It’s grievous what is happening to regional newspapers, especially. But the whole industry will continue to collapse until everyone swallows hard and goes behind a paywall. The New York Times has shown us the end of the beginning; they’ve embraced the paywall and they are seeing significant revenue. The Washington Post, LA Times, others have to follow. Once the content of the larger papers is no longer available to aggregators, then regional papers can safely take that same path and, maybe, there is an online revenue stream that will allow high-end journalism to survive.
Short of that, the great Molly Ivins is right, this is nothing more than slow suicide.
That newspaper executives listened to the mavens of new technology and decided to give away their content and copyright without securing a revenue stream is incredible enough. That they continue to do so amid this collapse is just astonishing, especially since The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Financial Times are showing us a plausible future.
Folks who decry the idea of subscriber fees argue that paywalls won’t work, and that those who advocate for them, don’t understand the Internet. The opposite is true. These folks don’t understand the first thing about actual journalism. It costs money to cover a metro region, or a nation, or the world comprehensively, to place reporters at key points and maintain them while they cover a beat and glean information year after year. Anyone who still thinks that this can be achieved by amateurs or hobbyists are embarrassing themselves. It hasn’t happened in a consistent fashion anywhere, and it won’t happen anywhere. Journalism is a profession; it requires careers, and careers require a living wage, and until newspapers recover a revenue stream for their online product, they have no future.
Here's the problem. In a time of real economic disaster, a reader is asked to shell out a significant amount of money at once. If you're a voracious reader, that could amount to a couple of hundred dollars a year in one big chunk. If your readership is aimed only at elites, no problem. But if you really are trying to serve the public good, that annual subscription price is a bear.
There's another option no one ever mentions: A newspaper portal where you pay a monthly fee and have access to ALL member publications. (As broke as I am, even I would do that.) Papers would share advertising revenue according to national page views (you know, like the NFL) - which might actually encourage them to raise their sights again as they compete for readership.
This is similar to the ASCAP / BMI model that covered royalties from radio plays and club performances of members' music --which, of course, is virtually obsolete now, but only because the music industry refused to see the train coming down the tracks. Choo choo!
#1 Posted by Susie Madrak, CJR on Fri 25 May 2012 at 11:27 AM
Susie, I don't understand this argument about "shelling out significant money."
During the Great Depression - people BOUGHT newspapers. People have paid newspaper subscriptions for centuries.
It was n-e-v-e-r free until about the last 15 years. So I understand that because people got used to things being free, they expect it to always be free, but that was not the historical reality.
It costs money to create a product and it should cost money to obtain a product. The fact that it might be easy to steal is not a good reason to give it away for free.
#2 Posted by NS Webster, CJR on Fri 25 May 2012 at 12:06 PM
I like your newspaper portal idea, btw.
#3 Posted by NS Webster, CJR on Fri 25 May 2012 at 12:08 PM
In the old days, subscriptions subsidized the cost of print. The bills were paid by advertising.
And, because of this, we put up with the conflicts of interest and the decline of mudraking. Paper's gotta pay the bills.
In the new days, there is no cost of print, therefore the advertisers have said, "Why should I have to pay top dollar for advertising, when the cost of advertising is free and anybody with a website can garner an audience for impressions?"
So fine, I don't mind funding newspaper operations out of my subscriptions, but if we are going to be a primary source of revenue, I do not want to see the usual advertiser induced conflicts of interest and muckraking avoidence.
If you're going to be funded by the public, then you'd better do the public service.
#4 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Fri 25 May 2012 at 12:12 PM
I think it's true that people don't like paywalls, because they are a hassle: one more password to remember and enter.
Here's what I think we should do: instead of selling paywall access to individual consumers, sell it in bundles to ISPs. This is how science journals survive: they sell access to a bundle of publications to a large gatekeeper like university libraries. If, say, Comcast could offer their users unlimited, un-passworded access to say, HuffPo, the NYT, Washington Post, etc, it would be a huge selling point for them (a little like the way newspapers used to bring in customers by picking up popular comic strips or syndicated columns, or the way cable companies attract customers by including premium channels in the basic package.) "Use our service and you can access all this for free."
The costs would be passed to the consumers, but it would be a small price when spread throughout the entire customer base. Once one ISP offered this, all of them would have to. You wouldn't want to be using the ISP that made you sign up for your own individual accounts.
This would be really hard to pull off; newspapers would have to work together at least initially, and the ISPs would have to be convinced. But newspapers could end up with guaranteed yearly incomes and eyeballs. What do you think? Could this work?
#5 Posted by SI, CJR on Fri 25 May 2012 at 12:26 PM
The point about subscriptions/advertisijng is very true.
But - the point remains that this was a product that people have historically been willing to pay for, so it was and is silly to give it away and depend ONLY on advertising revenue (which has disappeared, while the readers have remained).
#6 Posted by NS Webster, CJR on Fri 25 May 2012 at 02:27 PM
This:
"That newspaper executives listened to the mavens of new technology and decided to give away their content and copyright"
is false.
In the early years of the web, it was a largely private and scholarly domain. The commercial businesses decided OF THEIR OWN VOLITION to jump onto the bandwagon, hoping to use it for marketing.
Newspapers and magazines have only themselves to thank. It was they who made unilateral decisions to jump into the web, apparently giving little or no thought to the consequences.
#7 Posted by Damned Liberal, CJR on Fri 25 May 2012 at 02:41 PM
the new york WHAT? oh yeah, i used to read that before they stupidly erected a paywall. now i read the independent, the telegraph, and the guardian. which also happen to be ballsier, more interesting papers. bye bye times.
#8 Posted by sonoma madman, CJR on Fri 25 May 2012 at 02:48 PM
"It costs money to cover a metro region, or a nation, or the world comprehensively, to place reporters at key points and maintain them while they cover a beat and glean information year after year."
Who's saying it doesn't cost money? Where can I find their arguments? Does anyone take them seriously? Are they a threat to win the debate?
"Anyone who still thinks that this can be achieved by amateurs or hobbyists are embarrassing themselves. It hasn’t happened in a consistent fashion anywhere, and it won’t happen anywhere."
Who now thinks this? Who is Simon arguing with? Does he even know?
Let him box with Dan Conover, to take one example...
http://xark.typepad.com/my_weblog/2012/05/what-if-we-give-it-away-wapologies-to-rem.html
... rather than punching out helpless phantoms like these.
#9 Posted by Jay Rosen, CJR on Fri 25 May 2012 at 02:53 PM
If the content is good, people will pay for it. It's that simple.
#10 Posted by Rich Binsacca, CJR on Fri 25 May 2012 at 03:00 PM
People pay for a connection to the internet and you want them to pay for content on the internet? How about these newspapers paying for the stories? They don't pay for police reports or pay for interviews.
They already collect from ads, and with most, it would be like paying to weed through online ads.
If they have content that's worth reading, then the revenue from displaying ads would support them.
#11 Posted by JoeDoe, CJR on Fri 25 May 2012 at 03:04 PM
I totally agree with Susie's and SI's bundling idea and have been saying the same thing for several years. It would be reasonable and affordable and practical to ask people to pay several hundred dollars a year for a personalized selection of a number of publications. But paying hundreds of dollars EACH for the publications you want to read gets awfully expensive fast. I sure wish the news industry would figure out a way to do this, and soon.
#12 Posted by Harris Meyer, CJR on Fri 25 May 2012 at 04:06 PM
Agree in everything BUT one point.
The NYT doesn't have a real paywall either, Mr. Simon. If people are dumb enough not to know the workarounds, like NYClean or a Greasemonkey script, so the NYT makes money .... that's their problem but not to the NYT's credit.
Call me back, David, when the NYT gets a real paywall, because I regularly tell people who don't know about it, about NYClean.
#13 Posted by SocraticGadfly, CJR on Fri 25 May 2012 at 04:33 PM
@JoeDoe - Are you actually suggesting that because somebody pays for internet access that content should then be free? Were you involved in Napster by any chance?
In case you hadn't noticed the vast majority of interviewees agree to the piece because it benefits them through positive PR and exposure. In your view not only should they get column inches (that costs advertisers thousands) but they should be paid for it as well. Why do you think police hand reports to the press? It's positive PR.
The Daily Mail's MailOnline has only just broken even through advertising. They receive 84 million unique visitors a month. How can regional papers even think about competing or emulating this?
#14 Posted by AdamG, CJR on Fri 25 May 2012 at 04:40 PM
How much longer are we going to have people idiotically proclaim that readers always paid for the news until the big, bad Internet came along and newspapers started giving it away for free?
Readers never paid for the news. Advertisers did. And now because media companies can't figure out a way to make 20% profits again, we have to pay? I don't think so.
#15 Posted by Anna Tarkov, CJR on Sat 26 May 2012 at 12:34 PM
To Ms. Tarkov above:
I will not call you idiotic. I will refrain from any ad hominem.
But I will simply state that you are factually wrong. And I have thirty years of mailing monthly checks for my home subscriptions to the Baltimore Sun and New York Times as evidence. Similarly, there were all those quarters tossed into newspaper boxes and money handed over at newsstands.
The news was always a purchased item for consumers until the advent of the internet. This is simply fact.
If you mean to suggest that circulation costs didn't actually cover the newsstand costs or the costs of subscription, you are correct. Circulation was a loss leader; advertising was the revenue stream in the pre-internet age.
But this is NOT the dynamic currently. Currently, the revenue stream of advertising is disappearing and circulation -- given that it is digital --is not preordained to be a loss leader. No cutting down trees, no printing costs, no trucks, no truck drivers, no gas -- now circulation -- even if newspapers charged half the cost of a monthy hardcopy subscription -- have the potential to yield profits. Moreover, they ARE yielding profits. The revenue stream from subscriptions online at the NYT are indeed substantial and growing.
Your argument seems to be the newspapers should simply give away their product and die -- and indeed they are dying. You offer no alternative but slow suicide. But indeed, it costs money to produce a comprehensive news report -- lots of money. And just because circulation yielded no profit in the past -- well, the internet has changed that too, hasn't it?
It's the pay walls or death. That the horse has been out of the barn for ten years -- and that there are people who will not purchase news -- these are not reasons for the industry to take the only viable step to solve an existential nightmare.
But "readers never paid for the news" is simply and utterly wrong. Until the internet, they always paid for news. And pay for it they did, sometimes at a newsstand, sometimes on Sundays, sometimes weekly. But we all paid. That newspapers mistook the internet for an advertising vehicle for their product when in fact it was the product was ridiculous on its face. That some papers continue down this path when others are proving that a significant portion of the public will pay for access to high-end journalism -- well, that is somewhere past ridiculous and approaching insane.
If there is another revenue stream besides advertising and subscription revenues, I am ready to consider it, of course. But advertising is not coming back to newspapers on the same scale -- Craig's list and department store consolidation have seen to that, among other trends. The only thing left is to see whether the product is, well, a product. And will it sell. If so, then there is a revenue stream for digital journalism and we can pay for more reporting and editing. If not, better to know right away and cease this long death march of layoffs and buyouts and newspaper reductions.
Regard,
DSimon
#16 Posted by David Simon, CJR on Sat 26 May 2012 at 01:04 PM
The idea of a portal is interesting, but then who gets to pick the stories it presents? If a newspaper (or any other media outlet for that matter) insists on feeding us celebrity gossip and human interest stories interspersed with cute animal pictures...why would I pay for that? I would rather have a hard copy anyway. It gives me something to do with my morning coffee
#17 Posted by Overviper, CJR on Sat 26 May 2012 at 09:06 PM
Mr. Simon, thank you for responding. I want to first of all clarify that I wasn't calling you idiotic although I realize it certainly looks that way. And, not that it's material to this discussion, but I am a huge fan of your work. I know you must hear this all the time, but I've seen ever episode of every seasons of The Wire at least 5 times.
I don't exactly disagree with anything you wrote and I'm glad to hear (see?) you say that you are open to considering other sources of revenue besides advertising and selling subscriptions (whether print or online). There are, in fact, many ways that newspapers could potentially make money. Few of them have been tried. Here's one good list that I hope you'll take the time to read:
http://stevebuttry.wordpress.com/2011/04/29/newspapers-dont-need-new-ideas-here-are-lots-of-ideas-for-new-revenue-streams/
Newspapers need to start thinking differently about their business. The days of the information monopolies they once enjoyed are long over. There are so many more sources of news now (and no, I'm not talking about bloggers; I'm talking about originators of news). In the Chicago area where I live for example, I have so many options. Yes, those options include our two print dailies, but I find myself going to them less and less. I think you can probably guess why and it has nothing to do with how much they cost to read (I don't much read them for free online either).
Also, what works on print doesn't necessarily work online. Every newspaper/media company/etc needs to have a digital strategy and people who understand digital need to be in charge of it, not just working on the fringes slapping stuff up online. There's a lot more to say here, but I haven't the time now.
