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Comments: 390 +- News: Newspaper Execs Hold Secret Meeting To Discuss Paywalls on Friday May 29 2009, @12:29PM
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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."
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One idea... (Score:4, Interesting)
We all know paywalls won't work. However, the alternative is worse: if newspapers don't find a way to make money online soon, they'll start seriously blending advertising inside news content. I don't want that to happen!
One idea, based on what I have seen work abroad, is to mandate, for a limited time, a fee of $1 on all Internet connections. You could then use that monthly credit to subscribe to whatever content you chose. That would inject millions in the content economy. If what you want is free music, use your credit for that. If you want to read the New York Times, fine.
After a few years, phase out the fee (hum...). By then, people should have gotten used to it and you get a smooth transition to people using micro-payments for content. Any better ideas?
--
FairSoftware.net [fairsoftware.net] -- fair jobs for iPhone developers and graphic designers
Re:One idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
One idea, based on what I have seen work abroad, is to mandate, for a limited time, a fee of $1 on all Internet connections. You could then use that monthly credit to subscribe to whatever content you chose. That would inject millions in the content economy. If what you want is free music, use your credit for that. If you want to read the New York Times, fine.
After a few years, phase out the fee (hum...). By then, people should have gotten used to it and you get a smooth transition to people using micro-payments for content. Any better ideas?
-- FairSoftware.net [fairsoftware.net] -- fair jobs for iPhone developers and graphic designers
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Re:One idea... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Re:One idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
If recent history demonstrates one clear, concrete fact, it's that the overwhelming majority of what is passed off as journalistic value is worth less than the paper it is printed one. No one should be paying for it.
The recent Iraq War only brought sharply into focus and issue which has been building for many years. Newspapers, TV, Radio, indeed all mainstream sources of news are heavily biased, grossly inaccurate and sloppily researched and presented. The news industry has been slowly bleeding itself to death by producing naught but tripe and nonsense over the last two decades or more.
Are you seriously suggesting that millions are turning away from newspapers because there are lower quality sources which happen to be free? I put it to you that it would in fact be quite a challenge to produce a lower quality product that the mainstream media without making something unreadable and/or unpalatable. No. The reality is there are far more push factors than price which are turning people off mainstream sources.
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Re:One idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyday the local metropolitan newspaper (in my case the Boston Globe) provides coverage of dozens and dozens of events that you'd be hard pressed to learn about through an RSS reader watching some random collection of local blogs. And where do the local bloggers find out about these events themselves? I suspect a large percentage write about things they themselves learned from the mainstream media, and only a tiny fraction are writing about things they experienced in person.
Anyway, your last question is framing the issue incorrectly. People are turning away from newspapers in favor of -identical quality- sources which happen to be free, because those sources have been able to appropriate and parrot the same content with ease.
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Re:One idea... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:One idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
If it is worth paying for someone will pay for it.
Someone isn't enough...and if you can get it all for free, most people will not pay for it at all even if the content is good enough. If anything, having excellent content just means people get it from you even more.
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Re:One idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
Screw 'em. I'd trust a pamphleteer over any of the sacred cow rags that are mentioned in the TFA.
'Pamphleteers,' by whom I presume you mean bloggers, are not journalists. Bloggers just cherry pick other peoples' hard work and add a few opinionated comments of their own to it. Journalists are professional people who do research and go through an editorial process before they get published. They are held accountable. Society needs this. It costs money. The money has to come from somewhere. The free news business model has been tried, and kudos to the newspapers for giving it their best shot, but it simply does not work. Screw em? No. Let's not 'screw em.' We need someone to uncover the next Watergate. We need someone to keep an eye on the war profiteers who charge $20 per washing machine load of laundry. We need someone to keep tabs on the polluters and bring it to the public's attention. If it means an exemption to anti-trust laws (that were written before newspapers ended up in this situation) then so be it. A professional news media is too important to be left to die.
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Re:One idea... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:One idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
Journalists are professional people who do research and go through an editorial process before they get published. They are held accountable.
Provided you define "do research" to mean "Maybe check google for a couple seconds", "editorial process" to mean "Check whether this will boost ratings/readership", and "held accountable" to mean "Issue a 1 line or 2 second correction a week after the fact when we make an error so we can't get sued over it no matter how badly we fucked up".
Journalism from the major corporations ended a long time ago in favour of increased profits.
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Re:One idea... (Score:5, Funny)
Journalists are professional people who do research and go through an editorial process before they get published.
