Newspaper Execs Hold Secret Meeting To Discuss Paywalls 390
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."
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?
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FairSoftware.net [fairsoftware.net] -- fair jobs for iPhone developers and graphic designers
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.
Such fail (Score:2, Interesting)
Not for trying to collude in secret with one another, because that's been the status quo of business since some better-than-thou jackass decide that "manager" should be synonymous with "boss" rather than with "secretary." No, this fail because they just illustrated just how irrelevant they've become. I can't get a lick of investigative journalism out of these crusty old outlets other than that spoon-fed to them by their chosen benefactors in government or industry, but I heard about this little gathering of goofballs just fine using these silly Intarwebs.
Why should I pay a bunch of jokers to hunt down sources when those sources are having a grand old time posting everything they see direct to the world, often with full color photos or even video from the convenient little cameras that so many people carry in their pockets these days. Sorry Jimmy Olsen, I know you dream of roaming the streets capturing your Pulitzer, but most of us have found a nifty way to pass information to one another without needing you to play middleman.
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: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.
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
Re:One idea... (Score:1, Interesting)
I think a more profitable (and completely non-socialist, yay!) idea would be to encrypt the content and charge people for a one-time-key. Combine this with two separate versions of the content: one free one riddled with many annoying ads and pop-ups, and the paid encrypted one sans the ads/pop-ups.
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.
Already done in other industries (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:One idea... (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 "newspaper". Put news in it. Another celebrity blah blah blah something, that isn't new, that's old news with a different famous person.
Captcha: circus. How appropriate.
Re:One idea... (Score:3, Interesting)
Unfair. Many bloggers do original work, particularly in the tech field. Many of the more useful articles on a given technology appear first in blogs.
Saying that all bloggers "just cherry pick other peoples' hard work and add a few opinionated comments of their own to it" is not unlike saying that all journalists just read the prepared statement given to their editor by the White House Press Secretary. Probably true in some cases, but not in all (or even most).
And there's no need for an exception to anti-trust laws here. All they need is a third-party company that charges for newspaper subscriptions, handles all the client issues, and provides newspaper companies with some server-side software that implements client access. Instead of colluding with each other, they'd merely be clients of a service company. In fact, I just suggested this to the editor of the New York Times (we'll see what he thinks, I'm sure).
Newspaper execs have NO IMAGINATION.
Re:One idea... (Score:3, Interesting)
Does society really need to be burdened with the cost of having 30-50 people at a press release when only a small handful will actually ask any questions and the rest are going to just release the same story with a couple of opinions added?
Re:One idea... (Score:3, Interesting)
Well put. I find that I can find far better quality reporting from bloggers than I can ever get from the "professionals." About 4 months before the shit hit the fan, the financial blogs I was looking at were predicting a banking crisis. And it wasn't just guys making a lucky guess. They had charts of Fed lending that made a very convincing case, and everything was well-researched.
It might be mean to say, but sadly, it is the truth that the dumbest people in college go into journalism. They tend to be the idiots that think they are smart, so they are always mouthing off their dumb ideas.
One Word for This Story: Bullshit (Score:3, Interesting)
This story is nonsense from start to finish. Yes, some newspaper execs got together and discussed paywalls. Big deal.
There is nothing illegal about that. I realize everyone on Slashdot thinks of himself as an antitrust expert, but industry people do this all the time. Credit card companies have trade associations, and so do banks, car dealers, fast food franchisees, and book publishers.
"Models to Monetize Content" is the subject of a gathering at a hotel which is actually located in drab and sterile suburban Rosemont, Illinois; slabs of concrete, exhibition halls and mostly chain restaurants, whose prime reason for being is O'Hare International Airport. It's perfect for quickie, in-and-out conclaves.
Omigosh! An industry conference! But if we call it a "quickie conclave" it sounds sinister...
In which they discussed ways their members might adapt to the market! Stop the presses! Wait - they apparently had some legal counsel to make sure they weren't breaking the law! Wow!