I could go on and on, but the main point is that what has to change most of all is newsroom culture. No, I'm not asking for the wall between editorial and ad sales to be totally torn down. No, I'm not asking for reporters to write stories about Kim Kardashian. I'm asking for newsrooms to change like these leaders are changing them:
http://www.knightdigitalmediacenter.org/leadership/
If I may offer one last piece of reading material, this is a good one: http://stdout.be/2012/05/04/fungible/
#18 Posted by Anna Tarkov, CJR on Sun 27 May 2012 at 03:04 PM
Several years ago, in a discussion with a high-level editor at our local paper, he bemoaned the fact that his bosses (the upper management) didn't grasp the idea that dead trees covered in ink were not the actual product they were producing - that it was information, and it was the information people were willing to pay for. He had all sorts of ideas of ways to distribute the news content of the paper to paying subscribers - what local sports fan wouldn't gladly pay $10/month for lots of good coverage of all the games, from high school to pro? What political junkie wouldn't pay $5/month to get all the political stories emailed daily to him?
People will pay for content. Look at the ton of money the iTunes store makes. It's all in the packaging and marketing.
But hyper-local blogging - what appears to be the cornerstone of the Advance/T-P "new model" - isn't enough. People bought the T-P because every so often, it dropped a bombshell of a story on us: the 8-part series on incarceration, for instance. They bought it because of the writing. The columns. And they would buy it online, if it's packaged right and priced fairly - and it would cost less to distribute than the newsprint version.
#19 Posted by Kevin Morgan, CJR on Mon 28 May 2012 at 02:35 PM
I'd already thought about bundling news with broadband providers, but I'm reluctant to increase Comcast's stranglehold on which information is available to citizens. What might be more workable would be for Comcast and other providers to add premium content - investigative series, magazine-length features, etc. -- to their subscription packages.
#20 Posted by Susie Madrak, CJR on Mon 28 May 2012 at 03:33 PM
In my opinion Mr. Simon is correct, but I see another elephant in the room. With the rise of the Internet came an attendant rise in a curious assumption by many people: That all voices are equal, and with so many voices now "speaking" online, many folk see no value worth paying extra for, just because the masthead says "The New York Times", "The Wall Street Journal", etc.
I find that sort of fuzzy thinking dangerous. Equality under the law is the core component of human rights, and freedom of speech is essential, but anyone who extends the notion of equality to cover the VALUE in any entities speech is guilty of a most egregious lack of critical thought.
I don't miss newspapers per sé, even though I grew up in a family embedded in the newspaper business. What I bemoan is the loss of journalism. I want trained, professional, well-compensated people who are capable of research and independent thought, and who are able to speak and/or write cogently. That is what I value when consuming news, opinion, or any combination of the two.
My cardiologist and my good friend Trevor both have opinions on the state of my health, but when it comes to making decisions about medication, exercise, diet and so forth, I place a far greater value on what my doc says, for she is far better trained and has far more experience than my buddy, no matter how charming he may be. The same principle applies to more innocuous subjects. Let's use hockey as an example. I give far greater weight to the opinions of Katie Baker of Grantland, a hockey reporter for years, than I do to the ramblings of an enthusiast's blog that, however passionate it may be, lacks the historical knowledge and deep understanding of the game that the professional brings to the table.
The reason I support the NY Times paywall is simple: It offers great value for content I cannot get elsewhere. The same is true for the WSJ and Salon.com, both of which I also pay for. If no one is willing to pay for professionalism, then all too soon there will be little or none available and we all will suffer.
Why people feel that it's okay to pay for Netflix (a service I love and have supported for years), but are offended that news isn't free, astounds me. I've been a huge film buff for 1/2 century, but to this day I know that a free press has more essential value to humanity than the right to see "Casablanca" or "The Avengers" on demand.
Remember the old adage, as true today as it ever was, "You don't know what you've got till it's gone." I, for one, have no intention of allowing a free, independent and professional press go the way of the dodo. The loss could be incalculable.
#21 Posted by Greg Howard, CJR on Mon 28 May 2012 at 03:39 PM
David, I think the question whether to charge for access to digital content has been answered already.
The current dilemma is what method of monetization to use. I am for paid access (I make money as online payment processor), but based on my experience and case studies from the publishers we serve, it is clear that paywalls (or long term subscription) is not the way to do it. There are better -- cheaper to implement, more user-friendly and engaging, and more effective -- methods.
I'll be happy to share with you a few findings, if you are interested.
#22 Posted by Greg Golebiewski (@znakit), CJR on Mon 28 May 2012 at 05:01 PM
David, when you write, "But 'readers never paid for the news' is simply and utterly wrong."
I have to ask myself if are you delusional or just lying.
"And I have thirty years of mailing monthly checks for my home subscriptions to the Baltimore Sun and New York Times as evidence."
No you have evidence that you packed for a package to be distributed to your home.
As Walter Lippmann observed in 1920 -- 1920 mind you -- readers do not and will not pay for news.
They especially will not pay online where alternatives are bountiful and subscription paywalls are porous.
But keep pushing the clap trap that people will pay for news. The more newspapers that jump behind paywalls, the better for independent journalism and the entrepreneurs who are creating a new era of journalism.
Before I go, a little fisking is in order:
"Folks who decry the idea of subscriber fees argue that paywalls won’t work, and that those who advocate for them, don’t understand the Internet. The opposite is true. These folks don’t understand the first thing about actual journalism. "
Confused by logic much? Too separate issues. The issue of whether people will pay for journalism is 180 degrees removed from whether journalism is expensive.
Just because journalism is expensive, does not mean that people will pay for it in the copious manner needed to pay for it.
For all of the NYT's success -- which, frankly, you overstate -- with its easily defeated paywall, it still isn't generate sufficient revenue, with online advertising thrown in, to support NYT-style quality journalism. If what you're after is saving journalism, the NYT is a piss-poor example.
"Anyone who still thinks that this can be achieved by amateurs or hobbyists are embarrassing themselves."
One phrase will do: Red Herring.
"Journalism is a profession; it requires careers, and careers require a living wage, and until newspapers recover a revenue stream for their online product, they have no future."
Until publishers get smart about online -- which they still haven't done in more than 15 years of trying, and are now only digging their hole deeper with pay walls -- those newspapers have no future. Journalism will be just fine. There are plenty of smart entrepreneurs building a new future, and profitably, too, because they understand what is needed to run an online business.
#23 Posted by Howard Owens, CJR on Tue 29 May 2012 at 12:11 PM
BTW:
It's very dangerous to draw conclusions from the NYT's paywall success as to how it might apply to metro markets.
The NYT is a global newspaper.
A metro only serves it's region. As such, it has numerous competitors already providing free news. In free news from TV and radio have been driving down circ numbers for papers for decades. Besides the rise of aggregators and entrepreneurs a metro's paywall may engender, broadcast stations on the web make quality, free news easily accessible in every market.
Ask the folks at Johnson Newspapers how well their paywall worked in Watertown and whether they think the can put up a paywall now in either of their daily markets.
There is just too much resistance from readers to paying and too many free opportunities, and the barriers to entry for competitors too low (and some of those new competitors are the very journalists newspapers have jettisoned over the years).
#24 Posted by Howard Owens, CJR on Tue 29 May 2012 at 01:35 PM
I have to agree with Jay Rosen and Howard Owens on this. I think you are purposefully confusing two arguments in the attempt to create a straw man that you can blow over.
Yes - doing journalism is expensive. To state that doesn't defeat anyone because nobody said it wasn't.
That doing journalism is expensive doesn't mean people will pay for it. It's expensive for me to learn and do pottery. But I highly doubt anyone will buy my pottery at market value.
Moreover - I think you reveal how this is a personal issue for you instead of a logical one. Both in your attempts to create a Red Herring and also the comment response you made above. You start by stating "I will not call you idiotic. I will refrain from any ad hominem."
Um.... lot's of restraint there buddy. That reeks of a child on the verge of tears crying "I will not point out how you look like a butt-face."
Look - everyone agrees: Journalism costs money. Everyone agrees it can't be replaced by hobbyists. The question at hand is if people will pay for it online to which you have not made a credible argument for/against here or elsewhere (at least, not one that I've seen). Instead - you argue for the civic value of journalism. Again - nobody disagrees. But that's not the question at hand.
#25 Posted by David Cohn, CJR on Tue 29 May 2012 at 01:53 PM
Also to @Susie (the first comment) you should check out Piano Media which is based in Eastern Europe but expanding (not to the US but reports are their next country will be Poland). Piano Media lets you buy subscriptions to a bundle of news providers (think Cable).
#26 Posted by David Cohn, CJR on Tue 29 May 2012 at 03:41 PM
Mr. Cohn:
My reference to the ad hominem was a direct response to Ms. Tarkov, who began by employing the adjective "idiotic." Mr. Owens has since added delusion and dishonesty to my attributes. You have furthered this line of debate by comparing me to a crying child.
In reply to Ms, Tarkov, I replied -- using her language, not mine -- that I would not embrace her tone and then I proceeded with an argument that was content-based. Ignoring that, you've rushed in with more ad hominem.
Perhaps this is another thing that the internet has wrought in its defeat of the newsroom and its culture. I was taught by professional editors to avoid argumentum ad homimen, and indeed, my impulses in that direction seldom made it past the copy desk. But of course, there is no copy desk anymore. And now everyone's first impulses go out into the ether unchallenged by anyone as thoughtful as a veteran editor. That said, I will once again assert in a manner that is not all sarcastic that I do not regard Ms. Tarkov as idiotic. I do not think Mr. Owens is delusional or a liar. And I do not think you, Mr. Cohn, are an emotional child. Going forward, perhaps you can advance this discussion without characterizing your opponent, his motivations or circumstance.
I did indeed pay for news. Not for coupons or comics or horoscopes. And I believe that a residual, but economically significant number of readers will pay for online news of higher quality. My arguments for this are varied and can't be contained within a 600-word cap. Refer to the CJR article from two years ago for some of them, if interested. If only 10 percent of the readers who took the Baltimore Sun in its fat years will support a non-profit news organization at half the price they paid for the print paper, a staff as large as the Sun metro desk and half the copy desk is sustainable. If I am wrong, then we are no worse off than giving it away and engaging in slow suicide, or in trusting in a free internet to finance professional journalism. More on that in a better venue than this.
Here, I will note only that your suggestion that I cited the cost of quality journalism as an argument for why people should pay for it is untethered to any fact. It is a straw man of your creation, not mine. I cited the cost of news-gathering not because it bears any relation to the demand for news, but because the for-free internet model is de facto incapable of paying that cost, of supporting good, sustained journalism. Sorry, but I believe in journalism as a profession, and in the gravitas of a newsroom -- a place where the best ideas for coverage prevail and where the laziest impulses of reporters are often restrained by editors who ask hard questions before anyone hits a "submit" button. Cost is relevant in that it pays for that culture and gravitas and professionalism. That alone is why I referenced cost.
You can debate the substance here. If you are ambitious, you can even offer more than negation and explain just how a post-newsroom world will sustain first-rate journalism absent a pay wall (or online advertising rates that don't, at present, exist). It is easy to say what you think won't work; harder, perhaps, to offer a scenario that sustains professional reporting.
Or you can pursue more name-calling. It's certainly democratic. And free.
#27 Posted by David Simon, CJR on Tue 29 May 2012 at 03:55 PM
Put up a paywall, don't put up a paywall. I don't care. But spare me the moral arguments. David, do you have an obligation to send a check to NBC News for the journalism they give away freely in their nightly newscast? No, because they have a business model that's entirely dependent on advertising, rather than the advertising + subscription model that newspapers have traditionally used. Neither is inherently superior.
What this ultimately comes down to is maximizing revenue. Newspapers, and all media channels, should employ business models that produce the most revenue. Sometimes that will be 100% advertising, sometimes it will be 100% subscriptions (eg, Consumer Reports), sometimes it will be a hybrid, and sometimes it will rely on completely different revenue streams. You would no doubt respond that the 100% advertising model has proven to be unsustainable. Fine, so newspapers should experiment. What I suspect, though, is that it's unsustainable not because it eschews subscription revenue, but because the overall value of news has declined. The Internet has destroyed the monopolies on both content and advertising that previously sustained newspapers' fat margins. Which means this whole debate is essentially over how best to slice up a smaller pie.
#28 Posted by Greg, CJR on Tue 29 May 2012 at 05:51 PM
Mr Simon
Ms, Tarkov did not call YOU an idiot. In fact, in her second comment she wrote: "I want to first of all clarify that I wasn't calling you idiotic although I realize it certainly looks that way."
I myself didn't read her comment as directed at you - and when I saw your comment it was the first time my brain cognized the reference to being idiotic. So it was easy for me to come to the conclusion that you were "not calling her idiotic" in a sarcastic sense. I will take you at your word that you were not and thus I apologize.
So moving on....
There are other points, however, where I do think we will remain at an impasse the most important one being that this is an emotional issue for you instead of a logical one. Even your final response to the ad-hominem discussion has elements of this. You write: "Perhaps this is another thing that the internet has wrought in its defeat of the newsroom and its culture."
Are you suggesting that the internet invented ad hominem attacks?
Your next assertion: "Here, I will note only that your suggestion that I cited the cost of quality journalism as an argument for why people should pay for it is untethered to any fact. It is a straw man of your creation, not mine."
I certainly don't want to beat a dead horse - but this thread started in response to your own post where you write: "Folks who decry the idea of subscriber fees argue that paywalls won’t work, and that those who advocate for them, don’t understand the Internet. The opposite is true. These folks don’t understand the first thing about actual journalism. It costs money to cover a metro region, or a nation, or the world comprehensively .... Anyone who still thinks that this can be achieved by amateurs or hobbyists are embarrassing themselves."
