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AP Considers Making Content Require Payment
TechDirt is reporting that the Associated Press is poised to be the next in a long line of news organizations to completely bungle their online distribution methods by making their content require payment. While this wouldn't happen for a while due to deals with others, like Google, to distribute AP content for free, even considering this is a massive step in the wrong direction. "Also, I know we point this out every time some clueless news exec claims that users need to pay, but it's worth mentioning again: nowhere do they discuss why people should want to pay. Nowhere do they explain what extra value they're adding that will make people pay. Instead, they think that if they put up a paywall, people will magically pay -- even though the paywall itself is what takes away much of the value by making it harder for people to do what they want with the news: to spread it, to comment on it, to participate in the story. Until newspaper execs figure this out, they're only going to keep making things worse."
Because newspapers and the like are faring so well. This is a great idea. It will simply kill off the industry. No wonder that Chinese blogger is investigating murders.
Bored at work? Play Game!
Advertising revenues continue to plunge for many sites these days, a trend I've felt myself for the few small sites I run that are ad-supported. I'm going to be deploying a "paid content" option myself for my main site in the near future, although I'm still planning on offering everything for free as long as people are willing to deal with the ads.
It's a difficult position to be in. Offering and maintaining content costs real money in time and resources.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
when newspapers were free. They made their profits via advertising. Of course, that was a long time ago, before they found out that they could double-dip.
Let them force users to pay for their content. If it kills off the service, then so much the better. Something else will step in to fill the void left behind, and will likely be less dinosaurian about the entire process. Good riddance.
And if it works? Well, I'll accept an "I told you so."
They're trying to grasp for anything that is floating. We've been telling every media company for the last 15 years that they need to embrace the internet. "The Internet" (it really feels awkward even calling it that) is the way of the future, and that dead-tree distribution is going to go away.
Some of them have embraced this, some of them have not. The ones that *have* are still making money, the ones that haven't...well....
Look, it's an age thing. As morbid as it sounds, humans have a usable life of about 80 years before we wear out and stop working. The people who were using your old model are wearing out, dying, and not buying your products.
The younger generation, the one accustomed to receiving their news the very minute (or second) that it happens are taking over. It used to be that the newspapers and magazines had the advantage, they could afford printing presses. Well imagine if a printing company decided that they were going to print and distribute your magazine or newspaper for free.
THAT is the internet. It isn't a series of tubes, it is an amazingly cheap distribution method for media.
NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
AP has to do this. This is what is killing newspapers. If you want real news, you will need to pay. Next stop, minimum payments for news on all major sites that use AP news stories.
This is my sig.
And where do these stories come from? Who pays the reporters? Who keeps the servers running to deliver these stories?
Forget the "extra value," what about the existing value? And if people won't pay for news on the web, then the services should keep providing news for free? I don't think it's a case of they expect people to magically pay if they put up a paywall, it's that they know people won't pay if they don't, no magic required.
Seriously, is this guy running for d-bag of the year? The world does not owe you free content. If the people who, you know, actually work for a living, want to get paid, then so be it. If you refuse to pay, you weren't doing them any good reading their content for free, so they won't miss you when you when you're gone.
I forget the title of the book she wrote, but she was making the point that the problem with the newspapers is that they have cut all the local investigative journalism (because it's expensive), just reprint wire stories that everyone read the day before, and then wonder why no one is buying the newspapers. So in order to combat this, they decide to cut more staff from their newsrooms, buy more wire stories, and continue to shrink into irrelevance.
My father subscribed to the local major city news paper for 35 years. He remarked how the newspaper had continued to shrink year after year in the past 10 years. Finally they cut out the listing of stocks to just a few blue chips and the bigger local employers and the sports section, which he could read free online. So about a year ago he canceled his subscription and now reads the local sports section online.
Frankly, there is more local news in the local throw away rag that we get twice a week, free. They seem to be doing okay. Are they raking in millions? No, but they are profitable, keep on top of local issues that you won't find elsewhere and people at least skim the headlines.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
News organizations need to differentiate themselves and then people will be willing to pay. The Wall Street Journal web site has thrived a a for pay site. But it provides value to people. So much free news isn't particularly well written or investigative. An article about this was just posted at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123534987719744781.html which sums up the argument for paying for quality information.
Nukes fly over the city of...[click here to pay via PayPal for full story]
Has this idea ever worked? Most sites that go pay-to-view just have a huge loss in traffic as people look elsewhere, they hardly have a monopoly on the news.