This story is sensationalist nonsense. There is truly nothing to see here. The best part is the guy from the Atlantic [theatlantic.com] whining about the decline of journalism, while simultaneously providing an example.
Re:One idea... (Score:2, Interesting)
We need someone to uncover the next Watergate.
Wiki-leaks.
We need someone to keep an eye on the war profiteers who charge $20 per washing machine load of laundry.
Independent auditor's report.
We need someone to keep tabs on the polluters and bring it to the public's attention.
Ditto.
Investigative journalism is dead. It isn't dead in the sense that there's nobody left to do it, but that it's not profitable to do anymore, so only the small local newpapers do it, and only for small, local subject matters. Today, major newspapers are more aggregators of information than creators of content. They take press releases, government reports, studies results', wikipedia, news blogs, etc., mix in a good dose of the company's editorial bias, and put it into paper form to distribute to the masses.
With the advent of blogs, most of the real reporting happens at the individual level. Somebody takes apart a gadget. Somebody notices a robbery. Somebody reads the government reports on crime. And that somebody then does a short write-up of it, complete with pictures and maps and all that, and puts it online. Somebody else who was present sees the story, picks it up while adding more information, until the complete picture appears. How is that different from one person going around talking to various people? How is the end product any inferior to the end product of a single reporter's investigation? Or, somebody contacts someone for an interview, gets it, and again puts it up online. Somebody else will take that raw interview and pick out all of the major points. How is that different from what a reporter does now?
The only purpose of designating certain individuals as "press" is to segregate the validated individuals who have blogs or are working for other press medium from the general riff raff at events. It's to guarantee that there'll actually be members of the press at a press conference. But in reality, the lines have already blurred, and will continue to blur, until every citizen can be a potential reporter.
But the next generation of media will be very fractured. And it may not be such a great thing if Blog A only puts up stories its readers will like, and likewise the diametrically opposed Blog B does the same. Readers of Blog A then never hear of the stories in Blog B, and likewise, readers of Blog B will never hear of the stories in Blog A. But for better or worse, that is what is happening, and I don't think anything can be done to stop it. Even the traditional forms of media are introducing biases to compete with the completely biased internet journalists.
Re:One idea... (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree with both of you...
I'm of the opinion that at this point the only way to get true journalism out of either standard media or independents is to let the current system burn itself down and see what rises from the ashes.
The people who care about quality reporting can encourage the growth of a replacement. If not enough people care then maybe it's time to acknowledge that the zombie apocalypse has already happened and we're living in the aftermath.
Re:Micropayments (Score:3, Interesting)
---This problem cannot be solved by technology.
Oh, it absolutely can. Current transaction costs are exacted by Banks and credit companies. Their merchant fees are insane, something on the range of .5-2$ + 3%. And banks have straight 2-4$ fees for anything money handling. If a digital microcurrency could be made using strong crypto (1995 paper by RSA guys showed how to do it), then we could cut out the banks, other than trading in and out of the microcurrency.
---Sure, you can make a system that reduces the seller's transaction costs to near zero, but all this work has completely ignored the buyer's transaction costs. With micropayments, you're asking your customers to spend more time managing their micro-account than the product you're selling is worth.
Do you honestly think that transaction management of costs ranging from .01 cents (yes, 1/100 of 1 cent) all the way up should be done by a person? What're you smoking?
Your "PayBox" is a forwards and backwards counting micropayment machine. You make the rules on what you allow, and what you deny. You set warnings when certain thresholds are met. You make the general rules, or use preconfigured ones. You can override these "rules" by warning you what the rule break does.
Eventually, everybody would be able to use a micropayment architecture, including massive media. It'd be rather nice if we create the content, and have a very small, nonzero price that we actually pay for our surfing.
---Suppose I have a micropayment account which charges to my credit card each month. I read all the articles I want because, hey, it's only a few cents. One of these days I'm going to look at my statement and the total for that month will be over $100 -- more than I intended to spend.
