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Letting Time Solve the Online News Dilemma
The Guardian's John Naughton isn't looking to micro-transactions or licensing fees from search services to solve the online news business model problems that have come to a head recently. Instead, he's simply waiting for capitalism to do its job in killing off the providers who can't cut it. Once that happens, he says, the remaining organizations will be in a far better position to see what web-goers will pay for online news, and he doesn't think it will inhibit the growth of an increasingly information-rich news ecosystem.
"Things have got so bad that Rupert Murdoch has tasked a team with finding a way of charging for News Corp content. This is the 'make the bastards pay' school of thought. Another group of fantasists speculate about ways of extorting money from Google, which they portray as a parasitic feeder on their hallowed produce. ... But what will journalism be like in the perfectly competitive online world? One clue is provided by the novelist William Gibson's celebrated maxim that 'the future is already here; it's just not evenly distributed.' In a recent lecture, the writer Steven Johnson took Gibson's insight to heart and argued that if we want to know what the networked journalism of the future might be like, we should look now at how the reporting of technology has evolved over the past few decades."
Capitalism just maximizes for profit not for equity, not fairness. NPR versus Fox News is a great example of this. Fox News will be going strong for a long, long time; regardless of their bias. NPR could be hurt if the government cut off all their funds.
Saying that capitalism will save the day overly simplistic.
Another group of fantasists speculate about ways of extorting money from Google, which they portray as a parasitic feeder on their hallowed produce.
From what I understand Google licenses news from the big news wires as well as from some of the big newspapers. Some of that has been forced through lawsuits.
Before that, they would just crawl news sites and display headlines and summaries, just like in their normal search.
It seems odd. Google has to pay for the privilege of sending them traffic. I wish I could get a deal like that.
If I were Google, the next time the traditional news outlets came to me with their hands out I'd tell them I've decided that I'd be more than happy to remove all their content from my index and no longer "steal" their business. Thew newspaper execs wouldn't like that too much.
Dual Opteron < $600
Will people pay for well-reasoned, researched, and written commentary and opinion columns?
I would, but not the price of a year's subscription for print. I would pay that, however, if I had unfettered access to, e.g., all (or most) Canadian newspapers online; including the small, local papers. Similarly for a major English-language paper from each country.
This simulates the blog experience - access to a multitude of differing viewpoints, but with financing to be able to do a good to excellent job.
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
Sometimes things going the way of the dodo is capitalism as well. How many buggy whip manufacturers are there today? A more than few I imagine, for various equine sport but not the numbers that once existed.
Drive-In movies are all about gone too because we just don't need them any more. People have so many other options for entertainment and so many other venues including their homes to watch the same movies in the drive-in theater is just not a marketable service any more. It may be the same way with the papers. The question is where will investigative reporting and other hard news content come from? I think we all understand there is a need for and a market for that content. What needs to be figured out is how to deliver it profitably.
I suspect print newspapers and even online news sites as they exist to day are not that mechanism, nor is network broadcast news. I just don't know how it gets done, If I did I would be doing it.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Newspapers go the way of the buffalo just like drive in theaters.
Don't confuse the delivery mechanism with the product. The product is "What is going on?". It is delivered now via Newspapers, T.V., Radio, and the Web.
While a great deal of it is generated by the infrastructure of workers created and maintained by the newspapers, there is plenty that is generated independent of them.
The analogy of Drive Ins is very accurate. It used to be they were one of only two options to watch movies. Even though the Drive In are now virtually extinct, people still watch movies. And their options for watching them have expanded greatly.
People will always want, no, need to know what is going on. Regardless of what happens to the newspaper industry, someone will be there to fill that need and they will be compensated one way or another.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The problem with funding news isn't itself news. The reason I watch and respect a news service is because they put resources into investigating the world and offering valuable insight. But I also aknowledge, that I can be occasionally pulled into cheap editorial content.
Guess which one's cheaper.
So, in the commercial news business, the industry has once again shifted drastically towards the cost-conscious editorial and rehashed-news dominance. Everyone's using the same sources, and the sources are dwindling. And because of that, the feeling that any given news provider has unique value is only contained in the unique voice they give themselves, but even that is becoming a formless soup.
The news providers provide less meaningful news, leading to less interest, leading to less money, leading to more editorial dominance, and so on... mostly because the global pool of money has shrunk so much to prevent many real sparks of bold investigative journalism from being worth the risk in the environment. Like with the chicken and the egg, even when we've learned that the egg is far older than any chicken, it doesn't get us more chicken.
That's why I've been turning to the BBC (and the CBC) more often. Put whatever hate you want on socialism, but it really does improve on capitalism when it comes to allowing media to do an effective job at funding news. They're certainly not perfect - but the signal to noise ratio is so much better, in terms of what remains after the bullshit filter, from my biased perspective. PBS/NPR are also nice in spots, but they really have lacked diversity, as administrations have waged ideological wars through appointments.
