I came across a couple of stories the other day that were unrelated but quickly became related in my mind as I read the second one. With the talk that I’m hearing about the death of newspapers (sometimes equated completely wrongly with the death of journalism), and the other talk among journalism pundit-types (Jay Rosen, Steve Yelvington, others) of plans by some news organizations to monetize web content by creating firewalls and account-system access, I thought a particular quote from an interview with the author Michael Lewis was particularly poingnant:
When I published my first pieces for publication 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago, if I published something in The New Republic, it might get a few readers who subscribe, and if it’s really good it might get Xeroxed and passed around. But now, the readership is vast and global. So that bodes well. I just assume that where there’s demand, the world will figure out how to monetize that.
Lewis goes on to say that he thinks we’re all “too well read” (gasp!) because of the foreverness of the web. He might be right, but I don’t really care. Although, I presume that to mean that, along with the quote above, he’s saying that making the information scarcer might be a good thing. I can’t disagree with that more, as a lot of you might suspect. I like reading as much as I do on a daily basis. For instance, if I hadn’t ever been granted access to the web, I might never have come across this from Boing Boing:
Here’s a prediction: in five years, a UN convention will enshrine network access as a human right (preemptive strike against naysayers: “Human rights” aren’t only water, food and shelter, they include such “nonessentials” as free speech, education, and privacy). In ten years, we won’t understand how anyone thought it wasn’t a human right.
Put those two stories into a similar context and we have something pretty interesting happening. On the one hand, we have an author whose stuff I read almost as if my life and interests would suffer if I didn’t saying that he thinks we’re already too well read (read: informed?) versus another whose stuff I rarely like saying that so much of the world is uninformed, but soon a change is coming, and that’s a great thing. Throw in a little bit of charging for access and you have yourself a bit of a storm, right? I think so.
I think Lewis is just a bit out of touch in his comment. I think Doctorow is right on. And I think anyone saying that news organizations should charge for access is a complete moron. As soon as there is yet another financial barrier to getting information that’s supposedly important to societies, you lose another group of people that (in the case of important information) should get access to it. If a well informed public is a more active and engaged public, who the hell in their right mind would advocate the taking of information away from that public? Besides politicians, of course.
Anyone else have any thoughts on this?
Comments
Dullard Mush wrote:
I took Doctorow’s bit about broadband to be more about availability than the actual content. As for the content, we’re still back to the same problem of getting paid. When a person creates something for a living, they need to make an actual living. People have paid for news since the beginning, so I can see the newspaper industry’s logic in thinking about extending it to the online world. They’re paying a reporter $20-75k a year. Why should they give it away for free?
That said, it’s pretty much doomed to fail because of the one basic law of the internet — unless it’s pix of Jenna Jameson & Co. people generally don’t like to pay to view online content.
But one thing that doesn’t tend to be mentioned much when the discussion of newspapers going digital-only, and trying to make it on today’s online revenue, is the fact that all those print ad dollars are going to be looking to land somewhere else. Businesses aren’t suddenly going to stop advertising because a paper is no longer going to be flung onto townspeople’s lawns every morning. They will buy more TV spots, perhaps some radio too, but the biggest boon will be for online sites. And since newspapers already have a relationship with these businesses, one would logically think they would have first crack at bringing them along on their digital conversion. So maybe the real solution for newspapers is to readjust their current online advertising revenue predictions based on today’s market, where they compete with their own ink and paper, to the world where there is no ink competition.
Jun 3, 03:03 PM
Ryan Jerz wrote:
I read Doctorow’s piece that way, too. I was thinking more about how something that’s seen as so vital might possibly become restricted just as the internet is opened up. Plus, the reason the internet could feasibly ever be seen as a human right is because of the easy access to information, but there are forces at work trying to take that access away. Basically, my idea is that pay for content systems are evil.
I’m not a business person in the sense that I understand how news organizations can monetize content well, but I have to say I fall pretty squarely in the camp that believe they screwed themselves by allowing sales people to throw in web ads as value-adds for advertisers. So now nobody will pay for web ads like they will for print. Oops.
