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Paywalls To Drive Journalists Away In Addition To Consumers?
Hugh Pickens writes "With news organizations struggling and newsroom jobs disappearing, each week brings new calls from writers and editors who believe their employers should save themselves by charging for Internet access. However, in an interesting turnabout, the NY Times reports that Saul Friedman, a journalist for more than 50 years and a columnist for Newsday since 1996, announced last week he was quitting after Newsday decided that non-subscribers to Newsday's print edition will have to pay $5 a week to see much of the site, making it one of the few newspapers in the country to take such a plunge. 'My column has been popular around the country, but now it was really going to be impossible for people outside Long Island to read it,' he says. Friedman, who is 80, said he would continue to write about older people for the site 'Time Goes By.' 'One of the reasons why the NY Times eventually did away with its old "paywall" was that its big name columnists started complaining that fewer and fewer people were reading them,' writes Mike Masnick at Techdirt. 'Newspapers who decide to put up a paywall may find that their best reporters decide to go elsewhere, knowing that locking up their own content isn't a good thing in terms of career advancement.'"
Reading this, it strikes me that news sites are just big blogging sites. No blogger would want their content hidden behind a paywall, and reporters are more and more just professional bloggers.
Opinion columnists are just like bloggers. Even if there is a sound argument for a news organization to succeed by putting up a pay-wall on their website (and I believe that a good news organization could do so and succeed), it does not apply to opinion columnists who are not providing anything different than bloggers do.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
"...their best reporters decide to go elsewhere, knowing that locking up their own content isn't a good thing in terms of career advancement."
"Friedman, who is 80.."
Yes. Yes, that is obviously why. More readers to further his career.. yes, that must be it.
The fact is that writing as a profession has such low barriers to entry these days these days (all you need is a keyboard, an internet connection, and a deal in place to host your published ideas), and the concept that ideas from certain writers are more valuable than others seems to be misguided.
Instead, sites should focus on improving their most worthwhile content by making sure their best writers are writing IN DEPTH INVESTIGATIVE STORIES that elevate the nationwide discussion. For what it's worth, the strategy of publishing mounds of opinionated drivel is being demonstrated to lead to minimal success.
Though, while we're here I'd like to plug my own source of potentially opinionated drivel at my site and invite anybody who thinks my ideas are worthwhile to help me get some of my ideas published in the mainstream media (which unrelentlessly still controls 90% of the power within the news publication game).
Both the Newsday columnist who resigned over the Newsday paywall and the NY Times columnists who protested the NY Times paywall are just that: columnists, not reporters or journalists.
Columnists are people for whom the newspaper is a vehicle for the broad distribution of their writings, which are not even notionally constrained by the standards of fact reporting, or even news analysis. Columns are vehicles by which the columnists ideas, pet causes, ideology, other products (like books), etc., are promoted. The interests of columnists may be very different than the interests of journalists with regard to paywalls.
I'd support up to a dollar per week, 20% discount for year-paid, for a couple of may favorite online news sites. But not $250 a year. Printing and distribution costs are nearly negligible then. All the money would go to paying reportors and editors. It sounds like the print media did not learn the "Goldilocks" online music tale: CDs too much, napster too little and iTunes about right. When you get it right you'll have paying customers.
Modern news distribution derives its value from two things: First, the reliability of its product. Second, the timeliness of its product. Newspapers and magazines fail the test because they are release daily, weekly, or even monthly -- whereas other distribution mediums can do it in seconds or minutes. This is not, however, what killed them. The deciding factor is therefore the reliability of the product. Unfortunately, the news industry has made several very bad decisions regarding this:
First, was catering to certain groups (liberals, conservatives, etc.) and following the demographics rather than the story. While this improves profitibility over the short term, it sets things up for a diminishing returns cycle -- to maintain the higher profitibility the product must be targeted more with each iteration, leading to an alienation of those who do not share the increasingly-restricted viewpoint. That is to say, they become aware of the bias and lose confidence in the product. This "short sell" ideology permeates many industries -- in some cases, the results are more dramatic and immediate than other cases.
Second, was the packaging of such information. Even leading up to the 9/11 media event, packaging of information from major news sources was being called into question. Scandals rocked the New York Times, Washington Post, and all major television networks within a three-year timespan -- why? In every case, the rush to get the information to press caused errors to be made. In other words, a lack of process control. The coverage of 9/11 -- with its constant flood of meaningless and un-contextualized data overloaded people. Simply put, anything that's "hot" is over-saturated and in their rush to deliver the latest "news" they bury people in a crap-flood of information -- there was a loss of impact.
The third factor in the loss of reliability of major media organizations was a lack of peer review. Because most of the media distribution in this country is owned by a select few individuals and/or corporations, the industry homogenized. There was no further innovation. In the quest for profitibility, only methods of reporting and investigation were used that guaranteed eyeballs. As history has shown time and time again, the key to the long-term survival of a business, or industry, is adapability. This was sacrificed when the industry homogenized into only a few major corporate players -- leading to formulaic products that were too similar to one another.
Finally, the rise of social networking and the internet proved that word of mouth is the most effective way of spreading information that is NOT time-sensitive. Ironically, the random churning of information on the internet was better at distributing stories than decades-old systems of distribution: Why? Because the information had been separated out into a free-format. Like CDs, where you have to purchase the entire album in order to get that one song -- this was how the media operated. No longer -- and the result was that over a period of days or weeks, many millions more would see a given product because of referrals by friends. The news industry failed to capitalize upon this by creating stand-alone product that could be distributed between people and remain intact (for example, with its advertising or "related" content hooks, perhaps in something similar to PDF).