So you identified the interlocutors ("folks who decry the idea of subscriber fees") and then you assert their relative knowledge about journalism is minimal because they don't understand that journalist costs money. And if only they realized that journalist cost money - they wouldn't decry subscriber fees.
That's how I read the above paragraph and to me this is a straw man. You kind of do it again in the comment "Sorry, but I believe in journalism as a profession, and in the gravitas of a newsroom -- a place where the best ideas for coverage prevail and where the laziest impulses of reporters are often restrained by editors who ask hard questions before anyone hits a "submit" button."
You make it seem as though there are folks who argue against journalism as a profession and the gravitas of a newsroom or who argue that good journalism doesn't cost money.
I can understand why you go there in some respects. As you note: "Cost is relevant in that it pays for that culture and gravitas and professionalism."
But that is not the substance. The real substance then is when you write that the "free internet model is de facto incapable of paying that cost, of supporting good, sustained journalism."
So it seems your imagined interlocutors all must believe the opposite of this - (that free does support the gravitas of the newsroom) otherwise there is no debate. So I have to assume that is who you are debating in your mind - somebody who doesn't know journalism costs money and/or believes that free will cover the gravitas of the newsroom which you believe is important to protect (and we aren't sure if the interlocutors agree).
Meanwhile just to play devil's advocate. I believe there are ways where a model that is free online can be of real monetary value. In fact, I recently finished a four year experiment on this very subject. It was called Spot.Us (www.spot.us) and is now owned by American Public Media. It was a play off the NPR style fundraising where an self-selecting few would pay for the news that everyone could consume. It was an economic experiment in the commons (ie: not everyone h
#29 Posted by David Cohn, CJR on Tue 29 May 2012 at 09:00 PM
In other news:
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/times-picayune-cutbacks-9118943
:(
#30 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Tue 29 May 2012 at 09:11 PM
I disagree that there are no "moral arguments" to be made. While I'm no fan of the NYT's politics, I think it is wrong to jump their paywall, period. If you are at all interested in maintaining a healthy press, you shouldn't do it.
And to actually brag about helping people do it is loutish.
People are willing to pay for content if it makes sense. The smart publishers are slowly figuring this stuff out. I subscribe to the WSJ online, plus the Atlantic and New Yorker, all of which look great on the iPad. People pay for HBO despite free alternatives.
#31 Posted by JLD, CJR on Tue 29 May 2012 at 10:22 PM
David,
You seem more fixated on whether you've been insulted and that "gosh, darn it, quality journalism is expensive, so people should pay for it" than actually factually and logically dealing with the inescapable conclusion that paid online news is a doomed business model.
And despite your statement of, "I will note only that your suggestion that I cited the cost of quality journalism as an argument for why people should pay for it is untethered to any fact. It is a straw man of your creation, not mine ..." your actual argument can only be summed up as "gosh, darn it, quality journalism is expensive, so people should pay for it."
You've really said nothing else, not in your original post and not in your subsequent comments. You've offered no cogent argument for why people will pay for news other than they should or they have (factually wrong) or they will).
You're dealing -- and this is no insult, just truth -- in a pure world of fantasy.
Claim all you want that you paid just for news, but you didn't. The newspaper distribution system has worked because it was a package that included not just news, but comics, contests, puzzles, recipes on how to bake a cake, win friends and influence the future, ergo horoscopes and tips on the horses, interpretation of drams so people can win the numbers lottery, and if they accidentally stumble on the front page -- news (and I'm sure you know the reference). Only because there were coupons and comics, along with a dabbling in the news, were publishers able to sell enough papers to pay for distribution and attract advertisers so that you might draw paycheck.
The packaged distribution model is broken online.
People pay for their distribution and packaging when they buy a computer and connect it to a modem, and now you want to tack on a fee on top of that, for something that can easily be gained from any number of sources (route around with a few deleted cookies).
You cherry picked your response, but ignored the most salient argument -- free alternatives, particularly TV news sites. TV news has always been free, and though us print people like to thumb our noses at it, it can be quite good at times and in places. Any metro paper is competing online against at least three to five established news orgs giving their content away for free (the "we should bundle all newspapers together argument" fails in the face that it ignores the real free local competition already in place. And that doesn't even address all of the other alternatives that digital brings to the market place.
There is simply no evidence from any quarter to suggest sufficient subscribers can be found to pay a reasonable amount to support the kind of journalism you say you're defending.
There is evidence, and copious amounts, that newspapers can generate enough online revenue to support sustainable news operations without charging for content.
Any newspaper that is getting 10 percent of its revenue from online now could jettison print and operate a very good news org with its current online revenue. The problems newspapers face online isn't one of revenue, it's one of being unwilling to give up legacy costs. The problem is fear and lack of vision, not one of opportunity.
#32 Posted by Howard Owens, CJR on Tue 29 May 2012 at 10:41 PM
BTW: I do think it's foolish for newspapers to give their content away for free online. I've written about this before. I just disagree with the paywall model as some how a savior for journalism. It's pure folly and sends newspapers down the foolhardy path of doom, rather than doing the hard, creative work of building real online businesses, something they have strenuously avoided doing for nearly two decades now.
The history of the online newspaper industry is one of trying to shovel the print product online and hoping somehow that would be both engaging and profitable. It's never been a real business model.
And the newspaper industry has never really grappled with the reality that it's been losing readers for 50 years.
The paywall issue is such a boil on the butt of God sort of thing. It pales in comparison to the the real issues of why people have turned from newspapers in such large numbers and what it means to build a real, sustainable news business in the digital age. There's no publisher in America who is actually addressing these issues.
And my problem with you, Mr. Simon, is you're an enabler and with a rather sizable bullhorn in a room of nearly deaf, desperate addicts. You're pushing failed and foolish thinking that encourages publishers to avoid the real issues and instead seek a seemingly easy path. That is the way of assured destruction for many once noble local institutions.
#33 Posted by Howard Owens, CJR on Tue 29 May 2012 at 11:16 PM
Mr. Owens:
If you keep restating my argument as you wish it to be, you will be pursuing yourself indefinitely and to no actual purpose.
Your words: "Your actual argument can only be summed up as "gosh, darn it, quality journalism is expensive, so people should pay for it."
Actually, I never said or intended to say any such nonsense. You did. I am saying that quality journalism is expensive, so that if it is to be produced at all, it will only be produced by an economic model that has sufficient revenue to cover the cost. It is not, in my words, an argument for people to pay for journalism. It is, in my words, simply a premise that requires a viable revenue stream. People won't pay for news because they should. They will pay for it, I believe, if a substantial amount of news is only available at a reasonable price, and no longer available for free.
Then you contend that there are websites in metro areas that approximate the reach and depth of print journalism, and you actually cite TV news sites. I've read those sites. Been reading them for years in a variety of metro regions. Mr. Owens, please. Fully 75 percent of their content is AP- or Reuters-fed regurgitations of WHAT WAS PRINTED IN THE METRO DAILY a news cycle earlier and now has been aggregated and synthesized by wire services. They're running the daily metro coverage and community newspaper coverage laundered through local wire bureaus. Very little of that material has first-generation origins from the TV newsrooms running those websites.
So please, read the CJR article before continuing further down this path. That article argues clearly that for the industry as a whole, a prerequisite to workable paywalls is to reassess the dynamic between feeder papers, the wire service and aggregators -- permitting the AP and other wire services to send that copyrighted material only to member organizations that offer it from within paywalls.
In effect, Mr. Owens, you are looking at the current terrain in which newspaper-created content is bleeding out all over the internet and is shared and aggregated and you are saying, "See? Other places have the same stuff."
Of course they do.I But you are looking at the dystopic world that newspapers have created by their contempt of their own copyright and product. But in my argument, newspapers no longer send stories through wire-service subscription to other free websites or aggregators. Suddenly, those TV websites that you cite as competitors are revealed to be subsisting on the freely offered work of other wire service members. Again, you're arguing in a circle. The world that you think thwarts the paywall is the world already corrupted by the absence of that pa wall. In my argument, the news-generating industry as a whole has bundled itself to assert for copyright. If one or two papers do it, sure, it can't work. But read my original comments. I am speaking of the industry. So don't cite something as fallow and parasitic as a TV station website and claim that there is actually a competing agency doing what a metro daily does to generate news. Take a breath and ask yourself, are any of those TV websites staffing newsrooms that are achieving even a small portion of the news aggregated on their sites. No, they are not generating that news and they will not generate it if copyright has meaning. Their newsrooms are too hollow for that kind of content.
(More to come)
#34 Posted by David Simon, CJR on Tue 29 May 2012 at 11:48 PM
As to the second part of your contention, I agree that many people did not take the Sunday newspaper primarily for news coverage. And even a good many of those taking the daily paper had other priorities. But you must in turn concede that some clearly did take the paper seven days a week for its news content primarily. I did. And many, many of my friends and neighbors in Baltimore deeply grieve for the loss of that coverage in The Sun. How many are we? Hard for either of us to say. I made an argument that even 1 of 10 former Sun readers paying half what they once did for the newspaper was a sufficient readership to sustain a metro desk of trained, paid reporters. Do you wish to argue that this number is optimistic? Why? And on what basis? Perhaps it is a bit too modest.
Interesting that you should bring up TV, though. Because your claim that TV news is free is utterly fantastical. For the majority of Americans, TV news is bundled with other product and the bill comes every damn month. Most Americans now pay $60 or $70 or $120 for a variety of cable channels bundled together. TV is hardly free and TV news is sustained through its affiliation with the new delivery technology. And in doing so we have created a revenue stream -- previously non-existent -- that funds a greater variety of programming to be funded than ever before.
Apply the logic to newsroom survival. No, many will not pay $10 a month for a Baltimore-based metro news product alone. But bundle that together with the NYT foreign coverage and the Guardians coverage of the U.K. and the WSJ or FT's financial coverage. Then give them a choice of including SI or ESPN for sports coverage and pretty soon you begin to approximate the online version of a general newspaper. And if all of that is behind a paywall and if newspapers could manage the same kind of revenue sharing and packaging that now informs the TV cable dynamic, well then, all of a sudden, we have a revenue stream that matters.
It can only happen when the big papers -- the ones feeding most national and international news to the wires and to the aggregators for free -- go inside the paywall first. Again, please review the actual content of the cited CJR article before claiming I've offered no specifics.
And though you argue that paywalls must fail, you are, I'm afraid, confronted by the simple fact that those newspapers that have moved to assert copyright and place a subscription-based value on their content are realizing a better future than those that have not. And not just unique entities like the NYT or WSJ. Look to the relative health of the metro daily in Little Rock, which has maintained a paywall for a decade now. By limiting access to their website only to online subscribers or those who take delivery of the hardcopy paper, they maintained circulation in an industry that has not. There are other regional examples as well. Explain these "anomalies" before consigning the paywall to the ash heap.
But congratulations, you've penned a response that eschewed ad hominem and focused on content. I am not fixated on insult, as you contend. But I do regard over-reliance on it as a threat to the real value in any argument. When people fancy a snide remark more than a fact, what result soon proves dishonest and useless.
#35 Posted by David Simon, CJR on Wed 30 May 2012 at 12:35 AM
Mr. Simon, did you follow any of the links I provided? You have said that I and others who have commented here don't offer any alternatives to pay walls. Well, I did offer some and you seem to have ignored them. Please at least do me the courtesy of reading the first link.
You also ignored the substance of Howard and David's comments, choosing to focus on their so-called ad hominem attacks. I would specifically like to know how you would address Howard's excellent point about a pay wall not working for a metro paper the way it does for the Times.
#36 Posted by Anna Tarkov, CJR on Wed 30 May 2012 at 04:34 AM
Sorry Mr. Simon, my comment got posted before I read your responses to Howard.
I understand how and why you feel that your argument is correct. We will probably never know for certain if it is, because the kind of collision you're suggesting might run into anti-trust issues. But no matter. You imagine a certain type of future for newspapers and I imagine another. Let me tell you what I think your vision would lead to.
Yes, there are people who will pay for a pay walled news product. But many more people will not. And the people who will pay are dying. The generations who are replacing them are, at best, unclear on why they need to read a newspaper. This doesn't mean they are ill-informed though some surely are. It means that they have been accustomed all their lives to having their information and entertainment needs met by such a wide array of sources, there is no way they will pay for one while getting others for free. At 31, I am on the cusp of this generation, but I can tell you this with absolute certainty.
The news medium is moving online and what will happen if one day there is no more print and the only people paying for pay walls are journalists, former journalists, PR people and businesses? Newspapers will then be in gross dereliction of their duty to inform as many citizens as possible about their public institutions. We already have extreme civic apathy. Do you imagine this changing if newspapers' content is even more difficult to access?
You decry the breadth and quality of TV news and their websites. I'm right there with you. But I'm here to tell you that our opinion is not the majority opinion. If it was, no one would be making money in TV news. Most people don't judge the quality of news coverage the way we do, if they judge it at all. For most people, "good enough" is just that: good enough. And most people will continue to consume what's good enough rather than pay for something premium. Starbucks exists, but plenty of people buy coffee at McDonald's or Dublin Donuts. Ask yourself if you want newspapers to become Starbucks: a premium product consumed only by a small segment of a socioeconomic group.