What do people like that have to do with newspapers?
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Re:One idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone should mod this 'funny'. If these journalists are so professional and accountable and so on, where are they on covering the ACORN government-sponsored partisan politics? Hello, that's brazenly illegal. Where are they on the rest of the crap going on in Washington? Who did the research on the 60 Minutes fake letters? Who's doing the research on the bailouts, the billions of money being unaccountedly funnelled to political cronies of the administration?
No, bloggers arose because the Mainstream Media, including the newspapers, didn't do the job they claimed they were doing. They want their big money and perks, but they don't want to have to work for it. Arrogant incompetence, once again.
Bloggers are doing the research today. It's the Journalists who are cherry-picking other people's hard work. The big newspapers deserve to die.
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Re:One idea... (Score:5, Informative)
Hilarious.
I've been working 60-80 hour weeks for nine months because of layoffs by corporate to fund the debt holes they dug at other papers, while at the same time our 401(k) matches are cut, our health insurance is cut, our vacation time is halved and our sick time is cut by 2/3. Thanks to a reply-all fuckup by my boss, the entire newsroom just found out that our publisher wants to axe 3/4 of our copy editing staff by August.
There's no bloggers at the public meetings where school boards try to cut funding to the black schools so the white schools can keep their football programs. There's no bloggers at the city hall meetings, the port board meetings, the county board meetings. The only bloggers at the capitol are partisan hacks angling for work in the machine.
The people who want "big money and perks" left the business two years ago, and that's if they were foolish enough not to switch to PR before they got their mass comm. degree.
The passionate people who never expected to get pay or benefits in a profession where the per-capita income is lower than teaching in public schools are getting ready to switch to PR, political consulting, or flipping burgers.
The idiots who rewrite a press release for 30 minutes and play Peggle for the other 11 1/2 hours that their corporate-appointed "editor" has scheduled them to work are just happy to not be flipping burgers, and wonder why all of the people who've been working there for 20 years start to choke on their own vomit every time they see a kid like that get promoted from intern to reporter.
You want to know why your newspaper sucks? Look at who owns them. Look at what they've thought were good ideas - ignoring the Internet until 2002, paywalling content, cutting news staff, thinking event calendars and photo galleries trump local reporting.
But don't you shit on me for screaming in your ear to pay attention to the utter incompetency in your local and state government. Big newspapers can fuck off and die for all I care. The AP is a corrupt megalomaniac with a bullhorn who's still screaming from its deathbed. But journalists are looking for pay and perks? Fuck you. We came in knowing there wasn't any left for us after corporate was through. That doesn't mean we stopped giving a shit.
Since everybody's picked up your talking points and won't stop pissing them at us, though, fuck it, and fuck you. I'm tired of being bitched at for caring about your city, and your government, and your life, so you don't have to take the time out of your day to care on your own.
If you could take care of your own governance, you wouldn't need blogs, much less papers. Try keeping up with your own goddamned idiot local administration for a month and see if you want to hate me and what I've done for most of my life.
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Re:One idea... (Score:4, Insightful)
It is going on right now, everyone sees it, nobody cares. All over the place.
Tell me, is it not a watergate scandal that GM is going to be run by the US government, rather than let fail because of poor management and unions run amok? (I blaming both the board and UAW).
Why should I, as a tax payer, who has never owned a GM product, be required to prop up GM? Give me ONE reason?
And how much $$ to keep it running is enough? WHEN is Enough going to be enough?????
Sometimes the hardest thing do to is take the shotgun to Old Yeller, is also the best thing to do.
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Re:One idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why should I, as a tax payer, who has never owned a GM product, be required to prop up GM? Give me ONE reason?
For the same reason we subsidize grain - there is a tremendous national security advantage to being self-sufficient. We can't lose our industrial capacity any more than we can lose our ability to feed ourselves, or we risk becoming dependent on nations we might war against.
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Re:One idea... (Score:4, Insightful)
HAHAHAH. We are NOT self sufficient. WE depend on so many imports right now to survive it isn't even funny.
Try this, for one month. Buy only products made 100% in the US with 100% US made components. If it doesn't say "Made in USA" you can't buy it.
You're in for a huge surprise.
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Re:One idea... (Score:4, Insightful)
But I agree that they can't, by and large, do the difficult and expensive research necessary to "break" stories.
But then the solution would seem to be to find a way to fund investigators, without those investigators necessarily being the ones who analyze the data or write the news. We don't need the whole infrastructure of modern newspapers if the only key ingredient is the research.