I also feel like people are more leery of paying for web ads because there’s actual numbers behind them. Circulation numbers have always been a lie, and rates were based on those. Now that every click is tracked, people are realizing that advertising in the newspaper is a scam. Do I know this? No. But it certainly makes sense.
Jun 3, 04:01 PM
Dullard Mush wrote:
Yeah, they’ve screwed themselves on online advertising prices and they are cratering even more in the recession. But once the physical paper begins to fade, I think prices will ratchet up for the online business. Banner blindness will still be a problem for them, but perhaps they will start utilizing cost-per-action ads, both national and local, to kick up the revenue.
They do, though, have to start doing something and fast. Setting up a pay-per-view system seems like a financial boondoggle right from the start. Better to put that money into your online sales force and local content.
Jun 3, 08:10 PM
Laurel Busch wrote:
A few thoughts:
One is that if the RGJ stopped delivering my print newspaper and put up a subscription barrier on their site overnight, I probably would pay. The key word is “overnight” because that would mean no good substitute would be available. If everyone saw it coming and developed alternate sources of local news, the RGJ wouldn’t have a chance.
Of course, the experts say the newspapers don’t have to convince all their print subscribers to pay for online access, just a small percentage.
Two, you can’t assume that print advertising dollars are going to move to just news sites when print news goes away. They will go to any site, news or not, that has the most visitors that most closely match their target market. So former local daily newspapers will be competing with popular blogs, YouTube, entertainment news sites, etc., not just TV and radio.
Three, advertisers used to depend on newspapers because newspapers owned the presses. Now advertisers can do a lot of their own advertising on line as cheaply as newspapers can do it for them. “Using social media for marketing” is so popular now it’s almost a cliche. That will keep advertising revenue down.
Jun 3, 10:35 PM
Orrin wrote:
Doctorow forgot to list another fundamental human right that impacts his argument – property ownership and the related right to use, profit from, and dispose of your property and the fruits of your labor as you wish.
I agree that people should have a right to access any nets they can access. But the owners of the networks and/or the content on them also have a right to profit from their work, their investment, their maintenence costs, their ingenuity, etc. If we take that right away from them by FORCING them to provide content and net access to people unwilling to pay for it, we have now violated THEIR fundamental, natural rights. Not to mention that the only way to force them to do it is through government intervention, in which case the press is no longer free or independent. News (and other online content) producers will either be forced to produce, will be controlled by the government through subsidies, or they’ll simply quit producing. None of those options is ultimately good for society.
I like free content on line, too. But it’s a gift, not an entitlement. If someone wants to charge me for what they want me to read, I think it’s unfair to call them “evil’ or even bad. I just have my own choice to make as to whether it’s worth it to me to shell out my ducats.
Jun 5, 02:16 PM
Ryan Jerz wrote:
Orrin,
I don’t think Doctorow forgot to list that right. In my reading of him, I think the guy is at the very least a socialist.
Here’s where I disagree, though. The owners of the networks are currently telecoms. We all pay for access through them to the vast internet. In situations where the public (read: government) has provided access to the citizens, the owners are still getting paid. I think that’s more in line with how it would work than to presume they’ll be forced to give away their product (being the access to the infrastructure). I can understand if you take issue with the government paying for access for its citizens, but I disagree there. The government pays for access to roads, sewer, water, and lawyers through tax money. In an evolving and innovating society, it makes sense that access to tools that help move us forward would be added to that list.
I actually do believe that content online should be free. In this context, I was specifically speaking about news content. I have no problem paying for access to things like movies and music, as that’s more original than anything the news organizations are putting out. When the local paper, for instance, puts information regarding public meetings behind a paid firewall, I think you’ve run into a huge problem. News isn’t proprietary. It’s happening whether someone writes about it or not, so it must be made freely available to people who could benefit from it.
Paid subscriptions of newspapers have always been pretty cheap. I read the other day that charging for subscriptions was developed as a way to track real circulation. It was never intended to be a profit scheme. Advertising was that profit scheme. But rates were based on the lie of circulation and a few scandals have probably soured advertisers to paying the “going rate” for ad space. More efficient methods of advertising and tracking have come along and now the game has shifted control from the news organizations and into the hands of advertisers and networks like Google.