#37 Posted by Anna Tarkov, CJR on Wed 30 May 2012 at 05:33 AM
David,
"They will pay for it, I believe, if a substantial amount of news is only available at a reasonable price, and no longer available for free. "
But that just isn't going to happen. There will always be other sources for news, and where paywalls go up, there will be more and more people like me (especially as newsrooms cut staff) who create free alternatives. As I said, the barrier to entry is very low now.
I mentioned TV. You deride TV. You paint a picture of news on TV web sites that simply isn't true. I live and work between two minor metro markets. In each market their are lousy TV news stations and there are good TV news stations. When I go to the good ones, I don't see much if any wire copy. What I see is decent local reporting.
And local reporting is what matters. The vast majority of news consumption isn't around big expensive journalism; it's around the cheap "what happened today in my community" news consumption.
TV is the number one news source in every newspaper market in America (in aggregate, people get more news from television than any other source, though no single TV station has a bigger market share than a typical newspaper). You weaken your own case by dismissing TV as a viable substitute for paid online content because actual facts prove more people turn to TV news than newspaper news as a primary source of information.
The idea that Associated Press actually plays some sort of role in this is just rather ludicrous. When I ran the Ventura County Star web site, we stopped putting AP news on the home page. It was irrelevant to our local audience. When I ran bakersfield.com, I cancelled our online AP contract. There was no point in shoveling AP content to our local audience.
I fail to see how putting every single newspaper web site in America behind a paywall is going to help Peoria attract Peoria readers, because nobody in Peoria is going to the Akron Beacon Journal for news about Peoria. And people in Peoria are not currently going to the Peoria web site to read AP stories about Akron (and very few if any are going there to read stories about Afghanistan).
And in Peoria and Akron, there are viable local sources of news that will bleed potential subscribers from any paid model.
I run a local news operation with an audience that quantifiable beats the local newspaper web site audience online vs. online and arguably matches it in total readership (print and online), at least a 10th of the cost, if not less, and with no wire copy whatsoever. I say this to emphasize, AP is irrelevant to any discussion of paywalls.
"For the majority of Americans, TV news is bundled with other product and the bill comes every damn month."
A fallacious argument, because TV news operations don't see a dime of that revenue. So people are not really paying for TV news. It also ignores the fact that for decades before cable, TV news was totally free over the air. The whole concept also ignores the fact that no TV news web site (that I know of) currently charges for online access, and the TV news industry isn't even considering charging for online access.
More --
#38 Posted by Howard Owens, CJR on Wed 30 May 2012 at 06:37 AM
I do think you're subscription scenario is optimistic, both in the numbers who will subscribe and the amount they will pay.
The idea of bundling also runs into potential anti-trust issues.
Not to mention, look how well things worked out for the New Century Network and just about every JOA in the country. There's nothing in history to suggest these kinds of news cooperatives are sustainable.
You cite examples of successful paywalls, but I see smoke and mirrors. These paywall examples are not generating sufficient revenue to stand on their own without being propped up by print. And you ignore such examples as Watertown, NY were the newspaper was forced to take down its paywall when a local online-only competitor arose and built substantial marketshare -- and though it was an aggregator, it aggregated absolutely none of the local newspaper's content.
The economic model of paid content simply doesn't pencil out over the long run, not without the subsidy of the print product to go with it, and print remains exceptionally vulnerable to disruption in the current manner and method of its production (one of the ironies of our discussion is it's about saving quality journalism, but the idea that newspapers today produce much in the way of quality journalism is rather quaint). As others have said, paywalls are a Band Aid on a bullet wound.
And again, the real danger of paywalls is they keep newspapers from innovating. It's a reactionary move designed to try and protect the past (and a false notion of the past since newspapers have NEVER charged people for content) rather than create a new future.
I'm as romantic as anybody about the past and history of newspapers, but I'm more interested in creating a forward-looking business than grasping at straws trying to cling to the past. Nostalgia won't save newspapers.
Retreating behind paywalls prevents newspapers from exploring other viable options and strategies. And that's a shame.
But thankfully, there are scores of other entrepreneurs out there ready and willing to reshape the future of journalism. Newspapers will meet their inevitable doom, chauffeured to destruction by the advocates of paywalls, but journalism will survive.
#39 Posted by Howard Owens, CJR on Wed 30 May 2012 at 06:59 AM
Guys,
The fact is that the road is already curving. You might wanna start thinking about turning the wheel:
http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/174906/most-major-newspaper-groups-are-now-experimenting-with-paywalls/
#40 Posted by David Simon, CJR on Wed 30 May 2012 at 08:06 AM
And that fact that newspapers are stupidly putting up paywalls proves what?
#41 Posted by Howard Owens, CJR on Wed 30 May 2012 at 08:08 AM
the fact is that there are a lot of people throughout the flyover zones in this country that do not have the trust in these Dinasaur Newspapers because of the entrenchment of influence by the political factions so more and more we turn to smaller but fresher and not so jaded sources of information which tend to be more inspiring and often more honest. It is not that the people will not pay for good journalism but it is that we have learned how to line our bird cages with more cost effective moisture absorbants. So, here is to the journalist that gets the story, the real story, the one that we care about, that tells us something about the world that is factual and tenable and that matters, this journalist will be sought after by the publications that the people choose. It is not the peoples job to stave off evolution. Have your paywall, your bundling and your gateways nothing is going to get us to pay for the same crap we can watch on tv, and we are already paying too much for that...I imagine they are next.
#42 Posted by svedka pepper, CJR on Wed 30 May 2012 at 10:46 AM
"You cherry picked your response, but ignored the most salient argument -- free alternatives, particularly TV news sites."
He's got a point there. The problem with print is that you really can't make the eyes look at the banner ad.
The tv news videos can force advertising as the ticket for the video and thus offer their content free to viewers.
However:
"TV news has always been free, and though us print people like to thumb our noses at it, it can be quite good at times and in places."
The times it's good are very rare because, as I mentioned above, the commercials compromise the product. If you offend the audience, you erode advertiser value. If you offend the advertiser, you lose their business. TV news had always been a loser compared to entertainment and was done grudgingly out of an old obligation to public interest and service in lieu of the use of public airwaves. This, by accident more than design, caused a fundamental transformation in the way we absorbed information
When the 24 hour news channels showed how to monetize public service, by sucking the audiences in with tabloid coverage instead of news, then the tv news business really lost its way. It turned the journal into the circus.
To a certian extent, the web has allowed audiences to push back a bit and improve the product, but tv journalism is, with few hetrodox exceptions, still really really bad.
The problem is we all know good journalism from informed sources has value. We all know it is in the public interest to have good journalism keeping watch upon the world and our society so that democracies are well fueled with an informed and active citzendry.
The problem we are arguing over is how do we make public interest pay? How do we make something with value produce reward for the originators?
#43 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Wed 30 May 2012 at 11:32 AM
This viable business model problem is one we've dealt with before.
http://www.cjr.org/essay/confidence_game.php#comment-53527
Ps. Did I mention today TV journalism sucks?
#44 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Wed 30 May 2012 at 11:46 AM
"I disagree that there are no "moral arguments" to be made. While I'm no fan of the NYT's politics, I think it is wrong to jump their paywall, period. If you are at all interested in maintaining a healthy press, you shouldn't do it."
Well, I was making a point about the morality of instituting paywalls, not the morality of circumventing them. But since you mention it, it's worth pointing out that in the case of the NY Times, circumventing the paywall is not a matter of some clever nerds figuring out an ingenious Napster-style hack. The Times very deliberately set up a porous paywall because they didn't want to exclude everyone. They want the benefits of being indexed by Google. They want bloggers and social-media users to help amplify their message and boost traffic. They want the drive-by users. And why is that? Because they recognize that all readers, even those derided by paywall advocates as leeches and thieves, actually have some degree of value to newspapers, and they don't want to squander that value.
#45 Posted by Greg, CJR on Wed 30 May 2012 at 11:50 AM
Excellent, fascinating discussion. David, you have made the case for paywalls as well as anyone could. But your fantasy of collusion among newspapers will never come to pass. And even if it did, it wouldn't work.
You say, "They will pay for it, I believe, if a substantial amount of news is only available at a reasonable price, and no longer available for free." That will never happen. Only one segment of the online news world is even entertaining the notion of paywalls. Local TV stations, which never charged for news coverage, are not going to put up paywalls, and they have much of the news that appears on newspaper sites (especially as newspapers keep cutting their staffs). Local blogs (which are not all the amateurs that you portray; check out http://homicidewatch.org/) are not going to throw up paywalls. Topical blogs such as TechCrunch, Mashable and SB Nation are not going to throw up paywalls.
You claim the NY Times paywall is working, but its revenue continues to decline (and, as Howard correctly notes, it's not remotely comparable to a metro daily). You claim the Arkansas Democrat Gazette's paywall is working, but it cut staff the same week that we cut staff when I was at the Cedar Rapids Gazette, and their community had not experienced a natural disaster).
While you're right that you paid for print content, you never paid what it cost to produce. The news business needs to get serious about developing a new business model for the digital world. I won't re-share the link Anna already shared (thanks, Anna!) to my discussion of many new revenue sources that newspapers have not yet sufficiently explored, since you apparently didn't bother to read it when she shared it. But paywalls are not the only revenue source available. They are just the one that most severely limits audience potential.
Here's the bottom line: The survivors in the digital news game are going to find their business model looking forward, not back.
#46 Posted by Steve Buttry, CJR on Wed 30 May 2012 at 12:10 PM
People never pay for the news. They want the advertising. The 50k people (in only one year) at the Dallas Morning News sure must be getting frustrated that their pre-print inserts aren't coming out of the computer screen.
#47 Posted by Stephen, CJR on Wed 30 May 2012 at 12:52 PM
It appears my second response has not posted (too long?). So here's a summary of my thoughts.
David
I will gladly move past the subject of ad homonyms except to say that on first blush it appeared to me that you had brought up it up in direct conversation that somebody was "being an idiot." I will, however take you at your word that you were bringing it up without any sarcasm and in response to her comment which I did not read as directed specifically at you. So moving on.....
I will not let this sentence fly though: "Perhaps this is another thing that the internet has wrought in its defeat of the newsroom and its culture."
Are you suggesting the Internet created ad homonym attacks? Can it also get credit for humor, garage sales and soft core porn (or did HBO claim that already?)
As for the main issue. I still believe it is you who created a straw man. Just look at your short essay above. You describe your interlocutors and then point out that they don't even understand that journalism costs money. Worse than that this same ignorant interlocutor doesn't appreciate the "gravitas" of the newsroom.
Both of those traits are describing a fictional character you create so that you could easily blow them down making your argument for the paywall look better. It is intellectually dishonest with yourself to ascribe such traits to people that don't exist. (same goes with the notion that the interlocutors believe amateurs can replace professionals - who is saying this? Nobody - hence, it's a straw man)
The true debate at hand is about how to pay for the news. Yes there are folks who are skeptical of pay walls. But they might actually be on your side from time to time (if you aren't always ascribing feeble traits to them).
You challenge us to come up with alternatives. I actually dedicated the last four years of my life to a twist on the NPR model of donations (spot.us) where money would go to stories that were to the benefit of all (the commons) - this is not a paywall which creates value by limiting the number of people who have access to information. That experiment has since been acquired by American Public Media.
And that's just one example to traditional paywalls (Kickstarter being a similar model). There are plenty of alternatives to go around. I myself have written about the NYT payfence and believe it has promises and can be improved and should be pursued. But to suggest that people who are "against paywalls" don't offer alternatives is either short sighted disengineous or a straw man creation to boost ones own argument.
#48 Posted by David Cohn, CJR on Wed 30 May 2012 at 12:54 PM
"Are you suggesting the Internet created ad homonym attacks? Can it also get credit for humor, garage sales and soft core porn (or did HBO claim that already?)"
I think it has been established beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Internet killed soft-core porn in favor of the harder stuff. :-)
#49 Posted by Greg, CJR on Wed 30 May 2012 at 01:29 PM
One thing is certain: Nobody is going to pay for local news when it reads like it does in Owens' The Batavian or any of the terrible "Digital First" properties where Steve Buttry and Jay Rosen are leading the way.
#50 Posted by John, CJR on Wed 30 May 2012 at 04:12 PM
David, there's another way to slice this debate.
In your revenue model, the Baltimore Sun as a digital property makes $4 million per year, with most of it coming from some 30,000 subscribers.
According to the Sun's online media kit (http://essentials.baltimoresun.com/media_kit/reach/) it generates 41 million page views and 3.8 million unique users each month (two year-old numbers, I imagine it's higher now). A news web site in a market like Baltimore with those numbers, if well run and well executed, should generate easily $4 million in online revenue WITHOUT a pay wall. So what is gained in your approach? (and $8 million is not out of reach)
In a city of a couple million residence, you want to limit the reach of quality journalism to 30,000 people. How does that serve the higher purpose of democracy, which I assume is why you consider high quality journalism so important -- serving democracy.
In the free news model, any person with the minimum ability to make it into a library has access to the journalism that feeds democracy.
In your model, only the elite have access to quality journalism.
Which model serves democracy better?
