google News and Memeorandum. Most of my tech news comes, of course, via my phone and email inbox. It's ok that the legacy guys don't understand that, because when they erect paywalls it just stokes TechCrunch, which isn't behind a paywall. Live and let live, I say. Far be it from me to talk them off the ledge. Paywalls kill social links and aggregators unless they are specially designed to allow them via a set number of free views. But even then there's enough friction that most people won't bother. But when Mark Cuban starts saying aggregators are bad, that's something new. He's one of the guys that gets it. He's not supposed to be on the losing team: