Do pay walls create new opportunities?
The New York Times, as expected, seems to have settled on a date for the paywall to go live: January, 2011.
There’s no point in hashing out, again, whether or not this is a good idea for the New York Times and the many other major metro papers considering such a move. The one good thing about paywalls going live is that the theoretical questions will finally be answered in the real world.
No, what’s interesting is whether this is a good idea for other sites serving those same markets. If, for instance, The Chicago Tribune eventually opts for a paywall of any kind, do the people in the newsroom of WLS and other local media bliss out over the potential for reaching more news consumers? What about the rapidly growing ecosystem of micro-local news and information sites serving communities and towns? If your local newspaper walls up, will you pay, or find other sources?
By stepping back from a 100% free model — no matter how carefully (and slowly – we’ve been talking about this for years) — the large news sites can’t help but create some amount of vacuum into which the smaller sites — and audience — will flow.
But that’s where this all gets very interesting. Because if we’ve learned nothing else in the past decade, it’s that gathering a large audience — “eyeballs,” as the ad guys used to say — is no longer enough. Large publishers and tiny publishers need to cover their costs and make a little profit in the bargain if they’re going to continue publishing. So flowing into the vacuum isn’t enough for the upstarts — they need real business plans.
Recently in the NY Times Magazine, there was a long look at the business models of the non-traditional publishers that have emerged in recent years. It strikes more of an elegiac tone than I think is entirely appropriate, implying that the task is Sisyphean, but it’s essential reading for anyone trying to understand the struggles the journalism business model is facing and will continue to face.
The overriding theme: The future is much, much leaner for journalism, and that business models will need to change, radically, to accommodate that fact:
…the new world could end up looking a lot like the old one, albeit with smaller newsrooms and new players. Politico replaces the Washington correspondent, TMZ is the gossip page and you can get coverage of your baseball team directly from MLB.com, which employs professional sportswriters. In cities like San Diego, New York and Washington, online start-ups are taking on metro news coverage, hoping to tap local ad markets. All of these publications have been hiring real, full-time employees — as have nontraditional providers like Yahoo, which is constructing a new political news site.
If you’re a journalist or a publisher, whether you read that passage and weep or rub your hands with anticipation and hope is a good indicator of what the next few years hold in store for you.
Photo: Creative Commons license, flickr user Shawn Econo.
“If you applied for this job, you may already be a winner.”
Jobs in journalism are becoming rarer with each passing day. But at Scott Karp’s Publish2.com, there’s a great job for the taking. All you have to do is win their contest.
It’s a job with Publish2, a start-up focused on helping journalism thrive in the digital age. We already employ two incredibly talented journalists, Tammi Marcoullier and Josh Korr, and we want to expand our team.
But since we can only hire one journalist, we’re going to promote all entries to news organizations and media companies that are looking for journalists who are focused on the future and who want to help journalism evolve.
To enter the contest, you can submit a video, a slide show, or a written statement (or all three) about why you believe you are the future of journalism.
“I am the future of journalism because…”
If you’re interested, you can enter here.
Jarvis offers a year of good ideas, summarized in one post
Yesterday, 140 characters at a time, I hacked into Sam Zell and his far-ranging interview with Portfolio as signifying a man who is 1. very good at identifying the newspaper industry’s problems but (and this extends to his key advisor Lee Abrams) 2. woefully inept at articulating real responses to the crisis (other than to cut costs, which is necessary, and to add visual flash to the papers, which may or may not help), simply because as non-participants in where news is going (digital), he and Lee can’t begin to imagine its future.
On the flip side of that coin is Jeff Jarvis, who has been taking flak of late for being a supposed journalism hater, but who, in my opinion, has been a steady source of ideas over the years – mostly solid, a few shaky – for where we might try to steer this battleship.
A few days back, he gathered many of those ideas into one post. It’s step-by-step instructions on one (informed) guy’s recipe for saving the business:
Note well that none of this is new. The essential functions of journalism – reporting, watching, sharing, answering, explaining – and its verities – factualness, completeness, fairness, timeliness, relevance – are eternal, but the means of performing them are multiplying magnificently. That is why I so enjoy teaching journalism, because we need no longer pick a medium and its tools for a career but can select them every time we need to tell a story – and because journalism is no longer about preservation (it never should have been) but is instead about change and growth.
Could journalism die? Yes, but I have faith and optimism that it will survive, evolve, and grow. I believe there will be a growing market demand for journalism; I know there is a growing need.
Journalism doesn’t need THINK PIECES!! It needs solid thinking. Like this.
Let’s put the government in charge of journalism!