This is why I love the BBC, just pay the license fee and you get loads of great programmes and news, they make great documentaries as they needn't worry so much about profits and ratings (perhaps more so as we lower the TV license - tbh I think they'd do better taking it out of tax as there'd be no cost of enforcement and it'd mean people using only the iPlayer still pay their fair share without draconian DRM being installed).
But anyway, back on subject, having a government sponsored news agency can be good. I'd worry the AP would be too open to accept bribes to censor/editorialize stories under this model.
This of how much they'll have to pay back for all those fake photos they keep publishing.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
CBS plans to pull the plug on its free broadcast of the Evening News with Katie Couric and make its nightly newscast available only on pay-per-view. The news organizations of Fox, ABC, and NBC applaud the decision and are anxiously awaiting an increase in their ratings.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
This leaves Reuters the only free international newspaper in English. By that I mean a real newspaper with actual foreign correspondents and journalists. How terrifying is the thought that news could be turned 100% into opinion piece blathering with no actual research. As of last june CBS had 0 people in Iraq, FOX and CNN have 2. No American television network has a full-time correspondent in Afghanistan. Reuters has 100people in Iraq (inc staff). I'm sure AP has a similar number.
If AP and Reuters go this way news is literally dead.
I didn't know Google had a network of paid reporters and their affiliates.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
With more money, maybe the AP could afford to actually pay for a news organization.
And we wouldn't be subject to the "fauxtography" that Hezbollah stringers sell as "news".
How many more staged photos of green helmet guy do we need?
If you want real news, you will need to pay.
That's fine. I understand that news costs money to create, and free (beer) distribution means whoever does the work doesn't have a reason to. So, we move to a paid model.
Will I get what I pay for? As it is, news is largely vapid, telling people what they want to hear (celebrity X, outrage Y, cuteness Z). If we move to a paid model, will I finally get what I'm paying for - real actual news about what's going on in the world?
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
A lot of people want to read news so that they can be informed about what's happening in the world, not so that they can share and comment on it. These people might be willing to pay if it means continued access to news from on-the-ground, professional correspondents.
My hypothesis about making people pay for access to a news site is this: you get people who value it, and you keep out a lot of the crap.
Sorry if that's not egalitarian, but have you ever looked at your local paper's web site? On mine, each article typically has hundreds of comments to the effect of "how is babby formed," or "barrrak hussein osama gonna give teh aids." Why would anyone intelligent put in the effort to contribute to a discourse like that?
The counterpoint is not "slashdot." At least we have moderation and most of the crap gets pushed to -1.
...this is a massive step in the wrong direction.
Glad you think so. Care to throw some more bias in there?
nowhere do they discuss why people should want to pay. Nowhere do they explain what extra value they're adding that will make people pay.
That's because this wasn't a press release. This was the CEO of the AP answering a single question:
>>"Can I imagine content going behind a pay wall?" asks Tom Curley, the CEO of the Associated Press. "Absolutely. And, yes, we are in conversations about that."
Instead, they think that if they put up a paywall, people will magically pay -- even though the paywall itself is what takes away much of the value by making it harder for people to do what they want with the news: to spread it, to comment on it, to participate in the story.
Sure they can. Except only with other registered useres. Besides, it's far more interaction than they had from reading a newspaper or from having no services at all.
Until newspaper execs figure this out, they're only going to keep making things worse.
I suppose you have all the answers on how to save the industry. Since you're so fond of asking questions to the AP, I'm going to ask you a few: How do you propose the AP continues to pay the thousands of professional reporters, secretaries, copy boys, managers, staff writers, photographers, and journalists? Where is this money supposed to come from? Ad revenue? Don't be silly.
The fact of the matter is that these newpapers have to find _some_ way to survive in the digital age. It's going to be hard and they're likely going to shrink, but perhaps they're onto something that will not only bail out the industry but provide a decent service.
I, for one, would be more than willing to pay a flat fee of $5 for unlimited content to all of the major newspapers in the nation, which is exactly what they are thinking about doing. The stories are written by (hopefully unbiased) professionals as opposed to the dribble that makes it onto the Slashdot homepage, this article being a perfect example. Now don't get me wrong, I do love Slashdot, but what about local news? Non-nerd news? State-wide news? Sports news?
I think there will be plenty of people willing to pay for this service, especially once the papers start cutting circulation.
Anybody remember when CNN.com used to have videos that you'd have to pay for to view?! Then nobody actually paid and they realized the better way to drive traffic is to provide them totally free of charge? I know I visit cnn.com more often now because of it. Why aren't things like these noted and written down somewhere so nobody goes through this again?
The magical number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
When all newspapers become pay sites, you'll see where they're adding value - by bringing you the news in the first place.
Ads are no longer a viable revenue source for most of the providers.
Perhaps you'll trust the news being broadcast from around the world by free broadcasters. Others won't and will expect CNN or AP to send professional reports to the events and provide professional analysis. We'll see where the value add ends up.
You can see it today - who do you go to for your political coverage? Your sports coverage? How about your technical coverage? All of those have "amateur" coverage, yet here *you* are, on a site managed by professionals. Something has to pay the bills.
I say we just let the news industry go back to it's more honest past, and just have the news authors actually promote products in their articles...
"1,500 dead today in the official numbers of a third round of skirmishes along the Waziristan border in the mountains of Pakistan. Sectarian tensions are being further strained according to scattered reports we're getting out of the area, as government control over the region is fractured from open opposition from within.
"In unrelated news, Have you tried the new Camel Tropical Smooth(tm) brand Cigarettes? They've got just the right blend of tar and exotic fruit extract that'll have you singing for more! Tropical Smooth(tm) brand cigarettes - recommended by us, your favorite news source! Now, back to our story..
"'It's an unending bloodbath', says Ismail Mohammad, a local livestock herder, 'I've lost everything, and I've seen so many lose so much more. I don't even know what to pray for anymore." ...that way, at least it'll be more clear when media groups are compromising themselves for, and which corporate sponsor they're shilling for. Hey, who knows - perhaps this way, advertisers will actually prefer pushing for in depth news coverage, just so people will take their ads more seriously. Just a modest proposal.
Ryan Fenton
I would want to know the length and depth of the article, and a summary of exactly what the article will cover.
So, a free 1 paragraph summary, with word count, and a depth rating (1 for glossover, 5 for deep technical dive, perhaps). No crummy misleading headlines, and it would also have to have a "reused/rehashed" rating, to determine how much is just a recap of old news. These ratings would need to be done by a 3rd party, or would need to be a summary of the article reader feedback, with no way for the news producer to manipulate them.
I also want permanent access to it, to be part of my "pool" of information that I have purchased, so I can refer to it whenever I like. Oh, and no blocking of print, or cut&paste. No funky formats or DRM, to prevent media/device shifting. A workable micropayments system also would be necessary, not some junk like paypal.
So once you have that ready, let me know.
The strong do what they can, while the weak suffer what they must.
"Nowhere do they explain what extra value they're adding that will make people pay."
If they stop doing it, won't there be some value lost? Doesn't that mean that there's *some* value in what they're doing? If so, they're simply trying to extract that value from a different party in the consumption process, no?
creation science book
First shut down the BBC news service to remove possible competition.
Oh wait, you can't.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
While the story is interesting your editorializing is much less so. There are a number of very news organizations that have been very successful with a payment/subscription model. Two great examples: The Wall Street Journal and ESPN. In fact there was an op-ed in today's WSJ about this very subject. When companies have a news product that is unique in the marketplace, then the payment model is quite successful.
Examples given-
WSJ
Bloomberg
Lexus-Nexus
ESPN
While it is true that some news providers might not actually offer anything sufficiently distinct or special to make a charge model successful, some definitely do. This assertion "Until newspaper execs figure this out, they're only going to keep making things worse." is borne out by neither reality nor common sense. If your content/service is unique and in demand, you can charge. The AP's content may very well be too generic to get people on board the pay to view model, then again their aggregation services may be sufficiently unique that content providers that rely on the AP may be willing to pay.
Your knee-jerk reaction is as interesting and insightful as those on the other side that insisted a free model could never work.
AP has to do this. This is what is killing newspapers. If you want real news, you will need to pay.
And by doing this they will finish off AP. They've already gone bankrupt once. Now they can do it again, but for good this time.
As for "real news", that hasn't been coming out of the print and broadcast media for some time. It's been weighted, biased, and outright faked to promote political and economic agendas. The contrast with what's available on the internet absent the gatekeepers has been pulling the new generation of readers away from them (along with a trickle of the old). And the contrast became so obvious and blatant in the last election cycle that even the older generation is deserting their product in droves.
Next stop, minimum payments for news on all major sites that use AP news stories.
More like: Next stop, all major sites drop AP for some other news syndication operation (perhaps even creating their own). Let's see AP make up the lost revenue (and what content they get from the sites) from the print and broadcast media. B-)
The classic mistake is to chase the slow dimes and lose the fast nickels. Looks like it's AP's turn to make it.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
OK, how about the other side. Why don't you discuss why AP and other news gathering organizations will continue to gather and report without being paid? Why do you think the people who want to read the news, comment on the news and spread the news always assume AP and other news orgs will continue to provide it for free?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I worked at a newspaper several years ago (including during the 2000 election debacle) and at the time our paper had to pay for an AP subscription to see the new stories. The only way to see articles through the AP website at the time was to log in as a (paid) subscriber. Apparently at some point in the more recent past they felt they could do OK by charging newspapers for the rights to print the stories that they were giving away for free on the internet.
Exactly why they thought this wouldn't hurt newspapers is beyond me. Now it is apparently hurting them as well, too bad the damage has for the most part already been done.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
...people should read The Real Thing by Carolyn Ives Gilman. That story has kept me up more than a few nights, and stuff like this just make me feel like we are edging closer and closer to that horrid hell she describes.
I don't see where there'll be any value lost. I doubt my local paper's web site will stop carrying AP wire stories, nor will CNN or any of the other national news sites. So if the AP doesn't want me viewing those stories through them, it'll make not a bit of difference to me. I don't think this state of affairs is new either, IIRC it's how the AP worked for decades. It's only very recently that they tried to become a news brand in and of themselves, rather than be a supplier to others.
The AP needs to remind itself of a statement JMS made that I think is true. He said, effectively, that the readers/viewers aren't the publisher/network's customers. The advertisers are the customers, the readers/viewers are the product being sold. The content is just the bait needed to keep the product happy and hanging around to be sold, since this product has legs and can walk away any time they choose to.
So who exactly is clueless here. I think that before you just throw that out you need to understand the business model. People can't pull food out of the air yet and shelter costs, so unless and untill these things become free somebody needs to put money in there somewhere. Ap doesn't sell advertising, they sell news.
Why bother
News organizations should make aggregators and ISP's pay for content. Google and ISP's wouldn't have a service to profit from if others weren't working so hard creating the content they serve. It's just like DirecTV paying Food Network to be in it's channel lineup. Google should pay NYTimes to search and display their reporting.
I will admit that I have never had a paid online news subscription. That said, I believe that democracy cannot continue without a free and strong investigative press corps. There was a day and age when dozens if not hundreds of news organizations made news. Today, we are down to a handful of organizations that have the resources, skills, and clout to get the stories that matter the most. Blogs are not enough. They lack the credibility and the finances to pursue and investigate news. They only provide us with the information that the blogger can stumble across in their personal lives, or they parrot the news produced by the few real papers left. Now, that does not mean I think the AP should charge for its content.. but.. news organizations have to make money somehow, and monetization though advertising doesn't seem to cut it..
Advertisers. Are you willing to give up your AdBlock Plus in order to avoid having to pay for content?
Didn't think so.
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Since reading (and disagreeing with) Walter Issacson's Time magazine article on this topic (http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1877191,00.html), I have spent a good amount of time thinking about the topic. I think that a pay-per-read system could work if managed better than I expect it would be. I think it would require an agreement among major content providers to use the same micro-payment system, sort of like OpenID. It would have to have zero monthly/basic payment/deposit. And the rate for articles would have to be flat (and low), like 1-5 cents and article. Finally, I think think they would have to only charge your card after you had accumulated some amount of charges (like $5-$10) so you wouldn't have to have money deposited in the account.
Now, the problems. For one, it's hard to take away what people have been used to. Two, there isn't much of a value for "real" news, so most would probably happily find their "journalism" elsewhere. And three, no major reporting service could opt out (in hopes of getting all the viewers who bail on the newspapers that implement this), which would make orchestrating it especially difficult.
Personally, I think newspapers might have to adopt an endowment method. Or a private/public endowment/fund. There also probably has to be more discussion on what "real" journalists can provide that is unique so they can focus on that and spend less money on the "common" news (like who one the Oscars or following the inauguration. There will be little difference between what AP/ NYT/ WP/ WSJ, etc say about those events.)
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
Have you seen the circulation figures lately? Readership is dropping like a rock in many places.
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People just don't get it.
The value add is the reporter, paid by AP (they are called Stringers), who is gathering this news.
As Heinlein told us in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", TANSTAFL: There Ain't No Such Thing As a Free Lunch!
While you are building your great Web 2.0 service, funded using AdSense from Google, based on AP content, AP is getting zero for its contribution to the mix.
While the AP - and others - shouldn't be charging for a headline or to quote, but if you are carrying their content, you need to pay.
If the AP lost market share, would anyone (besides their employees and shareholders) care? Would it be so terrible if one of the primary sources of vapid, meaningless and primarily irrelevant drivel became marginalized? After all, we've tens of thousands of foot soldiers fighting the Good Fight Towards Truth ready and willing to take their place: bloggers. Have bloggers ever led us wrong? Are bloggers not the very souls of objectivity? I'm out of beer. Thanks for playing. N. a J.
Ok, I'm going to make a strained metaphor here. It's not about cars but please, bear with me.
Back before Martin Luther nailed his theses to the church door, the Catholics had the lock-on monopoly on access to God and the afterlife throughout most of Europe. There wasn't any way around that. The bibles were in Latin, you needed priests to speak the Latin to God since he didn't know any other language, and you couldn't say squat about them because they'd excommunicate your ass faster than you can say "Pontius Pilate!" And it cost some serious coin to keep an operation like this going, to support the massive ecclesiarchy and keep the pope in funny hats. They basically had the patent rights to salvation.
So here comes this funny little German anti-semite who says "Hey, what if we don't need the middlemen to get to heaven?" So when you get bibles written in the vulgate, printing presses churning them out by the gross, and this impertinent idea that you didn't need to tithe to Rome to get to heaven, you can understand why the pope saw red.
What I've noticed is that the older an organization gets, the more traditional and conservative it becomes. And throughout this ossification of thought and process also comes the bloated and corrupt bureaucracy that burns through money like nobody's business. It takes a fantastic revenue stream to keep the perfumed masters in kibble. If you strip that bloat away and have an organization that's all about delivery, couldn't you really cut the cashflow and still remain profitable?
I admit our current hybrid model isn't going to survive the immediate future. We went from mainstream media who were both content creator and distribution channel to our current system where they still produce content but distribution has been coopted by the net. The creators lose a large portion of ad revenue to people who essentially serve as aggregators of their content. When the creators stop creating, the aggregators will need to step up to the plate and start producing.
Defenders of the MSM will say that it takes some money to put together a credible news organization. This is true. It's also true that it costs money to have good editors and quality control. The thing is, we're not getting that with the MSM right now. Because their way of doing things costs so much money, the people who own them expect them to serve as profit centers. They also expect the news team to support their own agenda. To put this back in terms of religion, it's like the king expecting his clergymen to speak of God's will in his latest war.
The net helps to lower the cost of doing business. I think what we could end up seeing is journalists setting up their own non-profit news service to circumvent the dying mainstream model. Locals can report on what's of interest in their region and the wire can ship it out to anyone who cares. The editors would be part of the service and it's their job to make sure bogus stories aren't planted. (looking at you, New York Times and lead-up to the Iraq War.)
I'm thinking the news organizations of the future will bear more in common with the various open source outfits than with today's MSM approach. We're talking about lean, low-budget operations that can succeed because of the low capital requirements of operating in an internet-enabled world.
I could be wrong on this but I don't think it would be because what I say is completely unlikely.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
"Get off my lawn" - Clint Eastwood, Gran Torino
I nearly died laughing the first time I saw a preview for that film. This is probably a good indicator that I spend too much time on Slashdot.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Confusing:
Better:
While I'm nitpicking, "Associate Press Considers Charging for Content" or would have been a better headline than "AP Considers Making Content Require Payment." The "content" is not requiring payment, the Associated Press is. Even "Associated Press Considers Requiring Payment for Content" would have been better, but a bit long.
I don't care why you're posting AC
How terrifying is the thought that news could be turned 100% into opinion piece blathering with no actual research.
Or even more terrifying: The news will consist solely of stories sponsored by whatever monied interests that want to pay for them. Stories on climate change brought to you by the petroleum industry, stories on nutrition sponsored by fast food, etc. etc.
We're already halfway there.
for the free-to-view AP story about this?
Scary: Goverment controlled BBC (despite the fact that there are a couple of laws that dictate it is independent)
Perfectly okay: Privatly controlled FoxNews. (despite the fact that money talks and the powers that be are all in bed together)
If you want to know why Obama is still business as usual it is because voters are still business as usual. To dumb to actually be able to see the flaws in their own argument.
Who pays for AP? Newspapers. Who prints most of the AP? Newspapers. Who provides most of the content for AP? Newspapers.
That you think that you not viewing the AP for free online is going to hurt them one tiny little bit, shows how little you know about them. Web service they provide at a loss to drive their brand.
Lets just toss the AP for a second. You think that the newspapers not putting their content on line would hurt them? Bullshit. It's not a significant revenue stream for them, even now. Too much of the revenue they do make online is eaten up by the bullshit sites they use to aggregate their ad traffic.
But newspapers not putting their content online would destroy a lot of online sites. Fark, Google News, Yahoo News. Even Slashdot would feel the effects.
So deal. If they pull it all offline it'll be a big deal, and a lot of properties are thinking the same. Free distribution can't pay for in-depth coverage. //Yes, I work in news. Yes, I know more about this than I'd ever want to.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
So many choices, so much karma to burn.
Independent journalism.... ...is that the one where some whiny twat thinks that his world view is so right that he manufactures news to support it? ...where news that goes against the journalists view is not treated as contrary evidence, but as a personal attack? ...so like Slashdot where the news content is aggregated from others and then pithy comments are added as independent journalistic seasoning? ...all the lazy, underpaid, journalists combined with the lack of any sort of professional structure and standards? ...without the pesky editorial process checking speeling and grammer mistakes for?
http://blogmaverick.com/2009/02/22/how-cable-satellite-can-save-the-newspaper-business/
Never fear newspapers. Mark Cuban will save you.
What happened was that after this incident bursted on the Internet (in China the Internet has become the place where you could see *some* free press), the Yunnan government (the department in charge of press) invited some bloggers to investigate. It was like an one-day trip, and nothing like "official investigation". I bet the police department wasn't very happy and cooperative, and really this was more like a PR gesture than anything else. I think it was stupid, but did show the power of Internet.
The department of press might or might not have good intention, and this is unprecedented. Interesting to see how Internet affects the transparency in the once-secretive Chinese government. Over the last two years there have been numerous occasions where government officials were found guilty after the net disclosed their suspicious wealth and activities. Nothing big fish, but still interesting and progress.
Uh, we get that already with paid-for news.
"trite blogging on the latest who-gives-a-shit gadget"
Yup, we get that too.
And we no longer get the "ling-ling the Panda got his end away this weekend stories.
It's just government funded. The sitting administration can't dictate their reporting any more (or less) than they could with any other sort of media.
Internet advertising isn't worthless. It just isn't magic pixie dust that provides unlimited wealth. Advertising keeps the site you're posting on up and running, even though it would have one of the highest populations of adblock users.
Because the option is likely the loss of a valuable news source.
Maybe make a universal subscription that you pay the AP directly. Once you pay that, you get AP content on all your login IDs on the net.
Don't know the logistics, but it could make a universal ID system more palatable to the tech crowd and masses alike.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
I see the rationale, and I certainly won't criticize it one some sort of normative grounds, but I just don't think it will work.
Two examples:
The New York Times, THE newspaper of record for the United States, was once subscription-based for online content, but they now offer everything up on an advertising-supported model. If THE top newspapers of record in the U.S. can't pull off pay-per-content for online offerings, what makes the AP think they can?
Now some will point to the wall street journal, but it's the only major newspaper in the U.S. that is pay-per-content. It's also got a large portion of content offered for free. And, it's catered toward people with lots of disposable income, and happens to be THE paper of record for executives. I'm not sure the AP can boast of those advantages.
The only way I see this working is if they go back to their ap-wire roots, and just sell wire news articles to people who pay. To do that though, they'd have to restrict newspapers from offering their stuff online for free, otherwise people are going to go for the free stuff methinks. I'm not sure that's going to work unless they decide to completely change their market base and sell to individuals only.
I won't miss their shrill, hysterical headlines and one sided stories.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The future of news is here today. In a day and age when everyone and their dog has a blog we end up with blog aggregates. The Consumerist, Engadget, Jalopnik and many others, whose sole purpose is to take in stories from all over the net, and produce a focused coherent stream of stories. Then, on top of this layer, we get sites like Slashdot and Digg who primarily take stories from these mid-level focused aggregates and produce an interesting stream of news covering all sorts of topics.
I have a newspaper, but my front page is Slashdot, my sports section is DeadSpin, my auto section is AutoBlog, my tech section is Gizmodo and none of my content (in general) comes from any wire service.
Another model is that of NPR. Basically non profit user supported.
I don't know how accurate it is but Wiki says NPR member stations get about 1/3 of their funding from pledge drives, 1/3 from sponsers, "and one-third from grants from state governments, university grants, and grants from the CPB itself."
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I don't think there is a problem with paying for online content. I know some hardcore slashdotters think all content should be free (paid for by nebulius *other* people), but I'd happily pay $0.20 to read my fave sunday newspaper online each week. Why not? It costs more than that to get an unsearchable inconvenient dead-tree copy I then have to recycle.
The barrier to payment is the payment method, not user resistence. If I could make a one click payment of twenty cents using paypal or similar, I'd happily do it. Its having to find a credit card, and set up yet another account and password which puts people off.
