There's an interesting discussion going on at Wired on things that Google could do for newspapers [hat tip to Sean McBride]. The punch line is - save them.
The arguments pro and cons have been going on for a while now, and they are getting more heated given the recent announcements of many print publications going out of business.
Headlines about the future of newspapers have been circulating for a couple of years now. Michael Kinsley at Time magazine concluded then that newspapers and news organizations needed to find solutions to their business model instead of just watching as it got cut to pieces.
Would we pay for news?
Yes, we get a lot of news online and information wants to be free. Yes, many bloggers or online portals are starting to look more and more like media in a new format. When AP conducted its research study on a new model for news based upon the deep-structure of young adult news consumption, it concluded that the fragmentation of the news channels and delivery models, as well as the user experience, are by and large disappointing.
Not everyone is online. Not all that is online is reliable and credible if it's not researched and balanced reporting. Journalists and editors matter a great deal. It's not just about the skill sets, which are in and of themselves very important - if and when the journalists do something interesting and important with them.
We need editors and journalists in new media in the same way we need them in any form of news presentation. Unless many more take on the role of researching and documenting reality from many angles, there is a need for accountability to news. The depth is missing from many of the horizontal reporting sites. Would we pay for depth? The AP report seemed to conclude that we would. Do we find that depth in newspapers?
What is circulation and how would we track it?
Online especially, circulation is split between direct and indirect. The way a story spreads is much more in the hands of those who think it adds value than in the distribution control of those who publish it. Digg is one such service that helps spread news. Some have argued that it is a system in decline. I have written about it here as a free, paid new media backchannel.
Circulation does not matter to advertising alone, it matters for PR purposes as well. Would you bother pitching a publication, especially a trade publication, for a new product launch if it had weak circulation? It could be an excellent publication, but if the numbers are not there, I suppose you wouldn't. Scale is still important in new media.
When I asked if you need trade media for a new product launch we had a pretty animated discussion. I was focusing on the news value to customers and prospects and their ability to get the information. Of course, there is value in third party reporting of the news. Is that the only role of newspapers?
Foreign newspapers have long taken a more opinion-driven angle to news. The US seems to have gone the entertainment route. Entertainment draws a different kind of crowd than good, solid news reporting. You get what you pay for, or do you?
Is the ad-sponsored content advantageous for the advertiser?
With marketing dollars getting tight, there needs to be a better return for the advertiser. The system in its current form isn't sustainable. There was an attempt by newspapers and Yahoo to create a mutually beneficial partnership a little over a year ago. It seems that after a good start, they may have squandered it.
Isn't the relevant advertising served as a side to search how Google makes its living? Who is very important for relevance and ROI? Can Google improve its search of news to include local papers? Probably. But is Google the answer to everything online?
Digital has changed how we view
media in many big ways. Digital media is no longer considered a channel but rather an entity in itself -
something where we don’t just watch or read but create, participate in,
share with others. It seems that advertising has not kept up with this change.
_______
Whose job is it to save newspapers? Is it that of the advertisers or that of the news businesses? The one valid argument in favor of saving some form of paper news is for those who do not own a computer, who cannot afford a TV or a high def cable connection, those who have no phone lines to patch them to the world. But are they those who buy the newspapers?
It seems to me that there are two separate issues at play in this conversation:
- the news as a valuable tool for a thriving and informed society
- the news organizations and businesses that are failing to realize a profit
In the Wired comment thread, a journalist who signed as Joe writes:
I'm a journalist. While the challenges facing print media concern me, I'm also confident that I can find a job outside journalism that uses the same skills (at least, if/when the economy stops tanking; if it doesn't, we've all got bigger problems).
Don't save newspapers on my account. In fact, as far as print goes, sure, maybe we shouldn't save newspapers at all. Online's a different story.
But the point has been made above that it would leave a vacuum that nothing has so far been able to fill. Google? YouTube? Twitter? They are containers of information, aggregators of it even, but not producers of it. And, significantly, they do not pay for the content that they store or aggregate.
Without companies that report news (and pay people to reliably, accurately gather it), where will you get truly quality information? How will you trust that it is in fact quality? And finally, who will selflessly produce all of this quality information for you to absorb if you do not pay anything for it?
A.J. Liebling once wrote that freedom of the press is limited to those who own one; we now see that the truth of his witty little comment is that, today, everyone owns a printing press. That does not mean that they are all equal voices, all worth listening to.
I suspect we'd all vote for the news. But how does it get collected, analyzed, written up and reported in the first place? Should news be kept separate from PR and advertising to regain its mojo? What would that business model look like?
A recent Knowledge@Wharton article dovetails nicely on the discussion we had last week about the press tribe and online migration where content is a product. Some ideas to create a new business model that pays for the sometimes costly work of gathering news, while also squeezing a profit out of a readership whose options include the entire world wide web are:
- the philanthropic route
- the niche route
- the pay route
- the participation route
- the commercial route
What's your take? How would you turn a profit producing a reliable news product?
I began my career in print journalism, and I've stood in a small room next to the giant press of the Albuquerque Journal proofing papers until my fingers were the color of coal.
And I love the daily newspaper. So much so that I lamented their loss last month: http://www.commcognition.com/blog/newspapersrip/
But the model is dead. Within the past two weeks, there were two large earthquakes around the world, and I knew about each of them within 90 seconds on Twitter. Even CNN.com -- never mind the NY Times -- lagged by more than 15 minutes.