What I would love to see is funding made available to quality investigators, who gather together a bunch of information and publicize it, letting the public make of it what they will. With all kinds of source material (interview tapes and footage, detailed notes, photos, documents, etc.), the bloggers of the world would have the original material they need. (And no doubt many of them would find a way to make a living at it...) The question is obviously "who will pay for these investigators?" I don't have an answer, but I submit that this is the question we should be tackling. Not "How do we make newspapers sustainable?" but rather "How do we fund the important piece of news--investigation..."
I don't know if the right answer is public funds, or donations, or some mechanism by which interested parties (journalists, bloggers, citizens, etc.) pay into a fund to support the investigators, or what... But again I think we need to focus on the piece of newspapers that is actually valuable, and let the rest go.
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Re:One idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
Totall agree, we do need this. What we don't need is the rest of the baggage that newspapers want to keep selling to us. We don't need hundreds of newpaper titles, all carrying the same national news -- there is no added value any more in reprinting someone else's reporting.
Unfortunately, we don't currently have the newpapers that we need. The financial crash and the investigation of Madoff, where was that? The same person who gave details to the SEC about why Madoff must be running a Ponzi scheme took his information to a couple of major newspapers -- what did they do with it? Nothing. I did hear an interview of a reporter who had been investigating events that led up to the crash 2-3 years ago -- good reporting, yes? She wrote for UK newspaper.
The problem for the newspaper industry is the same as the buggy whip manufacturers when cars came along -- the demand for their product has dropped dramatically and many of the manufacturers will have to go out of business. Think of it this way, with hundreds of papers, the same function (collating and printing news) is repeated hundres of times each day, with no real added value over and above what the next guy is doing. There is no economic value in this. They had their shot, they made money (lots of money), but their time is now past. Technology and society have moved on.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
For one, your "pamphleteers" probably get their sources from your "cow rags." See very few bloggers and other small news and commentary outlets have the funds and ability to get reporters where reporters need to be, and while there is a lot of fluff there are also a lot of places where reporters really do need to be.
For two, no, people are not going to pay for something just because that something could be worth paying for. Online so far they can get it for free and from other outlets where oftentimes th
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Quit going for ratings and produce real journalism, and it will be worth paying for. The crap will get sifted out. But there's very few sources left for that.
Any "newspaper" with cover stories or front-page news on entertainment or celebrity should be disqualified. I hope they all die and have to start over, because I can't get real news from news outlets. I know who won American Idol, but I don't want to know it. I intentionally tried to avoid learning this, but I had no choice.
It's called a "newspape
Re:One idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
One idea, based on what I have seen work abroad, is to mandate, for a limited time, a fee of $1 on all Internet connections.
How about.... No. Since you're so free with everybody's money how about you give up your entire paycheck to them, ya know for just a limited time of a couple of decades... naw that won't work since you'll already be use to giving everything up, you'll mind as well just continue to pay til the day you die. Since after all til death is still a limited amount of time, right?
Besides we don't need yet another credit system since we already have enough and absolutely have zero cause to have another.
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Re:One idea... (Score:5, Informative)
After a few years, phase out the fee (hum...).
I present to you the Federal Telephone Excise Tax [taxfoundation.org]. Once a tax or fee is on the books it will be next to impossible to remove it - it will just be repurposed. What really grinds my gears is the Cost Recovery Fee charged each month to support the number portability act. That was is, what, 2004? Let's do the math: 5 years * 100 million cell phone subscribers * 12 months in a year * $1.25 per month = $7.5 billion in cost recovery monies. You really think it cost the cell phone industry that much money to support number portability? My professional wild assed guess is that it cost the industry 1 billion to implement and maybe 1 million a year to maintain/support. The rest of that is pure profit; pure profit I don't see going away any time soon. Now, if the government mandated they use that money to forcibly upgrade their network.
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Re:One idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
It would go about as well as the money Congress gave telcos in the 90's to give everyone fast, cheap broadband service.
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Re:One idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
Teen wearing Nike Shocks and Abercrombie & Fitch jacket steals 2010 Toyota Corolla and rams it into Wal Mart.
Granny calls 911 from her new Nokia Xpress Music phone with an affordable AT&T plan, reports missing LG 52" Plasma TV bought at Best Buy.
