You’d think that would be obvious. Plus, the Walter E. Hussman Jr. Theorem
All this is not to say that I don’t think there can be viable ad-only news organizations online. Clearly there are and will be more in the future. I just don’t see how it works on the scale of a metro newspaper. If newspapers go out of business, something else will spring up to take their place. Maybe whatever it is will provide better coverage.
Or maybe it won’t come close. That’s one long ball I don’t want to throw.
* corrected from 42.8 million to include evening-paper circulation
‘See you on the other side’ - Meet Jessica Lum, a terminally ill 25-year-old who chose to spend what little time she had practicing journalism
#Realtalk: This is the best moment to be in journalism - The old stuff isn’t coming back, but that’s okay
Streams of consciousness - Millennials expect a steady diet of quick-hit, social-media-mediated bits and bytes. What does that mean for journalism?
Sticking with the truth - How ‘balanced’ coverage helped sustain the bogus claim that childhood vaccines can cause autism
An ink-stained stretch - Can Aaron Kushner save the Orange County Register—and the newspaper industry?
This is the best moment to be in journalism (25)
The WSJ editorial page hits rock bottom (19)
Obama DOJ formally accuses journalist in leak case of committing crimes
Yet another serious escalation of the Obama administration’s attacks on press freedoms emerges
A rare peek into a Justice Department leak probe
Court documents in the Kim case reveal how deeply investigators explored the private communications of a working journalist — and raise the question of how often journalists have been investigated as closely as Rosen was in 2010
Reporter deemed ‘co-conspirator’ in leak case
The Reyes affidavit all but eliminates the traditional distinction in classified leak investigations between sources, who are bound by a non-disclosure agreement, and reporters, who are protected by the First Amendment as long as they do not commit a crime
“At some point you have to say, a law that people don’t obey is a bad law”
CJR's Guide to Online News Startups
Uptown Messenger – Hyperlocal news for a neighborhood in New Orleans
Who Owns What
The Business of Digital Journalism
A report from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
Questions and exercises for journalism students.
Now why would you go and make a perfectly nice point about the fungibility of money and then turn right around to this?
After all, what newspaper subscriber subscribes to the paper because they want flattened-out tree pulp or because they want a bag thrown on their porch every morning? They subscribe because they want the news (and the ads of all things, unlike their Web counterparts!)— the information and content that comes on that pulp and with that delivery.
That's substantively the opposite from your opponents' argument, but its form is the one you just dispatched.
In general, I see scarce grounds for your claim that newspapers readers buy papers for the content.
#1 Posted by Josh Young, CJR on Thu 23 Jul 2009 at 04:37 PM
I see a related problem with your reasoning in that "flattened out tree-pulp" analysis: 42.8 million people who do receive a paper actually are more: "Scarborough Research reports that more than 100 million adults read a printed newspaper on an average weekday (and more than 115 million on Sunday). -NAA.org: http://tr.im/tL56
Clearly they DO want "flattened out tree-pulp" -- at least once or twice a week. Another way of saying this is that the medium matters. People do not behave the same online as they do at the breakfast table with large pieces of paper around them. And it's not just because of "original sin." Knight-Ridder gave up charging for San Jose Merc online in 199-something because it wasn't working! At my newspaper, I was forbidden to put most news online on our free site, and circulation still went down while web traffic and revenue continued to grow at an accelerating rate. Why? I think it was because we offered something unique that only online could offer: conversation (early social network). And while I think you're right that AP withdrawing online could make a difference, I don't think you can count on more than Hussman's 2-3% to pay for news online: 3,400 paying subscribers vs. 178,186 daily, Sunday 271,815 after all. I do think there is evidence (Lance Turner's commentary on E&P report: http://tr.im/tLdO) that people who love print newspapers will pay more for them, including an additional charge for searchability, databases, video and discussion and updates online. But don't turn those gashog trucks in for the clunker rebate just yet.
