Slashdot Mirror
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."
It's difficult to keep one's head when all about one people are losing theirs, but let us have a go. First of all, some historical perspective might help. When broadcast radio arrived in the US in the 1920s, nobody could figure out a business model for it. How could one generate revenue from something that could be listened to by anyone for free? Dozens of companies were founded to exploit the new medium, and most of them folded. The problem was solved by a detergent manufacturer named Procter & Gamble, which came up with the idea of sponsoring dramatic serials: the soap opera â" and the mass market â" was born.
What you're overlooking is that newspapers have enjoyed revenues for quite sometime. Granted, they've risen and fallen, they are used to this steady income. Radio wasn't used to this income. Models like brand name advertising and recognition ensured its success. Newspapers have made money off of controlling the distribution channels of a similar model with great results, now they are staring down the barrel of a distribution model that they cannot control. They aren't used to this and they certainly aren't handling it well.
... who could blame them?
What radio saw was a controlled explosion in which they ramped up and expanded across everywhere. That's an easy thing to do because it's positive. What newspapers across the country should be doing is cutting unnecessary jobs, refactoring salaries. Being a columnist is not going to be glamorous any more. The irony is that you're going to be more widely read but be paid less. That might make a lot of people want to quit and find other work
This restructuring must happen or you will die. Marketing and endorsements have been the only card you have played (Murdoch's micro charging is proof he's out of ideas) for the past decade as the internet has exploded. The recession is making this more obvious now than it was last year. You had your chance to invent the new way, now you must act or reduce your work force.
The moral is simple: eventually someone will figure out a business model that works for online news. But it may take some time, and lots of outfits will fall by the wayside in the meantime. That's capitalism for you.
You are wrong. There is an end state where no one figures out a way for the model to work. Newspapers go the way of the buffalo just like drive in theaters. You have done yourself and your kind a great disservice by theorizing this false safety net and are only further lulling them into inaction and unemployment. I am not in your business but I see it from the outside and as a customer, use this advice.
My work here is dung.
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.
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.
It seems likely to me that the only way for these guys to really survive is going to be for them to get back to doing real, hard hitting investigative journalism. Anyone can and does do the shallow stuff. Blogs will certainly fill that niche, and they will remain free. What you can charge for is first access to breaking news and good investigative journalism. Want to see where the money trail leads in the bank bailouts? You'll have to subscribe to our premium service. Want to hear which of your local politicians is taking kickbacks from government contractors? That'll be a one time fee, or free to our subscribers.
The days of relying on the news wire are over, guys. Anyone can do that, and they can do it without having to pay a single salary, while making money off of ad content. In a perfectly competitive system, consumer costs approach the marginal costs. When something is basically free, or cheap enough to be ad supported, then it will be. If the audience is limited, or the costs too high, than a fee to read will be used, or some other model will emerge. This is how the market works. It drives non-competitive players out of the market. On a side note, the music industry would do well to adopt a similar strategy (ie the music is free/ad supported, but the concerts are not).
Surely Murdoch's effort to monetarize News Corp content is not 'make the bastards pay', but 'make us pay the bastards'?
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
Naked News will survive much longer than their paid service.
We all know we prefer to pay to see women undress than a dressed person reading the same news...
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.
...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.
Time for another Slashdot Pop Quiz. Which of the following is most true?
a) Regular people are willing to regularly attend hearings on the local, state or federal level;
b) Regular people have a budget to attend and cover those hearings;
c) Regular people have an extensive network of contacts in local, state, or federal governments with whom they've developed relationships that facilitate ferreting out new stories, ongoing consent to both on and off-record quoting, and cross-checking facts; or
d) Regular people watch American Idol.
The answer is obviously (d). Now if you're feeling inspired, pick a topic. Doesn't have to be government. After you've spent a few weeks researching who the movers and shakers are, see if you can get your name and email address added to the list of folks who regularly receive information, say, something ordinary like press releases. Your odds are higher than trying to get someone important to actually take your calls, but those odds are probably still slim to none.
When you get round to discovering you've got nothing to contribute, you'll be ready to blog about it anyway along with countless others who are doing the same. Hopefully by then you've gained some respect for reporters, most of whom are employed by newspapers. If not, I guess we'll have to sit back and wait for that traffic accident, meteor landing in your backyard, or other one-off event to occur for you to play Regular Guy Reporter.
100% correct. unfortunately, since the fall of the CCCP, the news industry has slowly collapsed into a sensationalistic grab bag of titillation and distraction.
Here's a nice short documentary on this by Adam Curtis.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.