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Re:One idea... (Score:5, Funny)
However, the alternative is worse: if newspapers don't find a way to make money online soon, they'll start seriously blending advertising inside news content. I don't want that to happen!
Oh I agree, it's time for newspapers to get their fair share. I mean, compare a newspaper to a manufacturer of fine computers, like Dell, whose products are unrivaled, and offer a great bargain for the buck. Dell is a thriving business despite their low, low prices, and the fact that they have a sale going on right now at dell.com [dell.com]. It's only reasonable that newspapers get compensated for their work in the same way as company like Dell, that dauntless innovator and technology powerhouse behind the new economy.
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Last to Act Wins? (Score:5, Funny)
NY Times Editor: Marcus? Hi, it's Bill Keller from the New York Times and since we're all in agreement that today we put our paywalls, I just wanted to call you up and thank you again.
Washington Post Editor: Oh yeah, Bill, we gotta do this--I mean, we just can't sustain without this revenue *snicker*.
NY Times Editor: Alright well, I'm calling because it's 10am now EST and we had all agreed that at midnight EST our papers would switch over to paywalls.
Washington Post Editor: Yep. That's right. *snort*
NY Times Editor: Yeah, well, your paper is still accessible without a paywall.
Washington Post Editor: What? Oh, man, hah, must be a bug. I'll get right on that!
*click*
Two hours later.
*ring ring*
NY Times Editor: Yeah, Marcus? It's Bill from the New York Times again, it's noon, still seeing a paywall on your site, what's up?
Washington Post Editor: Oh yeah, it's a bad bug, we can't figure it out--might take weeks. *laughing in background*
NY Times Editor: Really? Well, we haven't had a single person sign up for our paywall and I'm looking at an ad online right now that says, "Washington Post: Because Information Wants to be Free." And, uh, I also am reading some comments on blogs about only idiots will ever use the New York Times from this point on. Am I on speaker phone?
Washington Post Editor: Bill, it's time I came clean. In the newspaper business, there are sheep and there are sharks
Re:Last to Act Wins? (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, it means their intentions are definitely not pure.
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It's amazing how low corporate execs will stoop... (Score:4, Funny)
... to try to save a dying business model.
The reporters can always get day jobs and keep their writing game up at wikinews [wikinews.org].
Re:It's amazing how low corporate execs will stoop (Score:5, Insightful)
"Charging for stuff" is not "a" business model, it's business. What's not a business model is giving free rides. Something's gotta give.
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Re:It's amazing how low corporate execs will stoop (Score:4, Insightful)
to be fair, I'm not convinced that 'day jobs' will let reporters REALLY do research.
problem is, almost no local paper does research anymore and its only the 'biggies' that can afford it. the biggies are also the ones we cannot trust as they are too much in bed with the subject they are trying to do research on! its a big mess.
smaller independants are more trustable but their budgets are down to near zero now. so where do we get IN DEPTH stories from?
answer: we don't. the gov will soon control the data flow and news flow (in our lifetimes, we'll see this).
we are witnessing a change in info flow but its not all good, folks.
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Ooh... "secret" meetings? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like a non-story to me. Or does the article submitter imply that whenever companies get together, they should invite the press and make it a fully open meeting?
Yeah, so they want to get paid for their work. Might as well spin this as: "Capitalism 2.0: Your time ain't free".
Re:Ooh... "secret" meetings? (Score:5, Interesting)
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
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Google bot (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Google bot (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you think they will still allow Googlebot to crawl their web pages?
The sad thing is that they will probably only allow Googlebot to crawl them, thereby disadvantaging any upstart search engines that might want to compete with Google. As much as I like Google, the fact that they are so big creates a "we only need to worry about Googlebot" mentality among website operators that is similar to "we only need to worry about working with Internet Explorer."
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How to save the Newspaper Business (Score:5, Interesting)
I call it "The Kindle does Cable:"
1. Stop printing news on paper.
2. Give out electronic devices that update automatically and wirelessly
3. Bill the users of those electronic devices a small but non-trivial monthly rate (say, $14.99 with a 2-year subscription)
4. Offer other publishers access to your platform for much larger sums. So a subscription to your paper also includes a subscription to the local sports magazine, dining guide, etc.
5. Work out a deal with Craigslist to deliver local classified ads for free.
1999 just called (Score:5, Funny)
They should be adding paywalls (Score:5, Interesting)
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:They should be adding paywalls (Score:4, Interesting)
How can you be so deluded about the purpose of a news papers. The purpose of newspapers is to sell advertising. That's it, that's the business model. You need subscribers to do that, but you DON'T need good news stories. Indeed, the last thing you want is subscribers who are adept at analytical reasoning, they're terrible advertising targets. You need to tow the line, not be controversial and get readers of a similar type.