#2 Posted by Michael Odza, CJR on Thu 23 Jul 2009 at 06:42 PM
I suspect we would be well served by remembering that there remains a s
ignificant portion of the American population that does not experience
the on-line world and that the simplistic reduction of them to a homoge
neous group of the generally poor and uneducated, and therefore not a s
ignificant part of the equation, is one frought with danger when consid
ering “news” consumers. Many of them, even with free and ready access
to Web content, have had on-line experiences and, for whatever their re
asons, consider it little more than a novelty and of no enduring intere
st.
I know of no figures to point the way in an attempt to profile this amo rphous group, but personal experience suggests that there are many of t hem that are, generally speaking, well educated, are news literate and yet spend little time on-line and the take television news with a b ag of salt.
What suggest itself to me is that any meaningful news consumption is a deliberative process and discrimination plays a key role in that proces s. One can pick up a printed newspaper or periodical and read at a pac e that is suited to the reader's purpose; one can pause in mid-article, consider a proposition or statement for a moment—or a day—and then res ume reading, and all without the kind of mental indigestion that often accompanies the attempt to absorb multi-media presentations, podcasts, etc. One may encounter some diversions when attempting to read the pri nted word, but they are nothing compared with the dancing harlequinade quality of what television offers as news and what, I am afraid, too ma ny on-line news sources appear to be trying to emulate, at least to the extent that is possible.
#3 Posted by Joel Stookey, CJR on Thu 23 Jul 2009 at 08:10 PM
Right on, Ryan!
The newspaper crisis is a colossal management failure.
It's wrong to assume the same number of people will buy newspapers when you give away most of the content on the Web.
It's suicidal to take resources away from a medium that has a record of making outrageous profits, newspapers, and give them to a medium that most agree has no immediate prospects for generating profits and may never.
Yet that's how the managers are running the business and despite all the shutdowns, cuts and layoffs not one has been fired or even so much admitted they are wrong.
#4 Posted by Keith Roberts, CJR on Fri 24 Jul 2009 at 11:30 AM
Josh,
Regarding my fungible-money point, I don't agree that both arguments are equal and that as a result mine is shot through by that point.
Certainly, many people subscribe to newspapers because they like the physical paper. But the primary reason they like the physical paper is that they like reading the content therein and they like the presentation of said content.
But I find it downright incredible that you think this: "I see scarce grounds for your claim that newspapers readers buy papers for the content."
I mean--what?
#5 Posted by Ryan Chittum, CJR on Fri 24 Jul 2009 at 11:53 AM
Ryan, it's hard to know what you mean when you say, "the primary reason they like the physical paper is that they like reading the content therein...." The whole point here is to differentiate substance and form. And it's very difficult to infer dollar values for each, according to your logic that money is fungible. I just don't see how it makes any sense or is interesting to claim that people like content because it's on paper. People like content regardless of the medium, no? And they like the medium for its own reasons, no?
#6 Posted by Josh Young, CJR on Fri 24 Jul 2009 at 04:31 PM
Ryan -- I think you should consider how many people subscribe to a newspaper for a host of what consumer-behavior types call heuristic motivations -- out of habit (can't start the day without coffee and newspaper; out of a sense that reading the newspaper keeps them informed as a good citizen; as a sign and reinforcement that they are educated and informed (why else do managers get the FT?) and so on.
That is, they don't so much subscribe for the actual content as they do for the IDEA of the content. That plays more strongly to the print edition than online experience, and can be traced to more comprehensive, complete and better newspaper content produced years or even decades before. In other words, coasting on earlier ties forged with readers in an era of bigger, better papers.
I've heard analysts say that if we haven't driven away the hard-core surviving subscribers papers still have after all the cuts and reductions, there's nothing that will discourage those readers short of death. Which more than indicates that content is less crucial than habit.
#7 Posted by Brian O'Connor, CJR on Fri 24 Jul 2009 at 06:37 PM
Of course readers read a newspaper for the content, but they don't pay for the newspaper because of the content.
Newspapers cost money because they must be printed and delivered on "flattened out tree pulp". When you can move information cheaply and easily online, you can't justify charging for it.
#8 Posted by Jeff Sonderman, CJR on Sun 26 Jul 2009 at 10:45 AM