The limited access model, or the model that is capable of producing the same journalism you proposed with with a much broader and deeper audience?
For the record, I note that your model does not contemplate the metered approach now in vogue, and as we have discussed, that's an exceptionally porous model unlikely in a market like Baltimore to generate the paid subscription revenue you envision.
#51 Posted by Howard Owens, CJR on Wed 30 May 2012 at 06:00 PM
I told this story before, but perhaps not to this crowd, so...
Back in 2008 my company was approached by HP Labs, which as far as I know, were then working on Amazon's new (second) Kindle, or helping with its design. In any way, they were interested in a payment system that would allow tablet users charge and pay for digital content with little friction. We came up with something that now is often called a paywall, or a paygate as we preferred to call it. One can imagine I was ALL for it, could not stand publishers and their consultants who did not like the idea at all, claiming that NO-body would ever pay for online content and that tablets are a threat to the industry -- but the project folded down. My company and I moved on to monetize digital music and games. But I could not entirely abandon what in our tests and pilot projects worked so well: people were buying high-quality content and they seemed OK with that. Not all, naturally, but not "NO-body" either.
Then, at a MarkLogic conference in NYC, I listened to Mr Crowitz presenting his (and Steven Brill's) idea of a metered paywall. It seemed completely backwards vis-a-vis the model we had developed and successfully tested: portal-agnostic, reader-centric, on-demand, instant and anonymous. Still, then the dilemma was should publishers charge for online content or not? Hardly anyone was discussing how to charge for it or which pay model is better. So, I supported Journalism Online’s initiative and even fought with those who called it a "paywall," a derogatory name. Press+, as it is known now, was a step in the right direction, which the NYT and others later confirmed.
It does not mean, however, that I would advise publishers, especially those unlike the NYT or WSJ, to implement a paywall now. This is simply because there are much better content monetization solution; better in terms of the rate of conversion, profits and user satisfaction and engagement.
I am saying this here, because David Cohn is correct: there are solutions alternative to paywalls, and not all critics of the paywll as we know it now are against charging for digital content. David Simon is also correct urging publishers to try and generate revenue online. Which way to go, should depend on each publisher's overall strategy, type of content and its users’ preferences, not some unnecessarily dividing “paywall or no to paywall” debates. There are many alternative solutions to experiment with.
#52 Posted by Greg Golebiewski (@znakit), CJR on Wed 30 May 2012 at 06:40 PM
@Greg (lots of Gregs here): People who cheat always like to have a rationale to make them feel better. ("Everybody does it" "If they really were serous they wouldn't have made it so easy" "I'm helping them get noticed")
But they're still cheating.
#53 Posted by JLD, CJR on Wed 30 May 2012 at 08:25 PM
Bundle systems do work, there are two working examples currently, in Slovakia and Slovenia run by Piano Media. In those two countries 20 newspaper and magazine publishers have gotten together to present their content in a bundled package. The key to the system is making sure that payment is convenient and affordable. In both countries access to all papers within the system is less than €5. Put another way, that's less than two beers.
The system is not collusion, revenue is divided on where subscribers spend their time so publishers compete against each other with the quality of their content. If you have poor content, you get fewer page views and less revenue.
Finally, there is but one login for everything so you are free to surf all media within the system and never enter your login as long as you're a paying subscriber.
Payment systems ARE coming, by 2015 it will be impossible to read the news without paying someone, even if you simply read the wires. Yahoo pays AP, RTR for the privilege of running their stuff, so even though the reader doesn't pay, the journalist is getting paid, and that's the most important part.
The discussion will go on, but the anomaly that started in 1995 when newspaper publishers freaked out and put their premium content online for NOTHING will end.
#54 Posted by David Brauchli, CJR on Thu 31 May 2012 at 05:44 AM
Can we stop pretending that newspaper publishers freaked out in 1995 and put their premium content online for NOTHING? For some people that's a myth. For others it's a lie. But it is emphatically untrue. Lots of newspapers have tried lots of schemes for charging for online content through the years, including in the 1990s. I remember hitting paywalls back then and those paywalls came down because they didn't work. Newspapers moved cautiously online and still do. Remember the "we can't scoop ourselves" fear?
Go ahead and erect paywalls if you must. I hope you are successful. But understand that you are cutting your audience and clinging to the past. And know this: If John Robinson's college students wouldn't pay for Facebook, they are not going to pay for your online newspaper: http://johnlrobinson.com/2012/05/newspaper-paywalls-using-band-aids-on-a-bullet-wound/
#55 Posted by Steve Buttry, CJR on Thu 31 May 2012 at 07:01 AM
Some of the first newspapers to go online started with paywalls. Some of those paywalls lasted only a matter of weeks.
Steve, the problem with most of the "people should pay crowd" is they weren't even paying attention to the Web in 1995. They were the ones who said right on up to 2004 or so, "this web thing is just a fad." Then they freaked out and started demanding payment. Now, sadly and largely, they have taken over the asylum. If you look at the list of newspaper companies that are moving toward paywalls, all the smart digital people are nearly all gone, either pushed out or left in disgust.
#56 Posted by Howard Owens, CJR on Thu 31 May 2012 at 08:01 AM
...And then there's the digital people who can't even get a job in media (cough, cough), because the jobs they are perfect for 1) don't exist or 2) are very hard to stay in:
http://annatarkov.com/its-their-stuff-were-just-putting-it-online
#57 Posted by Anna Tarkov, CJR on Thu 31 May 2012 at 09:09 AM
While I agree with Simon in theory, the problem is that most newspapers are simply corporate mouth-pieces at this point. The New York Times help grease the skids to get us into Iraq, only one of its many sins. I don't cotton to paying for propaganda, so like others I look at British papers like the Guardian for my news.
He's also a bit behind the times - the Los Angeles Times already has a pay-wall. Interestingly, the New York Times pay-wall is much easier to circumvent if you so choose.
#58 Posted by John Wheaties, CJR on Thu 31 May 2012 at 09:58 AM
@JLD: "People who cheat always like to have a rationale to make them feel better. ("Everybody does it" "If they really were serous they wouldn't have made it so easy" "I'm helping them get noticed") But they're still cheating."
Ah, but where do you draw the line? If you sign up to receive the NYT's free email newsletters, all links from within the email don't count against your quota. Is that cheating? What about following the NYT on Twitter and following links from there (which also don't count)? What about following a non-NYT Twitter account that tweets out every article?
In other words, is your standard "You should not be taking extraordinary steps to circumvent the paywall" or "If you're reading a lot of articles, you should pay"? If the former, you need to define "extraordinary". If the latter, it's not clear that the NYT agrees with you.
#59 Posted by Greg, CJR on Thu 31 May 2012 at 01:06 PM
"Steve, the problem with most of the "people should pay crowd" is they weren't even paying attention to the Web in 1995. They were the ones who said right on up to 2004 or so, "this web thing is just a fad." Then they freaked out and started demanding payment. Now, sadly and largely, they have taken over the asylum. If you look at the list of newspaper companies that are moving toward paywalls, all the smart digital people are nearly all gone, either pushed out or left in disgust."
Dude, I go away for just a little while and it's right back to ad hominem.
Let me say it -- plead it -- again. Argumentum ad hominem is a logical fallacy that seeks to win a rhetorical dispute by maligning the opposing party -- either by insult, or negative characterization, or by an attack on an opponent's background, standing or associations. In relying on such, a person is, de facto, eschewing the substantive facts and issues. Mr. Owens, it seems your default is to create a characterization or assessment of your opposition, and then to hail the vision and history of allies -- as if that in any way achieves any relevance. It does not.
I've met a lot of print journalists who were Luddites, and others who readily understood the digital revolution well before their publishers did. I've met a lot of digital people who understood the requirements of journalism and many others who were absolutely ignorant of the costs, realities and nuances of news-gathering. None of that means squat.
Al Capone could, theoretically, have written the greatest text on human ethics ever. He didn't. But he could have. And if such a text were found, only after someone read such a text and accurately assessed its contents could we say for certain, either way. Telling bad stories about Mr. Capone's past behavior or calling him names doesn't resolve the issue.
I'm sorry that this is didactic, but it's honestly the reason that so little is accomplished by our current level of discourse. And frankly, it characterizes a lot of the belligerence offered by new media advocates over the last ten years. Calling those opposed to the free circulation of news dinosaurs and fools may be gratifying, but given how poorly the newspaper industry has been served by the practice thus far, and given how many talented reporters and editors are no longer at their posts in this country, perhaps it is time for those advocating more of the same to leaven the argument with something more substantive.
For the hell of it, let's see if the discussion can hew to the content and not to your impressions and opinions about who it is you are arguing against, or for that matter, how wise they were who have been unfairly vanquished at newspapers turning from the free digital model. That stuff is a crutch; and the folks arguing here can do better, for themselves and most of all, for the argument itself, which might actually matter in some way.
#60 Posted by David Simon, CJR on Thu 31 May 2012 at 05:31 PM
David, I have no desire to make ad hominem attacks. I repeat again that when I called your original post idiotic, I meant that I felt the idea was idiotic, not the person presenting it. I realize that's a fine line, but in case it's not clear, I don't think you are an idiot. I think you very intelligent, albeit a bit stubborn.
I think you can see in my other comments that I have not made any other personal attacks. With whatever credibility that has bought me, I beseech you again to read the links I posted in my first reply to you. I would post them again, but CJR filters any comment with three or more links as spam. I'm going to re-post one of them in this comment and then post another one in the next comment so you don't have to search for them.
I hope you won't decline to read the first one since it was written by Steve (Buttry), but hopefully you practice what you preach and can deal with content only, not a person's perceived character or past statements. And let me just say that I find Steve's character to be unimpeachable and I think you'll find many people agree. But I guess that's beside the point, right?
In any case, please read this and give us your thoughts:
http://stevebuttry.wordpress.com/2011/04/29/newspapers-dont-need-new-ideas-here-are-lots-of-ideas-for-new-revenue-streams/
#61 Posted by Anna Tarkov, CJR on Thu 31 May 2012 at 06:41 PM
"Argumentum ad hominem is a logical fallacy that seeks to win a rhetorical dispute by maligning the opposing party -- either by insult, or negative characterization, or by an attack on an opponent's background, standing or associations. In relying on such, a person is, de facto, eschewing the substantive facts and issues."
I'd love to have a discussion exclusively sticking to substantive facts and issues, but this is not the world in which we live.
Chris Hayes has discussions sticking to substantive facts and issues, and look what people are doing to him. (Media sucks link above)
Elizabeth Warren wants discussions sticking to substantive facts and issues, and look at what they are doing to her.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/05/26/michael-tomasky-on-the-media-s-foolish-elizabeth-warren-witch-hunt.html
There is a danger when the people of the rational persuasion tell us to avoid those crude, crass, ad hominem approaches. One, the bullies get to use our expectations of proper conduct to prevent us from talking.
Republican Scumbag: "You are a socialist, terrorist, islamo-fascist liberal! You hate AMERICA!"
Tiny backboned Democrat: "You have put forth laws which give the appearance the GOP is at war with women."
Republican Scumbag waving a fan: "This is outrageous! How dare you be so uncivil. It just goes to show the Democrats are more interested in scoring political points than talking about the issues. Bring me a glass of water, I feel faint."
Absent backboned centrists: "Terrible. For shame. Both sides do it."
Broken backboned Democrat: "I'm very sorry. Can we talk about issues?"
Republican Scumbag: "Certainly. I'd like to start off by saying YOU hate AMERICA!"
Every word becomes a potential trip "wire" (pardon the reference) for someone's outrage, which makes good tv for the 24 hour news channels looking for something to yap about.
Which leads us to Two, being civil at all times gives the impression we don't care about anything.
When a party does things like threaten social security, start ugly wars based on lies, and accuse us of HATING AMERICA, by not "letting emotion get the best of us" we give the impression that either we're vulcans or that we're embarrassed of something. That maybe we deserve the bitch-slaps.
And we let our opposition monopolize the ground on passion, which so often gets mistaken for principle in America.
So personally, I like the discussion to consist of substantive facts and issues, but there are things I care about passionately and, if someone wounds them, I think we should be allowed to respond without shame and defend what we believe is right.
Because I've seen a press laughing with a president as he looked under tables and chairs for the missing Iraqi WMD's US soldiers were dying on behalf of.
And it was a very civil affair.
America doesn't need that civility.
#62 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Thu 31 May 2012 at 07:04 PM
But this civility is awesome!!
#63 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Thu 31 May 2012 at 07:08 PM
More than anything, this is another disgusting example of how a few twitter-active nobodies have robbed the conversation over the future of journalism.
The question, as I see it, is yet to be answered. if we're choosing sides, I'll take that of the guy who was a killer reporter and creator of great television vs. the chin scratchers who have built up a good twitter following and done little else with their careers. If they're lighting the way toward the future, good luck journalism. You're going to need it.
#64 Posted by Jason, CJR on Thu 31 May 2012 at 07:44 PM
@Greg: Our Socratic Gadfly friend above recommends using "NYClean or a Greasemonkey" to jump the wall. I think we can both agree that's a pretty straightforward example of unethical behavior. If the Times offers free readings of its articles in return for signing up for their newsletter, that's obviously not cheating.