Why do you think that outing things like the Bush-era lies leading up to the Iraq war was widely reported and thoroughly documented in the blogsphere, but missing almost entirely from the mainstream newspapers. Being controversial means advertisers don't want to be associated with your paper.
I don't know that the death of newspapers is a good thing, but the lack of real reporting, that is, reporting facts however unpopular and digging for news stories, has long since stopped being a part of the newspaper world.
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Something has to be done (Score:5, Informative)
I work for a newspaper company and we are going through this exact thing right now. The newspaper industry has gotten used to seemingly endless financing and now sites like Craigslist and Google are doing a better job at what makes newspapers money.
There is no money in journalism. The money comes from classifieds and sponsorship. Now that people can easily get their news from just about anywhere companies are not as willing to shell out major payments for newspaper ads.
Don't get me wrong, a paywall is a TERRIBLE idea but the news industry isn't cheap and people take it for granted. What other ideas are out there to keep news journalism profitable?
Picking from who now? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, because great journalism talent will put their work on the web for free. /sarcasm
Remember, journalists have bills to pay and need to eat just like you. You wouldn't work for free, and neither will they. If they can't make money as journalists, they will get jobs doing something else. Seeing as great journalism is a full time job, there will be a major reduction in the quantity of quality journalism. But, crappy journalism with continue unabated.
The Benefits of Subscription (Score:5, Insightful)
As an longtime consumer of printed media, I really have no problem paying for a subscription to a daily newspaper and a few magazines on subjects I care about. Back in the day, the primary benefit of a subscription was home delivery ("Never miss an issue!") and a discount off of what it would cost to buy the publication on the street.
So what are the possible benefits now? I can think of a few things that would make subscribing worthwhile:
- Access to articles -- this is the porn/academic journal approach where you can only see the good stuff if you pay. This only works if what you offer is REALLY good and not available elsewhere.
- Freedom from advertising -- I would pay $10/mo to NYTime Company today if they would stop putting animated ads and buttons on their pages.
- Convenient access -- this is the Kindle approach, where your subscription grants you access to well-formatted content from mobile or dedicated devices. This only works if the content is truly well-formatted, which it is often not on the Kindle. This is more or less the iTunes model, too, because you pay a small premium for the tight integration of content and device.
- Affiliation -- this is the public radio approach: you support the station, they send you t-shirts and other crap that allow you to identify in public as a supporter. Commercial media are kind of blind to this, but it has worked really well for some organizations for a long time.
Can a room full of newspaper execs come up with actual reasons why we should subscribe like this? I dunno. I doubt it. I suspect they will put up paywalls, but then continue to show annoying ads, ignore mobile devices, and botch the affiliation angle like they always have. Bankruptcy comes to all dinosaurs sooner or later. If they could learn from Slashdot (which has an *excellent* subscription scheme) they already would have.
Publishers: The free Internet is over (Score:5, Insightful)
Rupert Murdoch, speaking out on the news business [today.com], stated today that "the Internet free access model is clearly malfunctioning, as I don't make enough money from it. We have to educate people that free doesn't work, particularly for us."
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?" 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.
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 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.
Um... So? (Score:3, Insightful)
I happen to work at a small(ish) rural newspaper that has an online edition. You can get the edition free if you pay by the year or have a 3 month auto-pay account. Otherwise you have to pay to either also get the online edition, or just get the online edition. It has been fine that way for seven years.
Paywalls a failed business model? Ask Blizzard. (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone likes the New York Times, but if it's behind a paywall, everyone will go read Yahoo News instead. Right?
Everyone likes World of Warcraft, but since it's behind a paywall ($15/month!), everyone plays MapleStory instead. Right?
1 million Americans pay for the New York Times, and many more than that read it for free. 2.5 million Americans *pay* for WoW.
There's nothing wrong with paywalls, so long as you can make your product attractive enough to pay for.
Minority Opinion - Why Not Pay For This Content? (Score:5, Insightful)
I may get modded down for this opinion. And I am to an extent playing Devil's advocate here.
Maybe monetizing this content isn't such a bad idea. One of the biggest problems with "big media" is that they answer to their advertisers and sponsors. These are the folks that pay the bills. With content being distributed free (beer), there is absolutely NO incentive for these organizations to put out a product that is anything more than a vehicle for advertising revenue.