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
This sounds like the perfect way to solve their financial issues. Why, just the other day I had a fire burning in my back yard. I did what any other sound-minded individual would do: I poured gasoline on the fire. You see, if I make things worse by increasing the rate at which the fire is burning, eventually there will be nothing left to burn and the fire will be gone.
In the same regard, by alienating their employees and consumers, these people will eventually stop taking part in the traditional (and failing) news system. If there are no whining consumers or disgruntled employees, then the problem will be solved! It will burn itself out!
I fail to see any flaws in the plan.
Reporters may leave if their newspaper starts charging for content, yes. However, I think a few more reporters might leave if the newspaper goes bankrupt. People aren't buying newspapers any more. They may not want to pay for online content now, but that's mostly because the 'free' online content is being subsidized by papers which are rather quickly going out of business. As that happens, the remaining papers will end up charging for online content (since how else will they make any money) and people will either pay for it (because there's no other option for getting good journalism) or not pay for it (because they'd rather read free blogosphere crap). But if there's one thing I'll lay odds on, it's that expensive content (like good journalism) isn't going to be available for free. TANSTAAFL, you know.
You mean like how Vox Day, who is a very big libertarian blogger, has made Paul Krugman look like an utter fool time and again on his blog? Or the way that Maureen Dowd consistently writes stuff that is no better than 90% of the stuff posted daily on the Huffington Post?...
I disagree completely. I think people will absolutely pay for news--but opinion is, as said upwards of here, worth exactly crap in terms of monetary value. And so little of newsreporting today has even the PRETENSE of objectivity and professional integrity that nobody is interested in paying for it. Why pay for bloggers? Blogs are free and free for a reason.
This is why the Wall Street Journal's readership is actually going UP while their competitors are losing money right and left. The WSJ has actual reporting going on, which is thorough, professionally edited and mostly free from bias and agenda. And they do a good job of keeping their news pages and opinion pages distinct from each other, unlike the Times and most of the now-dying newspaper industry.
Journalism used to be a craft, one that involved not only finding out what happened but reporting what happened objectively, leaving it to the reader to make up his or her own mind about what the story really means. Nowadays ersatz "journalists" think it's ok to be social crusaders, and objectivity is laughed off as though it were obsolete and unreasonable. (I graduated one of the nation's top journalism schools, and saw this firsthand.) This mindset is what has the newsroom in the grip of death.
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
I define as journalists anybody who writes for a publication according to a certain set of standards.
The main standard is that you're committed to telling the truth more than you are to promoting a cause. As Richard Feynman said, if the facts go against your position, you have to report those facts. Same rule for journalists and scientists.
Traditionally, a newspaper columnist started out as a reporter, and after he mastered the job, he moved up to writing a column (sort of like a cop who gets promoted to detective). And Saul Friedman was a reporter at Newsday before he became a columnist.
There was a bad practice at the New York Times and elsewhere of making columnists out of people who had never worked as journalists, and who often had nothing to offer beyond an ideological position. Example: William Kristol.
Molly Ivins wrote about this. She said that when you work as a reporter, you learn how to figure things out and get to the facts in a hurry. You cover a school board meeting, people are throwing charges back and forth, and a reporter has to figure out what's going on. Ivins said that a lot of columnists were political appointees, and never learned how to do that. They never learned basic fact-checking. So they can't even get their basic facts right. Just because some economist at the Heritage Foundation or some guy at the CIA said something, that doesn't mean it's true.
Some bloggers are journalists. They check out their facts, and report the facts no matter whose ox gets gored. I pay to read that.
Some bloggers just spout their own opinions and cut and paste whatever they happen to agree with. They're not journalists. Most of them aren't worth reading, even for free.
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You said:
Thesis: The MSM has to deal with an audience that is polarized, distracted, transient, and lazy. The appropriate product for that audience is biased, sensationalized, cheap, and simplified. The thougthful online audience doesn't pay the bills. This leads the MSM to pander to the polarized, lazy audience, resulting in a product whose content and style alienates thoughtful people. A vicious circle that results in a gradual loss of reliability.
1) The polarization of the audience is a pressure external to the MSM to which the big papers and television have had to adapt. Culture War is a term that describes the aggressive, polarized public sphere America has been experiencing for about 30 or 40 years. The idea that America is at war with itself has appealed to political activists who promote extreme rhetoric advocating their point of view. We have seen the rise of privately funded "think tanks" producing analysis and science that c/overtly promotes a certain line of thinking. The MSM has been met by the non-MSM, like conservative talk radio, which has taught millions of people the New York Times is a commie rag. This is the atmosphere to which a MSM news organization has to adapt. The MSM papers are caught up in a whirlpool of accusations of bias from 2 sides (and more) from which it is very difficult to escape. Read the comments sections of many papers for signs of the insanity, especially on articles linked from the DrudgeReport.
You have called this a loss of reliability of the news paper. We might call it a loss of reliability of the reader who is so consumed by his point of view that he interprets every alternative point of view as a declaration of war. These readers can no longer be trusted to demand quality journalism. Instead they want affirmative journalism. This leads to a lowest-common-denominator media analysis that screams bias everywhere it goes.
2) The MSM no longer has a lock on the attention of the average person. Hard news is hard to make and hard to consume, and most people don't bother.