We still don't have decent usable micro-transactions for everyone.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
Yes, but what is interesting and what is correct are two entirely different things. There have been many instances where one blog posts something false, and then it gets repeated and distributed by other blogs. (Witness Gizmodo's recent "new mac mini", "fake new mac mini" nonsense, or the "death" of Steve Jobs after Bloomberg accidentally published what was pretty obviously a false obituary).
While this can and does happen with "real" journalists, it happens a lot less often, because journalists have a code of ethics, which requires them to verify their sources. Journalists are inherently more trustworthy than the hacks who run blogs such as Gizmodo, or any of the zillions of blogs on blogspot, or Fox News, because real journalists will get fired if they don't check their sources and report the truth, whereas blogs will get linked and get more hits and more advertising revenue.
Lexus-Nexus
LexisNexis. "Lexus" is a fucking Toyota.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
You pathetic little hypocrite. That blog has, on its front page, an unsourced link to an article from the New York Times and you have the shit-eating audacity to point to that as a proof that independent journalism is alive and well.
That's the most pathetic thing I've ever seen.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
first the AP is worldwide. the people that use its content pay for it...ie. If CNN subscribes to the wire, they pay for it. AP has bureaus all over the world there that are paid for by the organizations that subscribe to their content.
Google gets it for free probably because the AP was trying to figure out the market - like everyone else. The AP does NOT have a goto place - like CBS or CNN. Orgs like CBS are part of the AP. So this is why CBS can charge for advertising but not content. They offer more than news and give advertisers demographics to chase. The AP can't do that since they don't have a portal like a major news network and WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO GET ONE!
I also hate to tell people that the new model for news is the Wall street journal - which charges for content. it is doing a brisk business and is probably going to be around for a while. People better start paying attention and realize that if they want free beer, then you get what you pay for it - NOTHING. At some point someone wonders why they bother since they need to pay their bills. start paying for news or we'll all be scanning twitter to find out the President's budget proposal.
Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems
My mind filled in the missing parts as: "Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Put your hand on a pretty girl for a minute and it seems like 20 years in prison."
John
yet broadcast airtime is very expensive.
Broadcast is only expensive because politicians made it that way. Before licenses were required many people were able to broadcast and even today there are pirate radio stations. It cost little to set up your own station, ham or amature radio operators do it a lot.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
but damn_registrars has always been an idiot.
not sarcastic, there for emphasis.
Another model is that of NPR. Basically non profit user supported.
You are under the misapprehension that NPR is doing well. In fact, they recently had a round of layoffs. The business reporter who was doing a multi-week feature on how layoffs were affecting workers found out mid-stream that she was scheduled for the ax. Her final segment was on herself.
True. Google it.
And with this, you kissed any credibility good bye.
No, actually, you proved my point even more. You're calling me stupid? Man, if I was the NYT, I think I'd be advertising having all of this local writers and NOT being an AP feed site like every other news site is.
Bad marketing on their part.
The WSJ is a better paper anyway.
This is my sig.
Where's the mod points when you need them?
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
What liberals? CNN certainly doesn't support liberals.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
. . . My father subscribed to the local major city news paper for 35 years. He remarked how the newspaper had continued to shrink year after year in the past 10 years. Finally they cut out the listing of stocks to just a few blue chips and the bigger local employers and the sports section, which he could read free online. So about a year ago he canceled his subscription and now reads the local sports section online. . . .
I have found the exact same issue with our small town newspaper. For the same price as a major market newspaper, we get one, maybe two, local stories in addition to sports. That's it. It doesn't even publish letters to the editor. Seriously. There are, however, lots of wire reports. I would like to get the local paper, but I can't justify the cost for, essentially, no news.
The real problem is consolidation. Most newspapers are owned my news conglomerates. Years ago, some jerk with an M.B.A. figured out you could increase short term profits by slashing your reporters and editorial staff. All you had to do was buy stories from someone else. Overall, this was less expensive, provided you can't get the same news somewhere else, and it worked until everyone had access to the same stories on the internet. For free. With no recycling.
Make love, not reality television.
I recently gave $50 to www.democracynow.org, partly because I was blown away by one of Goodman's podcasts but largely because I know how their funding model works and it's clear where their heart is.
The Associated Press is fulla liars and line toe-ers. They're on their own.
I can't see the whole picture yet of the emerging information paradigm and how it will all work, but something somewhere out there feels kinda right. . .
Maybe one of these days I'll toss some money to Slashdot. If they ever ask, I'll probably give. Love this place!
