Newspaper Execs Hold Secret Meeting To Discuss Paywalls

Techdirt got wind of a secret meeting by newspaper execs, complete with antitrust lawyers, to discuss how to proceed on the issue of implementing paywalls going forward. Of course, if newspapers decide to all lock away their content that just means the rest of us will have a bunch of great journalism talent to pick from soon thereafter. "You may have noticed a bunch of stories recently about how newspapers should get an antitrust exemption to allow them to collude -- working together to all put in place a paywall at the same time. That hasn't gone anywhere, so apparently the newspapers decided to just go ahead and try to get together quietly themselves without letting anyone know. But, of course, you don't get a bunch of newspaper execs together without someone either noticing or leaking the news... so it got out. And then the newspapers admitted it with a carefully worded statement about how they got together 'to discuss how best to support and preserve the traditions of news gathering that will serve the American public.' And, yes, they apparently had an antitrust lawyer or two involved."

Comments

They should be adding paywalls

[electroniceric]

As enjoyable as it is to bash the newspapers for all of their real flaws, I don't understand how people have come to find paywalls outrageous. I really don't. The difference between newspapers and random hearsay is (in the best cases) a lot of effort in developing broad and balanced sources, fact checking, having an editorial process for some degree of fairness and accuracy (as much as that's suffered in the past decade) and generally putting out a "report" on a subject (that's why we call them reporters). That's a lot of hard, often tedious work that is not going to get done well unless someone is paid to do it. And frankly we should all want to pay for that kind of good content to be made, even when we disagree with it.

It's become trendy to say that bloggers do much of the work of the media and that is simply delusion. First of all, nearly all blog entries (including a large fraction of those on this site) are built around a link of a publication which employs its writers. Bloggers do a great job adding bits, contextualize and bringing together info, but they are most often not the generators of solid base information they work with. So if we really do lose newspapers we are not going to have the People's Republic of Blogistan stand up and replace them with real reporting, we're just going to have gasbaggery in its place.

Now the newspaper industry as a whole needs plenty of creative destruction on top of that. Now that news can freely travel across the country and the world, there's no need for every paper to have Washington bureau and foreign correspondents, and consolidation is much needed there. Likewise the stupid forays of the 90s into "new media" and the debt-fueled expansions also call for some of these business to go under. But that's about restructuring companies and an industry, not replacing paid professionals with everyone's favorite opinion.

My hope is that the newspapers will force the issue on micropayments. I would gladly pay $1, maybe $2 a day for a combination of stories from the Washington Post, NYT, LA Times, my local newspaper, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and on occasion some random others that I learned about from some blogger. I absolutely will not pay $20/mo to each of those. So if they can figure out a joint payment scheme that makes sense, I'm all for that. Double bonus points if they can use it to make their archives affordable and not priced for company and institutiional use.

Re:One idea...

[LithiumX]

The problem is that recent history demonstrates one thing: People will gladly accept free crap of virtually no journalistic value over cheap crap that at least has a much higher value.

In the tech field, there is plenty of good free online journalism. Their expenses are relatively small, and are easily supported by advertising. Outside of the tech field, things get more costly due to scope - and the free alternatives either lean heavily on "pro" material (one of the news industries biggest complaints) or else just feed us trash worth about as much as what you get out of any scandal rag.

On the other hand, the previous guy's idea of forcing everyone to pay for some content is extremely distasteful. I think it would be much better to enforce some basic rules on content re-appropriation. While I love getting well-written news for free online, it's also one of the main reasons the people who write that news are going out of business - they don't get paid, and no one sees the ads that would normally fund them (because they're looking at the ads that fund the site that ripped off the content).

Attribution is fine, but in this case I think the newspapers are within their right to cooperate on this matter, because it's not price fixing if there are still going to be many free alternatives.

Re:Ooh... "secret" meetings?

[QuoteMstr]

Err, yes:

"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public..." - Adam Smith