We still want analysis, and analysis takes time. So a bi-weekly or magazine format will survive. Although perhaps we'll learn to read even that online. Perhaps I'll someday embrace the Kindle.
Newspapers were printed on newsprint because it was a cost-efficient delivery mechanism, not because it was ordained by a deity on the mount.
I, too, have waxed a bit too nostalgic.
The line between public relations and journalism becomes more blurred online. Say what you will about newspapers, but every one that I ever worked for had very clear policies about that line. I once sent a $10 check to the local hospital because the meeting I covered was catered.
Many people -- perhaps most -- online have an agenda. And we need to be wary about that. As much as you'll hear about media bias, those were institutions that tried to keep bias out. What will happen with bloggers who have no such desire?
We must save objectivity. It's the key to America's news values (interestingly, however, not everyone's). If Google can save objectivity, I'll let the newsprint die, even if I shed a tear along the way.
Objectivity will fight to maintain the division between editorial content and paid content. Without that, credibility is lost.
Posted by: Sam Bradley | January 11, 2009 at 11:07 AM
Information does not want to be free. People just don't want to pay for it.
That's a big difference.
Carolyn Ann
(Information doesn't want anything; it's not alive.)
Posted by: Carolyn Ann | January 11, 2009 at 09:09 PM
@Sam - It's funny and sad that the practices businesses adopt become so removed from the reasons why they were adopted (cost efficiencies in this case) and are so hard to change - whole economies have been built on stuff that doesn't make sense any more. We didn't have the daily newspaper delivery growing up back in Europe. But I remember the weeklies and we bought those in center city at the newspaper stand.
As a blogger, I have the desire to discover what works best, learn, and report what is observable. I come with a point of view, but then again everyone does. My agenda is the realization of human potential in every form, at every level.
I agree that it's difficult not to succumb to the vagaries of popularity, influence, and authority. But that's a conversation for another day.
@Corolyn Ann - yes, we have a hard time paying for things we think we can have for free. Then again, we get what we pay for.
Posted by: Valeria Maltoni | January 12, 2009 at 06:52 AM
Valeria,
This is such an important conversation, and it doesn't stop at how newspapers (and advertising, for that matter) will survive without fundamentally new models that take the gatekeeper-is-everyone reality into account.
Ethics and transparency are key ideas here too. The comment from Joe is a great example. The processes inherent to journalism in the legacy media are based on the idea that through the editorial stream, a product will be produced and because of the ethics and standards inherent to the industry (SPJ codes) and the reputation of the masthead it can be trusted and held up as "truth." Thus, the journalist, interestingly, STILL sees themselves as the gatekeeper, even in our current media landscape. See http://www.stateofthenewsmedia.org/2008/Journalist%20report%202008.pdf
The processes in regards to truth when it comes to participatory content, such as blogging put this model in its head and say, I am a person or individual who is creating content the best that I personally know how, based on my own understanding of truth and the issue I am covering, and I will put it out there for public consumption, and together, we will comment on and wrestle with and refine this content until together, we all agree that the conversation we've had has helped us get at truth.
Interestingly, both bloggers and journalists both consider themselves ethical. They just define them differently.
When it comes to the question you pose, and that Joe gets at, financing of the media comes into play when we talk about audience credibility - especially in advertising (are advertisers given preference for coverage), corporate ownership and coverage, etc. I'm actually about to begin a study of journalists (and perhaps bloggers) on media transperancy in our current news landscape.
But in terms of how journalists see this, and their career options, the state of their profession, etc. that adds a whole new level to the discussion, it seems. Things worth considering. http://twitter.com/tmonhollon/status/1113133444
So thanks for joining in the conversation on this issue. It's giving me lots to think about.
Posted by: Tiffany Monhollon | January 12, 2009 at 01:27 PM
Excellent point on coming at the ethical conversation from different points of view and history. Professionally, I've always been in charge of both advertising and PR. I do keep them separate and I have been turned off by trade publications that suggested they would give me preferential coverage for some advertising dollars. In a couple of lucky instances, the story/interview and the ad happened at the same time. Not engineered by us. I view it as church and state - I will sponsor content that makes sense to the company, especially online, to back up, but I will not pay for editorial.
There is a lot to think about. It's not just distribution of content. It's what content gets distributed, how it's produced, who pays for it, who ensures there remains integrity. That's why it's a pity seeing journalists try to become bloggers. We need solid reporting now more than ever.
Posted by: Valeria Maltoni | January 12, 2009 at 11:06 PM
As a former journalist who crossed over to 'the dark side' of marketing and PR, I can see both sides here. On one hand, I would hate to see print media in general--newspapers in particular--become a thing of the past. On the other, I love the near-real-time information sharing available with digital media.
As a marketer, the biggest problem with the digital realm right now is the lack of third-party verified audience data (see www.buysafemedia.com if you're not familiar with the concept). For print, we have independent circulation audits that allow us to pick the publication that best suits our goals for reaching a specific target audience. This is really important for trade press, where some of the niche products demand that you really get into some nitty gritty targeting.
I understand that the bigger media auditing organizations are working on some real breakthrough methodologies for online traffic measurement and verification. I say it can't come too soon!
Posted by: Stephanie Inglis | January 15, 2009 at 04:29 PM