That's my fix for reliable news sources - make funding more independent from news content, and get more international perspective where possible.
Ryan Fenton
...is that most of the "easy fruit" of reporting that basicly just being on site and report what's happening is easily done by regular people, there's always someone who likes to talk about it. They can blog and twitter and take cell phone pictures and videos on youtube. Other sections are much better covered by special services such as online marketplaces. Other things is just stuff anybody can and do write about like sports events and cd/film reviews and such. If you go through the newspaper with such a critical eye there's not really much that you really can not get from any other source.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Media commentators fear for the future of investigative journalism. "How can we hold governments' feet to the fire without money to pay our great reporters? Where would you get your recycled wire feeds, your Garfield cartoons?"
Newspapers have suffered badly since the collapse of their previous business model of selling readers to advertisers on a local monopoly basis. The replacement models appear to involve phlogiston, caloric and luminiferous aether.
Publishers hold that it is natural for readers to pay what advertisers once did, just as cows have to make up the difference out of their own pockets when the price of milk falls.
"We have to educate people that free doesn't work, particularly for us," said Vanessa Thorpe of the Guardian Media Group. "I tried an advertorial repeating several times that nothing will be free any more, to magic it into happening. I also subtly implied the Pirate Bay were Nazis -- HITLER! HITLER! HITLER! -- so we'll see if we can make that one fly too."
Publishers have also explored the notion of getting Google to pay its "fair share" for so parasitically leading people to newspapers' websites. The Wikimedia Foundation promptly started billing journalists for their reprints from Wikipedia. "We feel this is completely unfair," said Tom Curley of the Associated Press, "as real news stories spring forth from the heads of accredited reporters in an immaculate creation from nothingness. My preciousss ." Maurice Jarre was unavailable for comment.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
In the days where normal people couldn't have their opinions read / heard / seen by the masses, the position of those in organizations like newspapers had some perceived value to them. With the widespread adoption of the internet allowing more people than ever to have their opinions widely spread we are starting to see that many so called "professional" writers are not that much better than amateurs with blogs. We can do what they do for free. There are "proper journalists" who do stand out, but those are the minority, not the majority.
We have also long seen that "news" organizations are nothing more than agenda machines who will seek to feed every story through their political / moral / religious agenda to try and influence their audience......again I ask, what is so different about bloggers? The concept that being part of an organization brings a level of trusted journalism is mostly bullshit. It does carry the guarantee that the story put out will be part of that agenda, regardless of how much they have to twist it out of all context to make it fit.
Any source of "news" is reliant on it's credibility. That credibility is earned, not paid for by sponsors. Traditional news organizations have long held the upper hand and abused the truth for their own ends with nobody else as an alternative. They now face the facts that many bloggers have more credibility than the so called "professionals". They now face the fact that bloggers content is just a click away.
Poor journalists will fall in the face of this, no doubt whining to their unions and anyone who will listen that they're being hard done by and that "the public good" will be harmed by their unemployment while journalists who have stood firm and tried their hardest to "report" the news rather than try to "set" the news to a particular agenda will prosper. Reputation is everything.
Fox News is an perfect example of an agenda network with the name "news" in the title to try and pretend otherwise. Given their collusion with the Bush regime and detachment from reality they deserve all the karma they have coming.
New technology becomes widespread when it makes it easier for human beings to accomplish the same task with less human labor, or to accomplish a new goal that meets human desires. That's why we work to invent technology.
The internet makes it possible now for basically everyone who was a news subscriber before to get their information from any source they can send a web browser to, instead of just dead tree products.
Right now, there are more news outlets and news writers than there are people willing to pay for them. Hard fact.
A lot of people blame the greasy feel of newsprint, or Craiglist, or the current advertising crash, or things they don't like about the local newspaper. That isn't the problem. Right now, the market has too many sellers.
How's it going to end up? I don't know. One interesting fact I found is that for specific, timely information about a specific subject, nothing beats an online message board. For researching my whole path to medical school, residency, and beyond I spent hundreds of hours on the "studentdoctor.net" forums, and I learned more frank information than any book or news article about becoming a physician could have ever taught me.
Ditto for say, learning how to tune a computer for maximum performance, or how to properly install an SSD.
Maybe the news outlets of the future will be identity verified online forums where local citizens discuss local city news. Everyone will receive electronic versions of just the big, world famous newspapers (aka Wall street Journal/New York Times) on devices like the kindle.
McDonald's Founder's wife left $200 Million to them
NPR, the last I heard from them, gets about 10% of their budget from the Government. But I agree, that should be cut too.
Sometimes things going the way of the dodo is capitalism as well.
Absolutely. How is the Pure Collector's business model nowadays? Although I can't think what it is about journalism that brought that particular defunct business to mind...
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Any reasonable person listening to NPR would recognize the built in ideological slant to NPR.