I don't think this is rocket science. If you can access the Times through their sponsored links (or those it allows on Twitter, etc.) it's fine, if you resort to a "workaround" it's not.
#65 Posted by JLD, CJR on Thu 31 May 2012 at 08:18 PM
And here is link #2:
http://stdout.be/2012/05/04/fungible/
Again, please share your reaction.
Finally, allow me to explain why some of the people who have commented here took a tone that you have (I believe, mistakenly) taken to be unnecessarily confrontational and belligerent. You see, this is not the first time we are having these discussions, whether in person or online. I've only been at it for about 4 years, but some people have been trying to turn things around for 10 or more years. I can only imagine how they feel!
Like yourself, we love journalism passionately and we want to see it survive and thrive. And we have opinions about how that should happen and conversely, what would hold us back. And when we see people espousing views that we believe would hold us back from achieving a bright future, we sometimes get irritated. It's not personal. Or rather, it's intensely personal for us in the sense that we personally feel responsible for ensuring that great journalism continues to be done in the digital age. Maybe I shouldn't be saying "we" and speaking for the other people in this thread. But I feel fairly certain they would agree. They can correct me if I'm wrong.
#66 Posted by Anna Tarkov, CJR on Thu 31 May 2012 at 09:02 PM
David, there was nothing ad hominem about my truthful and factually accurate observation. I've been at this game a long time and have seen it first hand. I've spent a career fighting the passive resisters (The Luddites are actually much easier to deal with than the people who say the "get it" an then passively resist change). This isn't some side issue to the discussion. It's a central fact of one of the issues that have been killing progress for newsrooms across the country.
Jason, for the purpose of this discussion, I'll stack my qualifications against Mr. Simon any day. An exclusively journalistic career followed by writing scripts hardly qualifies one to run a business. In my career, I've written business plans, met budgets, hired and fired, had successes, had failures, won awards, studied the business of online news publishing exclusively for nearly 20 years. This is my job and my life. I haven't had time to write scripts because I've dedicated myself to trying to create online news businesses. Mr. Simon has none of this experience, but yet he offers advice to publishers as if he does. If the issue is over qualifications, then there it is. If you want to go all ad hominem about it. And I mean no disrespect to Mr. Simon. He's accomplished enviable things and has earned every ounce of admiration you and other can bestow about him. It's just that those qualifications are totally irrelevant to a discussion about business. And that doesn't invalidate his opinion, per se. He articulates his position well and it's a worthy topic to discuss from whatever the background is behind the opinions. But if you want to make the discussion about qualifications, you should at least get your facts straight.
#67 Posted by Howard Owens, CJR on Thu 31 May 2012 at 09:03 PM
@Jason - Wow. I can't speak for everyone on this thread, but Steve and Howard have done a lot with their careers. And I'm sure David, whom you hold above everyone else here, would decry your use of ad hominem attacks.
#68 Posted by Anna Tarkov, CJR on Thu 31 May 2012 at 09:43 PM
Mr. Owens, I understand that this isn't landing, but I'll give it one last go. I am not interested in debating the accuracy of your assessments of those who are opposed to your views or those who agree with you. That you seek to have your views of the players matter in some way to the substance of your argument -- regardless of your accuracy -- is, once again, the problem.
Arguing your idea on the merits is the challenge. Arguing that your idea has merit because you are certain that smart, sensible people are on your side and foolish folk are on the other side is on its face an ad hominem argument. Get it? The accuracy of your assessments of others has no bearing. The entire tenured faculty of Harvard University could be gathered in solidarity against pay walls and you would be no closer to proving a single fact. Every resident of a state home for the criminally insane could be in full support of pay walls and it matters not one way or the other to the merits of my argument. Ad hominem, translated, means "to the man." You are arguing to the man, not to the idea itself. When you do so, you drag the discussion off point entirely. Only a discussion of the issue itself can and should matter.
Ms. Tarkov, I understand that you were making a distinction between calling my argument idiotic and calling me an idiot. I wasn't in any way offended. But I began my engagement here by noting your tone and trying to establish a better one so that the discussion might progress past the point of such provocative conversation-enders as, "How long must I listen to your dumbass arguments?" That was your opening gambit, was it not? I was in effect trying to say, from jump: Hello, I am reading the back and forth and if we can bring this to a grown-up place and really discuss this, I am interested.
Jason, thank you but no thank you. Ms. Tarkov is exactly correct. Citing my credentials in a favorable light or attempting to diminish others' credentials does nothing to advance any argument, in exactly the way that Mr. Owens seeking to discredit and stereotype those opposed to his views isn't relevant.
Ms. Tarkov, I will certainly read your cited articles and posts, but while there were some interesting thoughts in between the name-calling, I do remain entirely unconvinced that high-end journalism can be achieved online without a revenue stream that values the product and requires the a significant share of the costs of creating that product be passed to consumers. You get what you pay for in life; the old saying is true. And when it comes to high-end journalism, the free internet is worth about what we pay for it.
I interposed here hoping to provoke fresh thoughts and debate, to take some measure of the current back-and-forth around the news industry. I didn't want to monopolize debate or have a last word, and honestly, I was listening for different voices. Not surprising that the comments section of a CJR item lends itself more to piecemeal banter, and perhaps, if there is more to say, it should find a more comprehensive forum.
Some place with a good, healthy pay wall, perhaps.
best,
#69 Posted by David Simon, CJR on Fri 1 Jun 2012 at 02:09 AM
David, let me remind you of how this conversation started ... "The opposite is true. These folks don’t understand the first thing about actual journalism. It costs money to cover a metro region, or a nation, or the world comprehensively, to place reporters at key points and maintain them while they cover a beat and glean information year after year. Anyone who still thinks that this can be achieved by amateurs or hobbyists are embarrassing themselves. "
No logical fallacies, ad hominem, straw man or otherwise, there, is there? You want to paint the opponents of paywalls as benighted fools who don't really understand journalism, and when confronted with factual information from the other side, you ignore the merits of those arguments and instead turn the conversation to the methods of how your opponents criticize your position. Throughout this conversation, you've done very little to address the facts and merits of the anti-paywall position.
When a conversation reaches the point that the argumentation moves from substance to arguing over the argument, it's pretty much done. I appreciate you at least engaging in public conversation, but I wish you had spent more time addressing the merits of the anti-paywall position rather than trying to turn the focus on how arguments were presented. More time spent on actual facts and substance of the positions of myself and others might have been more enlightening.
#70 Posted by Howard Owens, CJR on Fri 1 Jun 2012 at 07:28 AM
Howard, my brother.
I am characterizing the thoughts, their arguments that I fundamentally disagree with. I do think that anyone who wants this stuff for free doesn't understand the fundamental nature of the product. I think that opinion is a straight shot from the argument itself. I do think that anyone who is still arguing that unpaid "citizen journalists" are in any way capable of serving society in the same way that the profession once did -- given how much coverage has already leeched out of American cities -- is indeed embarrassing himself.
Let's acknowledge that you can't have an argument without criticizing and characterizing the other fellows arguments.
Brother, that's a far cry from declaring that the problem is that your opponents -- "most" of them, not even just the one's you are disputing issues with -- have no standing because you declare that they were wrong about the internet in 1995 and that they have now lost their minds further, and oh yeah, all the smart people are no longer in charge at newspapers.
You really can't see a difference?
One of us is willing to engage by saying: The people who make this argument are wrong and don't understand X.
The other feels comfortable saying: The people who make this argument do so because most of them didn't understand the internet early enough, then freaked out, and now they've chased all the good people away from newspapers.
I know you would rather have a discussion go forward without any discussion of dishonest or hyberbolic rhetoric. But you know what? I've had a lot of experience with those kinds of discussions, especially on the internet. And without fail, the lack of rigor on some folks' part assures that the outcome will be off-point and mediocre.
I love a good argument. Hate a lame one.
I admit that I probed this particular dynamic to see what was possible. But unless people are really willing to give up the horseshit attempts to hunt a backdoor and trash the other person and their standing, nothing real gets said.
A final point of contrast between your method and mine, brother.
This fellow Jason shows up and does exactly what I abhor on my behalf. I tell him no, that's not how we do. And I make absolutely no characterization about you, your background or your standing. Frankly, I don't care who you are or what you do. I'm not looking for a backdoor on you. I am interested IN WHAT YOU HAVE TO SAY only.
Your immediate response is not to do the same. Instead, you take his bait and not only defend your own standing -- which is understandable, he attacked your standing -- but you rush to run down mine, to suggest that you have seen it all in journalism and my personal experience, that of a working journalist and a television writer, is in your mind less to the point. Again, if this tack is your default, then there isn't sufficient rigor to really go anywhere.
(cont.)
#71 Posted by David Simon, CJR on Fri 1 Jun 2012 at 08:47 AM
If I thought for a minute that our histories matter to this argument, I could of course shout back at you that, hey, I happen to have run a multimillion production company for a decade now and that every year, I sign a production budget that makes me responsible for more than the operating budget of most newspapers. I'd puff up like that and then, you know what? We'd be arguing who we are and what we do, and why we deserve to be heard, while the actual issue goes unaddressed.
And behold, there it is! The American political dynamic! The very reason we can't address a problem in any fundamental way in this country anymore. Obama was a community organizer? How does that qualify him to be president? Romney ran a big ass company! Oh wait, no, he put people out of work. But Obama doesn't understand the private sector. But Romney's too rich to know the problems of working people. Trayvon's a thug! Zimmerman's a nutcase! Right down to guilt by association, with folks arguing about whether Obama should stand for all the stuff his minister once said, or whether Romney should answer for all absurdities in the Mormon canon. Christ. Anyone want to talk seriously about the drug war? Or election reform? Or health care reform? Or the legal implications of stand-you-ground gun laws?
I know -- you've made it clear -- that rhetorical boundaries are, for you, beside the point. But for me, honestly, they've become a prerequisite to real debate and consideration. And I feel that most of the internet could use the kind of editors and copy desk I labored under for the first couple decades of my professional career. They didn't let me get away with the kind of shit that flows nowadays.
Where once, in the Middle Ages say, an argument of circular fallacy was probably the greatest threat to human logic (I am the king, and kings rule by divine right, so I work for God and my decisions are divinely inspired), now the ad hominem predominates.
And if you still think this doesn't matter to me, that it's really some sort of device to avoid your issues, I can only offer this: davidsimon.com/i-meant-this. I hope I have the cite correct. I'm typing from vague memory.
If after reading, you still believe that how we argue doesn't matter to what we argue, well, I'm done. The future of the press in America should be all that anyone is talking about on this website. Or at Poynter. Or anywhere in which people are thinking about the future of the American experiment. And yeah, I read everything I can on the issue because I'm quite worried; no schadenfreude from this newsroom refugee.
But we need smart debate. Rigorous debate. Precise debate.
And yes, I do regret that this one didn't get to the point where I could address the pomp of new media advocate quoting Walter Lippmann from 1920. Did you really mean to suggest that Lippmann, speaking of the American public nine decades ago -- with its lower rates of literacy, basic education, college experience, urbanity, discretionary income -- had a clue about anything current when he declared that people won't pay for news? People in 1920 wouldn't pay for a lot of stuff we now consume readily. In 1960, they wouldn't pay for television programming either. Should we quote Jackie Gleason on that, too?
#72 Posted by David Simon, CJR on Fri 1 Jun 2012 at 09:40 AM
David, you really fail to see how your initial post was a horseshit attack on people who have thoughtfully considered the best business model to go forward with for online news?
Really?
"These folks don’t understand the first thing about actual journalism."
That isn't an attempt to insult a whole class of people? It isn't arguing from the person rather than the issue? Really? Since I've been a very vocal opponent of paid content my entire online career, you don't think I shouldn't take such an insult a bit personally? You're saying I know nothing about actual journalism. I mean, really, would you say that to my face?
Merely because somebody disagrees with your position, they don't understand the issue? That's an argument of substance?
"Anyone who still thinks that this can be achieved by amateurs or hobbyists are embarrassing themselves."
It's been pointed out to you several times now that this is a complete red herring, and you still float it out there as if it's a serious argument? Really?
I'm going to leave it at that because I'm frankly just flabbergasted.
#73 Posted by Howard Owens, CJR on Fri 1 Jun 2012 at 11:59 AM
David, you wrote:
"I do remain entirely unconvinced that high-end journalism can be achieved online without a revenue stream that values the product and requires the a significant share of the costs of creating that product be passed to consumers."
I don't disagree. But is high end journalism the only type of work a newspaper produces?
I'm starting to get the feeling that all of us actually agree, but the methods to achieve a sustainable future for journalism is where we differ. You prefer the paywall option, myself and others prefer different approaches. This does not mean that we want to give everything away for free. We simply want to be more strategic and charge consumers only for things that they truly want and need and ask for and seek out on their own. Those things usually are not high-impact journalism and that's why even in the good old days, the Metro section was supported by Real Estate, House & Garden, Travel, etc.
As much as it may pain us, it's difficult to make the case that high-value journalism is wanted or needed. Though we know it is vital, the general public does not. Media literacy is not very high in the U.S. and an understanding of how governments, schools, etc work is poor as well. You of all people know this to be true. I believe this is a problem we need to work on before we ask the average Joe to pony up for information that he doesn't think he needs. As someone once said "You'll miss us when we're gone" isn't a business model. Or, to put it another way, you cannot sell someone a hammer to fix their roof if they are unaware that their roof is leaking.