-FL
I meant that if 80% of the news becomes garbage because NY Times and what-not become indistinguishable from People, people might see the lack of good news and then might be willing to pay for quality news. We might have to go through a painful transition, in which for a time there is no quality news.
I don't think I misunderstand so much as you didn't compleat what you meant. This quote of yours above does compleat it.
I personally would be very willing to pay for quality news. For example, each month I buy Scientific American magazine, because to me it is quality news.
I too am willing to pay for good news or articles. SciAm is one of the magazines I keep putting off subscribing to. I do subscribe to others though. If I were to subscribe to every magazine I want to that would cost me hundreds of dollars.
if there were better e-commerce infrastructure I think that paying for news would be a no-brainer. What do you think?
It could help if people could easily and cheaply buy access to news. However until e-ink gets to be as good as print if I subscribe I'll want print. By "as good as" I mean a few different things. While I can read a paper newspaper, magazine, and books all day long my eyes can get sore constantly looking at a monitor. Printed material is easier to read without electricity. And it's easier to save and archive. I've got magazines stored that were printed 15 years ago I can use for references as well as older books I can still read.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Don't get me wrong, I think this is a bonehead move for the AP and might really hurt 'em. On the other hand, who's going to hire all those stringers to report from freaking Tajikistan and French Guiana?
"Something else will step in to fill the void left behind"
Or not. And something of value might be lost.
NYT is NOT Liberal and liberals are not trash. Those who want to dictate to others are trash.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
acutally, no, there aren't really other sources of the type of news that the AP provides. All of those 'independent' new sources usually to clip and compile AP or Reuter's stories without paying them a dime.
Reuter's is one of those other sources, as is Knight Ridder/Tribune. For news about or in Africa I like allAfrica which uses a number of other sources.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
This leaves Reuters the only free international newspaper in English
Reuters is not a newspaper, it is a news agency and sells it's articles to newspapers among others.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
There are too many issues floating around in the same pot. For instance, I think Local news has enormous growth potential. My little suburban paper has a few stories a day. I know that way more is going on. I would like to see a site that had lots of moderated reader submitted stories, pictures of new babies, remembrances of those who have died, pictures of what the town used to look like, police logs, even more local advertizing which very few tradesfolk ever do around here anyway. I think ther is room for volunteer reporters, stringers at least and that this could evolve, WOULD evolve, into meatier stories down the line covering government and zoning and such. The other sub issue is how much the payment would be. Old Media is still thinking about Old Pricing, pricing based on physical products and local consumption. But now there is no physical product and the audience is the world. I would pay the New York Times or the WaPo $5 a year. They might scoff at such a sum now but then now they are thinking about circulations primarily in their cities, not circulations worldwide which is what they could be. But there will be no worldwide if the subscription is $100 a year. Anyway, as usual, a very interesting discussion.
Personally, even if I'm faced with a free of charge login to get to news I skip the site. So much is replicated in hundreds of places that there's no need to put up with any barriers at all.
You know how our old business of selling news for money is dyeing at the hands of free internet news?
Lets try charging people! That'll definitely help!
The future of media is a media fusion; streamed video content along with articles, Audio mp3s to listen to on your mobile devices, and even more fusion that I have not considered yet. Until the newspaper industry catches onto that... it will be a dying industry. They simply need to wise up.
Regardless of what Wikipedia want's to claim, In the US, Liberals and liberalism is little more then socialist pushing government controls under the guise of freedom and enlightenment.
That is only because people like you refuse to correct people when they use a word incorrectly. And it's not just wiki that uses that definition. Merriam Webster has "liberal" as meaning "of, favoring, or based upon the principles of liberalism" and "liberalism" as "b: a theory in economics emphasizing individual freedom from restraint and usually based on free competition, the self-regulating market, and the gold standard". OneLook has more definitions along this line. Fact is is the first liberals used "liberal" to mean liberty and laissez-faire economics and self-regulating markets. Thomas Jefferson was one of those liberals as was Thomas Paine.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
The Chronicle endorsed GW
The Chronicle can endorse whoever it wants (free market).
I live in Fort Worth, and there is one paper (for all of FW) that I am aware of: The Star Telegram (listed from most corperate to most corperate). The Star Telegram did not endorse GW for re-election in 2004, for example, despite Fw going for him. The Star Telegram is much more Liberal than it should be and only runs stories about police brutality for example. The Star Telegram is pretty much your government propoganda machine.
That is funny that you have a "conservative" paper in Houston, most the people I know from there are very liberal.
No. Liberals let others decide for themselves what they will as long as they don't harm others. Liberalism is all about liberty and small government.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?