Well, call me unreasonable then because I recognize little if any slant. And I know you will say that's proof of my political leanings but I don't think it is. I listen to NPR because the rest of radio is complete and utter trash. I don't want to listen to a naked girl rub her boobs on the host on air. I'd rather listen to Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me or Sound Money ... shows I can't see any liberal bias you speak of. You know in Minnesota, they have at least three different MPR stations that play music. Classical music and independent rock. Commercial free. You're also arguing against that when you argue against public radio.
One listener to NOR said it best in a letter read on the air: "Gays, Aids, and Abortion". You are guaranteed to hear at least one story on one of these subjects every freaking day.
I don't know what NOR is but I'll assume you meant NPR. I grew up listening to A Prairie Home Companion and don't recall any of those topics. I don't know what "Gays, Aids and Abortion" has to do with being liberal, they are all issues that should be addressed by anyone regardless of their political affiliation. They are current topics. Have you heard their coverage of the war in Iraq? I've found that to be very unbiased.
Throw in a story about how wonderful (insert liberal politician here) is and how evil (Insert conservative politician here) is and then add some snooty, witty, and amusing story about some obscure idiot and there you have an NPR broadcast.
You have never listened to NPR. Do you know that a lot of the affiliates switch over to BBC World News late at night? Do you find that to have a horribly liberal bias?
NPR should have their government funds cut off. Let George Soros buy it.
Do you know how much money you pay to NPR? Probably a few cents a month--if that. I don't think they would really care if they lost government funding, probably just push their pledge drive out another day. They get so little from the government and so much from listeners that would like to see any kind of news source free without ads, available everywhere in the country. Think about it, people hand money to them ... they don't have to charge like Murdoch wants to.
They may present more liberal topics than conservative topics but at least they don't use verbage that tries to tell me how to think about them (a la Fox News).
I would bet that if you took a citizen from another part of the world and made them listen to NPR they would see it as pretty damn neutral.
How the parent post got moderated insightful, I'll never know.
My work here is dung.
The problem is that news needs to be critical information, and not just entertainment, in order for democracy to work. Even a truly free market requires critical analysis of products, because it only functions if consumers are making informed decisions.
Let's say we just let the chips fall where they may and cable news becomes the de facto standard for journalism. When you have a handful of corporations whose job is to sell advertising to another handful of corporations, the amount of self-censorship would skyrocket. Common sense tells you that outing your highest paid advertiser for having a sweatshop or poisoning a creek that's giving children cancer is a bad business move.
Imagine this scenario: two journalists approach their editor with a story. One is a fluff piece about a local sports star getting arrested for hiring a prostitute. The other is an investigation into alleged union busting at a major local employer, who also happens to be one of their biggest advertisers. In a purely capitalist model, which journalist gets the green light? Does the editor who cranks out huge profits for less money get the promotion?
A book was written about the subject, with a nice summary on Wikipedia:
According to the book, the pressure to create a stable, profitable business invariably distorts the kinds of news items reported, as well as the manner and emphasis in which they are reported. This occurs not as a result of conscious design but simply as a consequence of market selection: those businesses who happen to favor profits over news quality survive, while those that present a more accurate picture of the world tend to become marginalized.
Manufacturing Consent, by Herman and Chomsky
For a concrete example, check this out this article on the coverage of the genocide in East Timor.
Basically, if you let market forces totally control news media in any form, you will end up with entertainment that distributes what is popular but not what is true. It's the difference between the BBC and Fox News. Both are biased, but as far as the quality of news they provide, Fox isn't even in the same dimension.
How many buggy whip manufacturers are there today? Quite a few actually, if you bothered to look. In any case, buggy whip manufacture never was something done on an industrial scale. Buggies were not anything like as common as cars are today. It was never an important industry.
In any case, the thing you're missing is that the primary product of newspapers wasn't the sheaf of paper you could hold in your hand; it was knowledge. Knowledge isn't a commodity like a buggy whip, or an hour or so's entertainment at the drive in. We are enriched as much if not more by others around us having knowledge than our own knowledge itself.
Newspapers as an artifact aren't important. As organizations for generating knowledge about current events, they are indispensable. A mediocre newspaper does vastly more story development than the best newscast.
The salient characteristic of the Internet in the funding of knowledge generation is that Internet is funded by huge volumes of tiny transactions. This means that you want knowledge with wide appeal and low cost. Expensive local news gathering is out, and the national political opinion echo chamber is in. It probably cost the Boston Globe a half million dollars to break the clergy sex abuse scandal. Countless other organizations made money off of writing opinion pieces on that. That's the future of news: less fact gathering, more opinion spreading. In the end, "news" will simply be the upper echelon of the blogosphere.
The positive side might be "crowd sourced" news. That's certainly a bright spot. But while that's find for getting pictures of an airliner that ditches in the Hudson river, it's no substitute for going after a story.
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