By the way, I share your concern for the low level of American political discourse. Personally I don't withdraw from a discussion simply because someone makes what I perceive to be an ad hominem attack, but it's your prerogative to do so. In case it matters to you, the reason I don't withdraw is that I find personal attacks are often someone's trigger finger response, if you will, and they can often be persuaded to take their finger off the trigger.
#74 Posted by Anna Tarkov, CJR on Fri 1 Jun 2012 at 12:18 PM
Ms. Tarkov,
I do not believe so. I believe saying they don't know the first thing about journalism is a precise attack on their position, because I believe that the first thing about high-end journalism is that it requires paid careers by professionals. And that prime directive has been proven across the board by the last ten years.
Free journalism models everywhere cannot and have not sustained a beat reporting structure that can hold civic and societal institutions accountable on a consistent, continuous basis. It hasn't happened. It won't happen.
Whatever online entity emerges that fills the void of the major metro daily -- if indeed it performs the same civic function -- will pay people a living wage to commit their lives to professional journalism. And when I assert this, and I have been doing so for some years now, some folks invariably pop up and argue otherwise. When they do, they consistently cite this website or that in which some grassroots journalism has taken told in the wake of the newspaper demise. With no exception, those websites are either:
1) Paying a certain amount of staff for reporting, in which case they are affirming what I am saying about professional journalism (The Lens in New Orleans for example). Invariably, behind such entities, there is some non-profit grant money as a source of revenue.
or
2) They are not performing the same function as a comprehensive, fully staffed daily newspaper. They are unable in their current state to maintain a reporting beat structure that puts trained, committed full-time professionals in places where they can hold civic institutions accountable.
I have not had a new-media advocate cite an example of the brave, new viable world of free-internet journalism that does not in fact fall into those categories. Or worse, a website or aggregator site that is reliant on the wire service-stream of reporting from still existing professional newsrooms is cited, absurdly, as being an easy alternate to the very institutions that are still feeding them the of their first-generation reporting. Mr. Owens just did so with TV news station sites which are, in the markets where I live, wholly depended on the AP for 80 percent of their content, at a minimum.
So I look at statements of those advocating for free journalism and I quite naturally and appropriately note their indifference to the actuality of what real, high-end journalism is. If they continue compare the spare, rote aggregation of one site to the original reporting of another; if they can't see that, say, a series of articles detailing capitalism's corruption of Louisiana's prison system only exists because the Times-Pic sustained reporters for months in their pursuit of that analysis, paying salaries and expenses, etc; if they can't see that there is no free-internet model in New Orleans that can do these kind of things across the spectrum of society, covering criminal justice, education, health issues, government, transportation entities; if they won't admit a free internet has yet to create a single watchdog agency that does this in a single metro region, then by analysis, I conclude they don't have a clue about the true costs, scope and dynamic that creates cohesive, consistent coverage.
That is not me trashing new media advocates as a class, for being a class. That is me saying to the folks who look at the work product of the free internet, compare it favorably to the work product of a functional metro daily -- and then say aloud there's no distinction between the two -- man, you guys have no clue. And, well, they don't.
#75 Posted by David Simon, CJR on Fri 1 Jun 2012 at 01:06 PM
In conclusion, I would only add that because advertising revenue which once sustained the professional model has declined and will not return, another revenue stream must be achieved in order to sustain the necessary model.
To replace the advertising revenue, I am all ears as to whether there is a more viable stream of cash other than charging for the product itself -- particularly if it is bundled with other reporting from other national and international sources. And, indeed, if all of this material is no longer available for free from aggregators or free-for-use newspaper websites. Yes, the construction of this requires a navigation of anti-trust laws, but notably, such a navigation is entirely possible. Were it not, those fellows running Comcast or DirectTV would be in federal prison right now.
It would be one thing if new media advocates could conjure more than the pennies-on-the-dollar revenue that comes from aggregation or from online advertising, or the nice-but-not-enough-for-the-task contributions of 501c3 non-profits. Or if they even acknowledged that a failure to achieve a significant revenue stream will usher a level of reporting from the world that will not be replaced by smaller, stunted "citizen journalism" or underfunded grassroots efforts. But they will not. I have read the Jarvises, the Ingrams. I've seen what they have already claimed, prematurely, for new media, and how quick and facile they are in comparing, a victory here and a story there to the day-in, day-out comprehensive coverage of entire metro regions.
I do believe that in a world where Google or Yahoo does not link to a multitude of free first-generation reporting, and where bundled, professional news product -- much like bundled, professional television entertainment -- is available at a reasonable price to those people who need to know what is going on in their world, that high-end journalism can survive. And I believe that reasonable price can be achieved because the traditional costs associated with the home delivery of news -- paper, presses, trucks, gas, etc. -- no longer exist. Charge me half of what I used to pay to have the paper tossed on my doorstep and provide the same consistent stream of news, sports, business and lifestyle reporting as professional, fulltime reporters can achieve, and I am there -- provided the same thing isn't available for free elsewhere. Which is my point, in full. Free is the death of real journalism at this point. Free is contempt of product. A sophmore business major at a community college could have told the captains of the newspaper industry a decade or more ago that if you don't have a product for which people are willing to pay, then you don't have a product. But I believe information is indeed a viable commodity and the fact that people are consuming more of it than ever from free locales is indicative of its value. Would that the people running newspaper chains in the nineties had come up through newsrooms, they might have believed such. Instead, they were businessmen, many having come to newspapering from other industry. The fellow who began the butchery of my newspaper chain sold cereal before he sold information. And so, he regarded the actual product of The Sun and its sister papers as the stuff that cost money that you threw around the stuff that made money, the advertising. And he held it in no regard. But it was, indeed, the product. And a significant number of people acquire that product every day without fail. But they aren't paying for it. And if they don't, soon it won't exist.
#76 Posted by David Simon, CJR on Fri 1 Jun 2012 at 01:29 PM
The thing I still don't understand is why you think paid content is the only way to achieve high-purpose journalism?
I already showed you how your math fails on the topic.
You say the free model has yet to produce high-purpose journalism (I disagree, of course), yet you cannot point to a paid model that has worked either (we already debunked the idea that the NYT is doing this, just to save you the trouble of flogging that dead horse).
#77 Posted by Howard Owens, CJR on Fri 1 Jun 2012 at 01:38 PM
Oops,
I now realize it was Mr. Owens and not Ms. Tarkov, who was arguing that my criticisms were akin to ad hominem. So that response was, misdirected. Apologies. In any event, it was Ms. Tarkov's increasingly warm tone and earnest sincerity that drew me back in. So, my best to both of you...
#78 Posted by David Simon, CJR on Fri 1 Jun 2012 at 01:40 PM
Mr. Owens: I actually wasn't referring to you. Like many others, I suspect, I had no idea who you were. I found a link to your site after several videos from a yo-yo champion with the same name. Thank you for making it clear that you're an award-winning digital journalism pioneer. in an argument with MacArthur Fellowship recipient, did you seriously mention that you've won awards? More to point, after 20 years of studying the online news business, you have http://www.thebatavian.com to show for it? Dude, there's a press release on your home page. I'm sure it provides a worthwhile service to the residents of Batavia. But if you want an honest comparison, i'll take the opinion of the guy who was called to testify before Congress.
Ms. Tarkov: With all due respect, I don't give a crap if Mr. Simon calls me out for using the ad hominem he abhors. I'm entitled to question the credentials of those who are saying we should trust their advice over that of others because they're experienced in the business. Based on what, exactly?
#79 Posted by Jason, CJR on Fri 1 Jun 2012 at 01:56 PM
I don't agree with your math.
First of all, I don't believe that all advertising disappears, only that the percentage breakdown between ad revenue and circulation revenue will be altered, so that new circulation revenues, coupled with residual advertising profit can sustain the enterprise while online circulation revenue continues to be nurtured. Your math excluded that possibility, I think.
As to the NYT paywall being a failure and a dead horse unworthy of the whip, you might want to reconsider that notion in light of actual Wall Street analysis of the dynamic. That nag is passing the first quarter mile on the way to substantial and relevant success.
From the Atlantic wire, May 15, 2012:
"If you were longing to see the day when The New York Times was going to stop hurting and start making enough gains in subscribers to offset its ad losses, so that you could tell your media pundit friends that newspapers aren't dead, you may want to clear your calendar in 2014. Sure, five consecutive quarters of revenue decline for America's paper of record is a tough fact to live with if you care about newspapers, but this two year estimate is actually good news (for a change) about future of the news business.
AllThingsD's Peter Kafka has the report featuring research by Barckay's Kannan Venkateshwar that offers a timeframe for The Times' success, stating "One day, not that far away, the New York Times’ growing subscriber base will make up for its shrinking ad business. That will happen in the middle of 2014 ... when circulation growth at the paper will start offsetting the decline in The Times’ ad sales. Kafka goes on to explain, "True, one reason that circ growth will lap ad losses is that the losses will be slowing after much steeper declines ... Meanwhile, the paper seems relatively confident that raising the pay wall equals marketing the pay wall. And the nice thing about the system the paper has built is that if it doesn’t work, it can fiddle with the controls some more." "
I honestly don't know how you've so hastily dismissed what I do indeed regard as the end of the beginning, if only other major news organizations will bring their own coverage inside a paywall as well. At that point, I believe that subscriber commitments could even accelerate as more and more content goes behind the collective wall.
And god forbid, if the industry actually reinvested revenues in content, rehiring talent that was ushed out the door from the nineties onward -- rather than running any fresh profits back to Wall Street -- then subscriber loyalty and demand might be even further enhanced. For that, I admit, we need to unhinge the newspaper chain logic and hometown ownership of news organizations, if not non-profit status, would have to prevail. If they start making a few more shekels and then running it back to the Wall Street analysts, well then...
#80 Posted by David Simon, CJR on Fri 1 Jun 2012 at 02:02 PM
I have been reading The New York Times since I started work as a journalist 50 years ago. Living in England and unable to read the newspaper in print, I follow it Online. I am happy to pay $150 a year for this privilege, not only because it gives me the news, features and comment, but because it helps to support the continuing publication of a great newspaper.
#81 Posted by Jack Laurence, CJR on Sat 2 Jun 2012 at 03:31 PM
David, in case you haven't seen this: http://www.niemanlab.org/2012/05/the-newsonomics-of-majority-reader-revenue/
I actually think it would be great if readers shouldered more of the financial burden. More than advertisers that is. I know everyone always says this, but look at NPR. I think (or I hope) that if the audience paid more it would lead to journalists and editors being more answerable to their communities, something that is sorely lacking in much of media today. I imagine a future where we can almost get journalism on demand. If I think that something in my community should be looked into, I should be able to call up a journalist whose salary I partially pay and ask that it be investigated. If you're prepared for that kind of future, then so am I. For this I would pay. For this others would also pay.
So to reiterate, I'm not against news consumers paying for news and information. However, it needs to be something worth paying for. I'm sorry to say that right now I don't believe that is the case with many newspapers. How to reverse this trend? I think newspapers need to closely look at the information needs in their communities and really work to meet those needs. Then go ahead and charge for it. Or if you can create a premium product that some segment of your market will pay for, charge for that. But just asking EVERYONE to pay for the entire bundled product is unrealistic, at least not in the digital marketplace.
#82 Posted by Anna Tarkov, CJR on Sat 2 Jun 2012 at 05:21 PM
Ms. Tarkov.
We agree. If you are going to charge for content, you better have content.
Had the newspapers, fat as they were with personnel and talent in the early 1990s, made a decision to charge online, they would have been at their most credible. But the chains were already kissing the ass of Wall Street analysts rather than continuing to invest in actual product. I took the third buyout that the Baltimore Sun offered in 1995, reducing the newsroom from 500 or so to 400. In that year, the Sun's profits were 37 percent, but the chains and the CEOs had figured out that you make more putting out a mediocre paper than a great one.
When the critical moment came and they needed to charge online, there was, indeed, less confidence in the product. Now, The Sun's newsroom is about 120 souls and they cover about a fifth of what they once did. It will be a long road back and reinvestment of any new revenue stream will have to be deep and meaningful. Can they get back? Only if the pay wall is, in effect, industry-wide. Regional papers, on their own, offering only some certain unique local coverage, won't make it if readers can acquire national and international coverage from aggregators. The whole package needs to be bundled, and yes, that has to happen without newspaper execs speaking directly to each other, at least at the point of going behind the wall, for anti-trust purposes. Once all of it is a for-pay product however, marketing coverage in combinations is no different, legally and economically, as marketing a cable TV package. And as I said, the Justice Department isn't exactly hunting Comcast or DirecTV
#83 Posted by David Simon, CJR on Sat 2 Jun 2012 at 05:47 PM
Ok., but I don't believe all newspapers are going to go behind a paywall without talking to one another (or even if they did talk to one another which may be illegal). Currently some newspapers are pursuing paywalls, but some are not. If the ones who are not succeed in building sustainable businesses, they're not going to suddenly erect a paywall. You yourself suggest that unless this happens across the board, it won't succeed. If it's not going to happen, why are we discussing it? Shouldn't we figure out some other solutions which may work? But again, I don't think a hard paywall on every newspaper site in America would work even if there was some way to make it happen.