So, fine. Monetize it. I'm willing to pay for a truly independent press. If the newspapers continue to spew crap, then people won't buy it. But maybe, just maybe, if these so-called professionals actually put their mind to it, they could publish material worth paying for. I pay for content all the time. The Economist, WSJ, New Yorker, Harpers. I do so because it is worth it to me. And these are writers that put out good work and they deserve to get paid. Maybe the newspapers could put out content worth paying for.
If there is anything I'm worried about its not monetization of newspaper content. It is whether these organizations have the vision to actually execute a transition to an Internet world. The whole buzz about Kindles and the NYT indicates they may be --starting-- to get it. But one beauty of free markets is that if they don't do it, someone else will.
seems like it pretty much guarantees a suit (Score:4, Informative)
The 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly somewhat raised the bar for allowing privately-brought anti-trust suits to proceed, but its standard seems to be met here if they do actually implement pay walls, so a suit could at least go to trial. In Twombly, a suit against the Bells was thrown out because it only alleged parallel behavior (not itself illegal) and a claim of conspiracy to carry it out not backed up by any allegations specifying why the plaintiff had any reason to believe it actually was coordinated. Here you can state a sufficient pleading easily: if they simultaneously introduce pay walls, you have parallel behavior, and you additionally allege that they had a meeting at which they discussed carrying out said parallel behavior in concert. Not sure that alone would allow a plaintiff to actually prevail at trial, but it should at least allow a suit to go forward investigating it if this happens (assuming the newspapers don't get a Congressional exemption).
Pay for what? (Score:4, Insightful)
AP Content is all over the place. Most people weren't aware of how much of their daily news was filled by AP until the internet made it apparent. The WSJ has been successful as a pay model because 1) they create a significant amount of their own content, and 2) People want to read it. When you look online, the local newspapers aren't just competing with each other - they are competing with the TV news as well. With 4 sources coming up with the same stories, the reader will turn to the source they are most familiar with. When that source turns out to be too noisy (either with bad content, too many ads, poor layout), people will leave. There are other places to go. The papers aren't losing money because they can't make money online - they are losing money because they don't understand the marketplace they are attacking. They want "more revenue, more visitors" so they put up more ads, shock articles, and spam (pardon me, astroturf) other sites. Instead they should be thinking about things like visitor retention and how to attract long term customers.
The internet in the beginning was about how to make information more accessible. Too big a focus on commerce is bad.
If, say, the LA Times - with their vast library of news from the last 100 years made their archives publicly accessible from day 1, they would be one of the most popular sites on the web. They would be consistently cited, consistently searched, consistently visited. Instead they decided to charge a few bucks an article for their archives - and while they made a few dollars - the focus on monetizing rather than informing resulted in a lost opportunity to increase their company value by 20,000%.
Re:redundant (Score:5, Insightful)
Ever see the footage from those ten cameras after ten different network editors have had a go at it?
One source, one series of questions... you'd think it would be one story, right? Wrong. Each network will edit the footage to say what they'd prefer it to say.
Anyone with an S-Band satellite dish who's spent time watching "wild feeds" - network uplinks of raw footage - who's then watched the finished product rolled out on the news a few hours later can confirm this. It's one of the reasons Bob Dole got trashed in the '96 election - media coverage just flat-out favored Clinton.
Drop the number of reporters and cameras down to one and you still have the one source, the one series of questions... but instead of being told the story ten different ways, you're now being fed one single pre-approved opinion.
There's no way that's a good thing.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes the man in a small war torn African nation dodges bullets, manages to scrape together a bowl of polluted water and rice and then runs down to his local internet coffee shop to hop online and post to his blog.
Seriously, no, important news does NOT occur obligingly where everyone has an open internet connection and the ability to use it.
Re:Important to have a news media (Score:4, Insightful)
I
Lets stop demonising all of the newspapers here. We are talking about our ability of our society to have full time, paid reporters who act as independant watchdogs which play a critical role in our society as a check and balance against corruption. Making sure the newspapers can survive is in the best interests of consumers who rely upon and benefit from the research, investigation and reporting of news investigators and journalists.
The problem is they stopped working as independent watchdogs years ago. They have been promoting their own agenda for years while claiming to be neutral. The original newspapers were biased and proud of it. They came out and told you what they stood for and didn't pretend to give the other side a fair shake.
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