Writing in The Mediashift Idea Lab on pbs.org, David Sasaki wins the award for the longest argument yet in favor of government funding of the failing journalism business.
I try not to get into outright arguments here, but this seems to me to be a really, really bad idea. You can’t micro-manage every single industry with bailouts and new taxes to support them. If US automakers, for instance, can’t build cars that people want, then they should contract, combine or even, in the most extreme outcome, disappear. We won’t have any shortage of vehicles, as better-run companies slip in to fill the void. That’s cold, true, but that’s also the marketplace in action.
Same goes for journalism. If newspapers have created the perfect storm of outdated content and revenue models at the very moment when user consumption patterns are changing radically, then that’s a bright neon sign that it’s time to change. Not that it’s time to find a deep-pocketed government benefactor to allow things to operate as they always have.
But don’t tell that to David Sasaki. He’s thinking about the National Journalism Foundation, funded by the federal government. Which, as we all know, is really you and me:
The National Journalism Foundation would essentially serve as a re-invented Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Annual funding should increase from $200 million to $3 billion. (One percent of the total cost of the Iraq War; four percent of the federal bank bailout.) Similar to the NSF, the National Journalism Foundation would regularly award grants to individuals, organizations, and institutions that propose projects which serve to better inform the American public about their communities, government, nation, and the rest of the world. PBS and NPR would, of course, continue to receive funding, but other organizations and projects like EveryBlock and FiveThirtyEight.com, which provide important information to the public but don’t attract advertising revenue, would also be considered for funding.
As described, it sounds sort of enticing. Let’s fund the the cool startups. Let’s tax those “telecommunications giants” (who will, no doubt, totally absorb these new taxes out of the kindness of their bleeding hearts) and give the money away to a super-sized Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Yes, let’s. And Popsicles for everyone.
Or, publishers could look down the long-barrel of changing realities and change in ways that will allow them to continue in the business of informing people while still making a profit. But they surely won‘t do that if the Gravy Train is about to pull into town, just like GM won’t change if it’s guaranteed a future through taxpayer bailouts.
And what’s really the worst thing about this? Live for 5-10 years under such a system, and the bulk of the press will be dependent on the government for funding, essentially defanging an already gap-toothed watchdog.
Sorry, I’m not buying it. Journalism is currently screwed, but that’s a good thing. It’s finally forcing some real change. Let’s not screw that up by taking away the only incentive they have to change: fear.
There is great hope for journalism in people like David Cohn
Recent posts have been especially dark on my part. Which isn’t entirely representative. I believe that journalism – especially that journalism practiced by the organizations that today publish daily metro papers – is essential, and can have a very bright future if we stop thinking about the last 150 years and focus on maybe just the next 10.
And let the smart people lead.
For instance, people like David Cohn, creator of Spot.us.
I am writing this post physically exhausted but emotionally charged. I feel like a lion. As if I could talk down the curmudgeonist of curmudgeons. Not because I know the answer(s) – but because if we can’t even talk those people down, then we might as well just crawl into a whole and give up. F- that! We are moving forward with or without them.
The answers are out there in every startup (journalism focused or otherwise), community, blog, micro-blogging, micro-financing and CMS on the web. The internet is ours for the taking if we only reach out and grab it with as many hands as possible.
Breathe deeply. This stuff is good for what ails you.
Thinking of the journalist as a DJ instead of a curator.
Photo by Thomas Hawk
Jeff Jarvis points to what may be a better analogy for the role of a modern journalist: A nightclub DJ.
Previously, I’d suggested journalists need to become a curator, but I agree that the messier, noisier role of a nightclub spinner is closer to what journalists do as they run toward constant deadlines, and serves as a less fussy example than curator. Elevator speech: changed.
The original article, in French, translates to something like this (thanks to my daughter Anna for helping Google with some of the idioms):
The job of the press is redefined by new technologies and new relationships with readers, listeners and viewers. The new journalist acts as a filter, a “packageur” of information produced by multiple sources and heterogeneous sources (other media, agencies, experts, witnesses, fans).
Information is no longer a product, it became a process, it is no longer an object it is a service and the media become facilitators. (This does not mean that the report or the investigation died, it simply means that this activity, extremely expensive, can no longer be their only activity. Exclusive content is a loss leader, a product for “the reputation…”)
The whole article is here.
New Business Models for News: The opening salvo
I’ve been remiss in posting this. Here’s Jeff Jarvis last week kicking off the New Business Models for News conference. This is part one of two. You’ll find the second part linked at the end of part one.
This conversation could not have come at a more critical time. Circ. is down. Revenue is down. Staffing is down. If there is going to be journalism in the future, it’s time to change the model now.