In the early 1990s, Jonathan Glick, a programmer and news enthusiast, approached The New York Times about taking the paper digital. That path took him to AOL, iVillage, and finally—when the paper was ready to have an independent Web presence—The New York Times Online.
At a time when the term “news business” seems increasingly like an oxymoron, Jonathan Glick shared with CJR’s Diana Dellamere his straightforward business perspective on about what works, what doesn’t, and what we just don’t yet know about doing business and news on the Web.
Diana Dellamere: Coming from a software/technical background, how did you get involved in the news business?
Jonathan Glick: The Web had just happened, and I was thinking, “Where does this matter?” The answer was “I’m not sure, but probably with people who have content.” The New York Times wasn’t yet on the Web but they were on AOL and I wrote to them and said “I’m just a programmer but I would love to help you guys with this any way I can.”
DD: Do you still think that the Web and newspapers are a natural fit?
JG: I think nothing about the Web is that good for traditional news businesses. Because the Web creates so much competition for them and they are so slow to react to that.
DD: What are newspapers doing wrong on the Web? And what did they do wrong in the past?
JG: For the most part, what drives what people read are their strong interests. So, if I love the Vancouver Canucks, I want to read stories about the Vancouver Canucks every day. So, unless The New York Times finds a way to cover the Canucks, or whatever my interests are, I’m just not going to go there all the time. And what news businesses would have had to do to be competitive would be to occupy more space in the total interest lists of more readers. And they didn’t, because they felt, (a) that wasn’t relevant to the news and, (b) they couldn’t figure out a corporate model that would enable them to write about those things without sacrificing what they saw as quality.
DD: So, is all lost? Or is there a way to be successful on the Web today?
JG: To be successful on the Web today, you need to create millions and millions of pages. You need to be relevant to everybody’s shared interests. The truth is that we share some things, like you and I may be both interested in what’s going on in Washington today, but chances are your next twenty interests and my next twenty interests don’t overlap that much. So, to be a major player on the Web—where people control what they read rather than the publisher controlling what they read—you need to satisfy that next twenty interests for everybody.
Doing that means a completely different sense of what quality means. Because, if you only publish things of very high quality, you are obviously not going to be able to develop an organizational model to do that; you are just not going to be able to hire enough people. So you need some type of model that results in a lot more content. Google has a model: they mine the Web and create links. About.com has a model: they’ve created a network of guides. Huffington Post has a model: they’ve got a small number of professional writers sitting on top of a huge number of amateur enthusiasts. The Daily Kos has a model: they have a volunteer activist organization that creates diaries.
There are all sorts of models. But what’s clear is that the traditional sort of model that the newspaper and magazine world has—where a small number of people producing a small number of articles—has a smaller and smaller footprint every day on the Web.
Great interview.
Jonathan--where do you think the AP fits into this? In my opinion they provide a needed, high quality service, but their owners have to shoulder a lot of costs make things run, like putting people in dangerous places.
#1 Posted by Michael Mallin, CJR on Tue 28 Jul 2009 at 09:15 AM
There are many people more qualified to discuss the future of the AP than me.
My uneducated guess is that many of their members and customers will be under pressure to cut costs as they face increasing competitive pressure. I'd also propose that the value of a ubiquitous wire service is worth less to Internet-only businesses, where you can see the same exact story on hundreds of other sites and because search engines tend to 'punish' pages that feature non-unique content.
I'm not sure there's anything that can really take the place of the AP as it is. But I'm very confident that, after a period of disorienting dislocation, we'll see a ecosystem of individual experts, reporting teams, non-profit media (both local and international), and for-profit companies doing reporting from dangerous places.
Why am I so sure? Because all of the conditions for that ecosystem are already in place:
- plenty of readers of reporting on dangerous places (not as many as we may like, but the collapsing cost of access to the Web increases total global readership enormously)
- a meaningful subset of readers who will pay for this reporting (donations, online events and classes, premium content like books and movies, corporations and investors)
- plenty of passionate talented people who want to tell stories and share opinions about dangerous places
- steadily decreasing tech cost of gathering and producing interesting stories and opinions on dangerous places, and sharing that in interesting ways
What seems unlikely to me is:
- the domination of a small number of large reporter-employer organizations
- that many people will pay for today's newspaper article format
- that adjacency/banner advertising is a sufficient revenue model to support this content creation for all but the largest sites
#2 Posted by Jonathan Glick, CJR on Tue 28 Jul 2009 at 10:08 AM
Good interview. One thing I'd like to ask Mr Glick is this: in the future, will we be reading the news on paper surfaced products, real READING, or will we be screening these digital newspapers on PPS (plastic pixelated screens)? In fact, Jonathan, are you reading this right now or screening it. Your answer will say alot about the future of newspapers and journalism. Find out more at my blog: http://zippy1300.blogspot.com
#3 Posted by Dan BLoom, CJR on Fri 31 Jul 2009 at 09:59 AM
He makes great points about traditional news media. The average person doesn't want to be engrossed with an entire newspaper anymore. We just want what we want. If we are only wanting sports news, why would we buy a newspaper? It's a waste. We'd rather go online to our favorite blog or sports site and get exactly what we want.
footprints in the sand poem poem footprints in the sand
#4 Posted by Jimmy Soldier, CJR on Tue 4 Aug 2009 at 12:37 PM
Fascinating; thank you.
But how will the investigative journalists get paid? Will they have a "donate" button on their own websites?
And the lead time for feature films is months if not years. How can that work in news? Who will play the role of move executive producer in news? And if people aren't paying per story, like movie goers buy a ticket, where will the money come from?
#5 Posted by Dana Sterling, CJR on Mon 10 Aug 2009 at 01:29 PM
In my opinion, the AP has been incredibly behind the curve for better than a decade, still is, and isn't even fully cognizant of today.
It never leveraged its own version of vertical integration to charge Google, Yahoo et al sufficiently steep rates to reuse AP content to force them to paywall it.
I think it's still possible, but it's going to take more effort by AP, and someone with a different vision than its curent leadership. Dean Singleton is clueless.
Now, notes to other commenters above.
Jimmy Soldier, where does your blog get the news about which it blogs?
As for that sports site, if it had brains, it would charge you for it, if it has unique content.
That gets back to the AP.
Dana Sterling, I've raised that issue more than once, and most touters of "newspapers are dead" haven't directly answered it.
Beyond that, is the "new media" always better? Talking Points Memo, for example, referred to anonymous sources six times in a 750-word story earlier this week. It wasn't about national security; rather, it was the tussle over a public option between President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Reid. Just like old media.
http://socraticgadfly.blogspot.com
#6 Posted by SocraticGadfly, CJR on Sat 31 Oct 2009 at 12:40 AM