There are already several free international providers of U.S. news such as the Guardian. NPR provides a TON of free content online even if you're not a donor. There is Al Jazeera English. There are the cable news networks which provide everything for free online. And, even though I know you dismiss them, there are the TV station websites that sometimes do decent local news. Just because it's not of a high quality doesn't mean it's not good enough for most people. "Good enough" is often more than enough to catch a reader online. Want more hyperlocal news? There is also Patch.com. Fabulous journalism it often isn't, but they cover the city councils in their towns, the school board, etc and their model is free, supported only by advertising and of course they don't have a print product. Their long-term longevity is uncertain, but they're there now. There are many local free newspapers. There is a chain in the Chicago suburbs that actually does a decent job reporting hard news (I know because I wrote some stories for them). It's not all bake sales and honor rolls though of course that's there too. They can't be the only ones in the U.S. All this doesn't even begin to mention the independent news entrepreneurs. Some of them will build sustainable businesses, some won't. But the point is they're already there, building audiences and providing reporting and information that people are usually consuming for free or paying a nominal membership fee that is bound to be lower than what a newspaper paywall would ask for. This of course isn't an exhaustive list of all the available sources someone has at their disposal, but it gives some idea of the variety out there.
Finally, people go online for many reasons and reading the news doesn't rate too highly I'm afraid. People spend a lot of time on Facebook and other social networks (where yes, they do interact with news some of the time) , online shopping, playing games, etc., etc. Online retailers spend lots of time trying to figure out how to make people buy things on their website and that's people who are willingly coming to their site to buy something! If they do come to a newspaper site, people aren't of a mind to buy and if you put up a wall that says they have to, they will simply go elsewhere. This is especially true given the fact that they probably weren't looking for a hard-hitting story about political malfeasance or misplaced funds in the school system.
However....
Maybe a newspaper can convince real estate agents to pay for some kind of high-value real estate content. Maybe they can convince political operators to pay for a premium politics product (Rich Miller has been doing it for a long time while also providing great news and analysis for free as well: http://capitolfax.com/). Maybe they can convince marketers to pay some kind of content. Maybe they can convince lawyers to pay for something. Take all that together and suddenly you're making enough money to provide plenty of "free" reporting for the masses. And maybe you even have enough money left over to hire community managers who will make sure that that reporting gets to where it's needed most. I'm sure you know that many people routinely vote against their own economic self-int
#84 Posted by Anna Tarkov, CJR on Sat 2 Jun 2012 at 07:32 PM
Ooops, my comment got cut off. Here is the rest:
I'm sure you know that many people routinely vote against their own economic self-interest. Well, let's see if we can do something about that. Let's also see if we can do something about getting people to understand and thus care about what's happening with their tax dollars. Writing a story is not enough in this day and age. To wit:
http://www.knightfoundation.org/press-room/speech/story-isnt-all-matters/
In case you are short of time and cannot read the content of the link, I will excerpt:
"Last fall, Knight Foundation worked with the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism to release a new survey about local news. A headline in the survey needs more attention.
Sixty nine percent of America believes that if local newspapers no longer existed, it would be no big deal.
If newspaper news is gone, people think, they’ll get the news from radio, TV and the internet. But we know that’s not so. For better or worse, daily papers still produce most of the country’s local news.
People don’t know. Why? Who gave them that idea? We did. We did not want anyone in the kitchen as we worked out our recipes for great news.
Journalists have helped create a nation of functional news illiterates.
In Orlando, I asked about 800 investigative reporters and editors if their journalism produced significant social impact. Every hand went up.
I asked if they thought the average American understood investigative journalism. One hand went up.
Then I asked: Is it part of your job to help people understand the impact of what you do? No. Most investigative journalists, more than two thirds, in fact, did not think so.
Many of you here today may agree. You might be thinking: I have plenty to do already. This is just not my job.
I disagree. The digital age has upended traditional media. Everything is back on the drawing board. At this moment, what people think of journalism really matters.
Yet we are fighting over the cookbook while the kitchen is on fire."
I hope you'll read the rest of it as well.
#85 Posted by Anna Tarkov, CJR on Sat 2 Jun 2012 at 07:42 PM
Oh and forgot to mention that I completely agree with what you wrote here: http://davidsimon.com/i-meant-this/ I've read other things you've written, interviews, etc. and your passion is always so deeply pronounced. I can see that you truly care and strive to make others understand why they should as well. Whatever else we may disagree on, that is an intensely admirable quality. And for what it's worth, I experienced The Wire exactly the way you wanted people to experience it. For me it raised (or re-raised) all the important questions you wanted people to think about and I still search for the answers today. I'm certain I'm not the only one who feels this way.
#86 Posted by Anna Tarkov, CJR on Sat 2 Jun 2012 at 07:51 PM
A lot has been said here, and I don't have all that much to add, but a simple observation from my own constant debates with people of my generation, regarding the intellectual property dilemma our culture is facing:
Invariably, (in my experience), the people that argue the most stridently against the concept of paying for intellectual property -- particularly when delivered over the medium of the Internet -- are creative types: writers, filmmakers, musicians, etc.
On one level this makes sense. These people need access to the art/literary work created by the sources of their inspiration, in order for their own voices to develop and flourish, and they want it to be free b/c who doesn't love free shit?
On the other, more obvious level, when you ask such people how they expect to ever make a living off their own work, if they don't think people should be paid for intellectual property, they rarely have a clear answer.
In other words, not to be unkind, but it takes a special kind of myopia to argue against paywalls/online subscription fees AND bemoan one's inability to find employment in media in the same argument.
I work in book publishing rather than journalism, where the same arguments happened in this field ten years ago. "No one will pay for e-books, universities will argue for fair use, our content will be stolen anyway, etc." Well, guess what, we eventually had to wake up and realize that the technology moves on whether or not we stubbornly insist upon sticking to a previous decade's philosophy that no longer applies. The Internet is a form of media. It is not supplementary to media, it is not a marketing tool. It is its own form of media and must be treated as such.
The only thing the "nobody will pay for e-books" attitude gained the publishing industry is that in the decade or so we dragged our feet, the public got the mistaken notion that in fact e-books cost nothing to produce, and by and large they still think it costs less than print -- a completely artificial idea bolstered by market manipulation of e-book reader sellers, but that's a whole other argument.
In any case, newspapers will eventually face the same choice to charge money for their online content or die. There's no benefit in delaying this inevitability.
The bundling of various papers through vendor services idea would be a sound one, but in my observation academic journals and books have suffered badly from this; 3rd-party vendors have no inherant interest in the content they are delivering, and are quick to push a cheaper package (with less quality content and less journals included, etc.) as having "equal value" to an unsuspecting consumer. In addition, as those vendors merge and gobble up more of the market, they are more likely to get exclusive vending rights from various publishers and argue down their prices. Most academic/science publishing houses I know of are working on methods of delivering & selling their content on their own online platforms, if they don't have such means in place already.
#87 Posted by KL, CJR on Wed 6 Jun 2012 at 11:45 AM
Lots of passion around this topic.
Has anybody noticed what regional newspapers are actually doing with their so-called paywalls? (PayWALL? -- Now there's a pejorative term; aren't they merely "subscription fees," something we've all been paying for better quality reporting for years?)
Several newspapers have come-up with two-tier "paywall" strategy. A subscriber's-only site with all the newspaper's originally reported content and a free site with headlines, local weather and traffic, scores, and selected AP wire copy (a bigger strategic question might be why is the AP giving away its copy?)
Doesn't this makes sense when you know your site does not have the potential to obtain Amazon/Google sized numbers? Especially when Internet ad rates are worth about 10% of the value of newspapers ad rates.
And then there is the issue of "news" -- are you talking about the police blotter/ news conference stuff that is a commodity? Or, the in-depth, researched, sourced, vetted and copy edited stuff that newspapers provide and that costs a little more to produce.
Everybody knows Walker won in Wisconsin, but its costs a little more to dig out the numbers, analyze the exit interviews, document the expenditures and assemble a rational analysis for what happened and why it happened.
Generic news is cheap but stories behind the headlines are expensive. That's why newspapers (in their present state of transformation) need to tap all the honest revenue sources they can, so we can be well informed. And that's why many of them are adopting the two-tier paywall/non-paywall website strategy to curtail print circulation declines and earn a few extra dollars to pay for news coverage.
#88 Posted by Paul Steinle, CJR on Wed 6 Jun 2012 at 01:57 PM
Paul -- totally agree with you about the word "paywall" -- it sounds awfully negative in a Pink Floyd kind of way. I agree the term needs to be dropped from common use in favor of the simple "subscription fees".
#89 Posted by KL, CJR on Wed 6 Jun 2012 at 03:16 PM
Greg Howard stated that he will mourn the loss of professional journalism and that many will suffer in the long run. I'm initially wondering whether it is the quality and reliability of the work that he is worried about, or that it is being produced by a reputable institution.
I get my comprehensive knowledge of our world in various ways: National Geographic, Scientific American Mind. I certainly doubt these publishings will be discontinued. I have internet access, I can find a paper to read in my library or a Starbucks. Should it come to extremes, I will watch the television. This is all to say that people have access to professional writing all around them. It's not about to go away. And if it will, I am more than positive than a businessperson or journalist elsewhere will fill the 'lack-of-information' vacuum. Information is priceless, in my opinion, and money can be made on it. It's not going away.
Simply enough, people will pay for a product if it has an appeal. National Geographic is a well presented, well rounded source for information. NYT is posh - and there's nothing wrong with wanting the elite kind of press. People will pay for their taste in journalism, and something tells me paywalls won't be too pleasant for the consumer. However, I am curious to see what innovations will propel this industry out of its 'misery'.
I hope my jargon won't be devoured, or my use of contractions won't be pointed out in this ad hominem discussion circle.
#90 Posted by Phil Andreev, CJR on Wed 6 Jun 2012 at 10:16 PM
I have been reading the comments here with interest and will be directly affected by the loss of the Times-Pic here in NOLA. No doubt someone has already posted this, but in case they haven't : http://www.thenation.com/article/168330/rolling-dice-times-picayune#
Paywalls. As noted, NYT and WSJ have a different layout than the abysmally un-navigable (nevermind ugly) nola.com. Both have paywalls.
We recently bought a new television here in this house. First time in over a decade. We felt it was time to upgrade our tech. There in the instructions was a term "television provider." That is a term I certainly didn't grow up with but is commonplace now. I grew up with basically three channels (free) and any UHF stuff we could get with a good antenna (free). We didn't like it but we learned to pay for content with the advent of cable and dish, and we do it, every month.
Some of the "but we can get NYT content for free with a workaround" advocates here strike me as the same types as neighbors pirating the cable from next door. I'll just leave that one alone.
I just wanted to pass along the article to those who might be interested. I may comment again down the road once I've waded through all the comments here. I am delighted to see a discussion of this problem and some possible solutions.
#91 Posted by Sam, CJR on Tue 12 Jun 2012 at 05:18 PM
I've read with interest most of the comments here. So much of interest, but there are a few things that seem to be utterly overlooked.
One commenter, a young person, 31 I think she said, used the term Dinosaur Newspapers. (it's way up there on the page, so forgive me if I got the age or gender wrong.). While certainly we're talking about the future of news, serious journalism and monetization models, what has not been mentioned is access. Many many elderly people, my mother in law qualifies, are terrified by all things digital. Granted she's nearly 80 and will pass on eventually, no longer being part of this discussion, but right now she and other elderly people are part of the discussion and should be. Most of the elderly folks I know read the newspaper religiously. They keep track of local news and national news, election issues and yes, sales on eggs. I've heard more than one bemoan the loss of a daily obituary section, one article quoting a woman who said she wouldn't know if a friend had passed til the funeral had already been held. While such things as that may not matter to us relative youngsters, it matters deeply to them.
Something else not mentioned in this discussion is the further marginalization of impoverished areas without the financial wherewithal to pay for internet access or rural areas where the access isn't even offered. Here in New Orleans I believe we have a 37% non-wired population, mostly due to economics. In New Mexico, there are entire swaths of desert with no online access because the providers don't think it's economically feasible to provide it to areas with populations of 2 people per mile.
Are we really willing to just cut these people off from information because they don't have access or are unwilling or unable to get access? This bothers me a great deal. We're creating entire groups of cut off people. It's already happening and that group will grow very quickly as newspapers die off.
I will also mention that I have seen first hand articles that simply disappeared from online sources. I read it in the morning, told a friend about it, they went to find it and it had vanished. Had it been printed and put on our doorsteps, that would not have been possible. This has happened more than once so I can't chalk it up to someone's mistaken click of a button. Complete reliance on online news dissemination is a problem simply because with one keystroke, information can disappear or be changed. And no. I'm not a conspiracy nut.
I believe that the complete elimination of daily newspapers will, in the end, create a more ignorant population and less informed voters. We already have too many voting based on a one sentence, yes ad hominem, commercial seen between this show and that on TV. Until or unless everyone is wired and has access, losing newspapers for me isn't just a question of monetizing a website. It's a moral issue.
#92 Posted by Sam, CJR on Tue 12 Jun 2012 at 08:38 PM