Your financial rules would have stopped that before you "saw the bill".
---Micropayments are not good for the customers, and unsurprisingly, people have not been willing to pay them.
You're right they're not good for customers, because money handles make is impossible to throw a 1$ at a website for good information without spending 5$ to do so.
Im investigating a business that does precisely this: enables people to make money.
They need a new business model, of course (Score:2, Interesting)
It's been suggested before but the only way the 'traditional' news media can compete is if they use technology to their advantage. By the time the newspaper is printed most of the information is stale. The perils of a connected society.
Now a subscription to a Kindle-like device that provides current information and also has investigative stories would be a winner. Timely information, serious reporting, targeted advertising, the whole deal. Publication costs would be minimal and they could expand on what they already do.
The old model is broken and will continue to be broken as long as there's instant access to information. Notice I didn't say news because newspapers aren't about news any more. They're about information. Angelina Jolie's latest shoe purchase isn't news. It's information but there's no way it should be on the front cover of anything that calls itself a newspaper.
If the price was right I'd get a subscription to my local paper using a Kindle. There's lots of things in there that I'd like to know and it would be darn handy to have a classified ad with me when I had time to call or a list of the yard sales I want to visit.
But they can't get their heads out of the business model that worked 100 years ago nor do they see the opportunities for this kind of change.
Re:Something has to be done (Score:3, Interesting)
Well you hit the dirty little secert on the head. Craigslist is really killing a lot of newspapers.
The free classified ads on Craigslist is taking a huge amount of revenue from newspapers.
Re:The Benefits of Subscription (Score:3, Interesting)
- 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.
I have never really considered paying for online access to news until this was mentioned. I might not pay $10/month, but I think I would be willing to pay something a bit lower than that to, say NY times and the washington post to read their articles in a well-formatted form without the ads. (these two oddly go hand-in-hand). Also freedom from being tracked and targeted by their advertising overlords would be a natural feature to add.
And imagine if it becomes "cool" to have clean non-ad-cluttered web pages. Or combined with micropayments, a button that says "view well-formatted, without annoying ads for 10 cents". Information wants to be free, but service can cost money.
BBC as a model for newspapers? (Score:3, Interesting)
What about treating news like a public service? Have it publicly funded and held accountable with a model similar to how the BBC news operates in the UK?
The problem I see is that most newspapers are just glorified repackaging of newswire services with the odd local story and some opinion pieces that serve the owner's political agenda. That was all fine and well in the past, but the culture and technology has moved on and old business model is as dead as a downtown blacksmith ranting about how cars are damaging his horseshoe repair business.
Re:They should be adding paywalls (Score:3, Interesting)
Fox News isn't exactly profitable. The purpose of Fox News is not to make profit, but to make the political situation in the countries they operate in more favorable to Rupert Murdoch and News Corp, which can save costs elsewhere in the company with tax breaks, reduced regulations, and the like.
Re:One idea... (Score:3, Interesting)
Sorry but I strongly disagree. You might call mainstream journalism crap, and some of the writing along with the various media biases are certainly worthy of that term, but the mainstream media is still the place where we get the boots on the ground to actually find out what's happening in the world. Take that away and I don't know how much 'reporting' the blogosphere can actually support.
[snip][emphasis doubly added]
Is this [wikinews.org] what you're looking for?
News is crap -- entire hurricane unreported! (Score:3, Interesting)
I somewhat agree with your point, but I recommend caution about praising mainstream media too much...
A few days ago, a hurricane (cyclone) struct eastern India and the nearby region. Over 100 killed and millions strongly impacted. Being a highly agricultural region, this event will have long lasting effects for the farmers... [crops don't like salt!]
Try to find one mention of it in Yahoo news. You can't!!! Not even in the Asia section...
Yet, Yahoo faithfully reports that 6 people were killed in a South American earthquake... Yes, this is also tragic, but how did this get picked up and the other event not?
Yahoo pulls from many major news sources... They aren't the only game in town, but are pretty big nonetheless...