Earlier, I linked to Steve Brill’s “secret” memo to the New York Times urging them to start charging online readers. Brill suggested, at one point, “a new marketing campaign …’you get what you pay for.’” Here, TJ Sullivan of LAObserved suggests a sort of “you don’t get what you don’t pay for” approach that he hopes might convince readers of all online newspapers to pony up:
Now is the time for newspapers to do something proactive; time for them to demonstrate what life would be like without them.
It’s time for every daily newspaper in the United States, in cooperation with the Associated Press, to shut down their free Web sites for one week.Yes. Shut it down. Blank screen. Nothing.
Of course, news would still be reported daily in every newspaper’s printed product. No editor, or reporter or publication would dare shirk their watchdog responsibilities. This isn’t about stopping the presses.
But the Web? People can do without news on the Web for a week. They won’t like it. They’ll complain about it. But, that’s exactly what has to happen before they can be expected to care.
Pulling the plug gets their attention.
So, here’s the proposal: At the stroke of midnight on Independence Day, Saturday July 4, all daily newspapers ought to switch off their Web sites until Friday, July 10.
Call it “A Week Without a Virtual Newspaper.” Call it crazy. Call it costly. Call it whatever you want, but it’s no more drastic a measure than asking people to work for free…
…The point of pulling the plug for one week isn’t to harm them, but to emphasize the origin of all that news content, and why everyone should care about protecting that source.
Pulling the plug is perhaps the only way to make people outside of journalism sit up and take notice that this isn’t about jobs in journalism, but American Democracy.
Related petition. Watch Sullivan make the case:
Yeah, that'll make someone who is just making the mortgage, utilities and groceries "pony up". No, they won't simply stop reading the news: oh, no. They'll cut back on their kids' lunch allowance for this.
Are these people living in a dream world or what?
Posted by Charlene on Mon 9 Feb 2009 at 03:38 PM
But that would not stop the news. The news would simply be rewritten from print and posted on the web. This is being done now. So what you would end up with is an explosion of growth in rewriters for the Internet.
Posted by Stewart Nusbaumer on Tue 10 Feb 2009 at 09:06 AM
But that would not stop the news. The news would simply be rewritten from print and posted on the web. This is being done now. So what you would end up with is an explosion of growth in rewriters for the Internet, not, I believe, a hunger for the print versions which are often dry and stale even when breaking news.
Posted by Stewart Nusbaumer on Tue 10 Feb 2009 at 09:14 AM
I don't think Sullivan understands how the Internet works.
Posted by Blake Stacey on Tue 10 Feb 2009 at 09:45 AM
Right, clearly either this guy doesn't understand the internet, or he understands it very well indeed. His page contains top-and-bottom banner ads that are making money for his newspaper, so posting something so stupid and outrageous will get lots of traffic and thus generate more revenue. Crazy... like a fox!
Posted by coyote on Tue 10 Feb 2009 at 03:46 PM
What percentage of their revenues come from subscriptions versus how much money would they lose by dropping their internet ads for a week, disrupting their classified sales (which presumably depend greatly on internet access), etc.?
What about redundant staff? Do they have their internet-beat reporters just twiddling thumbs instead of twittering?
I realize that balancing all these costs might still be net-positive for the newspapers for a week.
But what if the readers spend that week organizing their own counter-protest week. Say, July 11th to July 18th, they don't buy anything from any merchant who advertises in the paper or on its website?
I doubt that would happen. But for the newspapers to alienate a large chunk of their readership --- the kind who gets the paper at home but still reads at the office online or during the day to get "breaking news" --- seems like an extraordinarily bad idea in this environment.
Posted by DC on Tue 10 Feb 2009 at 05:49 PM
er...what about the CNN website? Fox? ABC, NBC, and CBS? Heck, I barely read the MSM as it is so all this'd do is drive folks to the aforementioned newschannel sites or to the BBC, IHT, UPI, etc etc etc. Sullivan seems to be under the impression that American newspapers are the ONLY news source on the planet, or on the web even.
To paraphrase Dirty Harry, “You've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya Sullivan?”
Posted by Mara on Thu 12 Feb 2009 at 11:24 AM
The fact that so many people fail to recognize that the bulk of the news they consume originates as newspaper reports only underscores the need for an action such as the one suggested in this petition.
If those who have opined about this issue online are an indication of the views held by the general public, it appears they regard news content in much the same way as they view the water that comes out of their kitchen tap. As long as it continues to flow they see no reason to question from where it comes, or who is producing it. But once it stops you can be sure they'll want answers. They'll demand to know who was responsible. They'll insist that the flow be restored. But, of course, by then, it will be too late.
Newspaper Web sites have plenty of readers, but so do the many other entities that harvest newspaper content, stripping it of its brand, rewriting it, regurgitating it and repackaging it in various forms, often without any acknowledgment of the newspaper that made it possible. A single newspaper story can spawn hundreds of stories all over the Internet, on the TV, on the radio, and by word of mouth. But once the source dies, so do all those entities that fed off that source. And therein lay the colossal domino effect that will result if we lost many more newspapers.
This petition is not about saving newsprint. Clearly the future of newspapers as news-gathering organizations is on the Internet.
This petition is not about saving the jobs of newspaper people, for obviously these businesses will have to restructure as they adjust to changes in the marketplace.
This petition is about saving democracy. It's about taking an action, admittedly a drastic one, to spur online readers nationwide to ask "who is responsible" for all this news. This petition is intended to draw attention to the problem and the need to work together toward a solution.
The only reason this petition does not ask newspapers to stop publishing news in their print product during the blackout period is because journalists, much like law enforcement officers, are ethically bound to perform their duties as watchdogs. Publishing news in their print products allows them to fulfill that obligation while at the same time taking action to alert the public to the severity of this crisis.
Democracy depends on an informed electorate. That so many people online appear to believe that newspapers are irrelevant should alarm far more than those in the journalism ranks.
Posted by TJ Sullivan on Thu 12 Feb 2009 at 03:51 PM
This probably runs afoul of anti-trust laws. Market collusion on a grand scale is a ticket to jail.
Posted by JLD on Thu 12 Feb 2009 at 09:34 PM
Anti-trust laws apply to business practices that are considered monopolistic or that restrain interstate commerce. I fail to see how that would apply to this situation, in which no financial transaction takes place.
Posted by TJ Sullivan on Fri 13 Feb 2009 at 06:32 PM
TJ, get a clue, we dont need you any more.
I get far more information reading amateur writers who also happen to be professional lawyers/historians/engineers/scientists/athletes/accountants/soldiers on their blogs than I do reading professional writers who know jack shit about their subject matter.
So go ahead and cut off you nose to spite your face, that’s one tree falling that most of us wont hear.
The internet has given you competition that you just cant compete with.
Posted by Bill Gervas on Fri 13 Feb 2009 at 08:42 PM