That may be all beside the point, but what I’m trying to say is that events happen and they should be easily and freely available to the public. If you find yourself in a spot where you can’t provide that and continue to make money, you’re in the wrong business. The market is actually deciding this right now, and the market says don’t charge us. If you provide value through your analysis and reporting, that’s great. That should also mean that you’ll be able to provide a great way for advertisers to reach your readers and viewers. But sticking your stuff behind a firewall is a great way to have nobody see you.
Jun 5, 04:10 PM
Orrin wrote:
So we should force the RGJ to provide the fruits of their employees’ labor to us without compensation?
I can get on board with the network itself as a public utility, although I have my reservations. But government chooses where roads go – and more importantly, where they <i>don’t</i> go. And they HEAVILY regulate what can travel along those roads.
News, and any other content online, is NOT free. (I hate that word, unless it’s about beer.) It’s a question of who pays for it, either with their money or their time – as you and I do with our blogs. I pay for the RGJ because it’s the best option out there (including their website – eesh). But I can choose not to do that, and instead go to the legislative websites, go to committee/city council meetings/official, Constitutionally required records and meeting minutes to dig up the information myself. Since that’s a pain in the ass, I’m willing to pay someone else to compile that info for me. But if I’m forced to rely on the government distilling it for me in my morning paper, I’m not exactly going to expect any kind of critical analysis or even balanced factual coverage, because the government will control content directly through their dollars.
I agree that all government bodies should be required to post meeting minutes, committee hearings, etc. on line at the public’s expense. That’s important. But that’s a LOT of information, and not exactly in a format that makes is easy to browse through as I do the newspaper.
Reporters have to eat, too. Either I can choose to pay them or NOT pay them if I don’t like the job they’re doing, or the government can pay them, and I just have to eat what they’re serving. The scheme you describe, as altruistic as I understand it sounds, is a state run or controlled media. Keeping it on a user-pay basis, even if that means it’s via a third party like in the current advertising scheme, means that it’s customer – aka citizen – controlled. The later is far more conducive to a free citizenry protecting their individual liberties through the power of information.
(BTW, I’m sorry it took until just a few months ago to find your blog. I enjoy it very much.)
Jun 5, 11:11 PM
Ryan Jerz wrote:
Orrin,
I’m not advocating at all that government make news organizations provide their work for free. They won’t have to, believe me. This post primarily was to think about the responsibility to all of society that news organizations, whether they be multinational conglomerates or lowly local bloggers, to provide the information they gather to their readers for free.
I understand that the word free is a tough one. For instance, can I currently read the RGJ website for free? Yes and no, right? It’s not costing me any money to visit there and read, but it is costing me attention and time due to their advertisements. My cost is looking at ads, and if I have the misfortune of being on a PC (I don’t, ever) I might have to click a few annoying pop-up windows to close them. I still say it’s free because when we assume that the subject of this post from way back—the granting of the internet as a human right (to homeless, going back to the Boing Boing post) have time on their hands, but a lot less money than the rest of us, charging money creates a barrier to access to important information. The time thing doesn’t pan oput. That’s easy.
So, assuming all of the above, which I did for the point of this post, is it a responsible position for news organizations to take to charge for access to things that theoretically make for a better society? I say no.
Jun 13, 11:38 PM
Orrin wrote:
But that’s the problem with declaring something a human right – eventually, the government will step in and enforce it via subsidy and therefore, control. I understand that you want to accept that opening assumption and debate from there, but the underlying assumption is fundamentally flawed, making the foundation of your argument untenable.
You mentioned the right to an attorney in criminal cases in your response to this similar thread on E’s blog. In the 60s, the right to an attorney was fundamentally changed by the Supreme Court in Gideon from something no one could stop you from doing if you wanted to do (a right) to something someone else had an affirmative obligation to provide you (an entitlement). Now, over 90% of all criminal cases are defended by tax funded attorneys. We can debate if that’s good or bad policy (I think it’s good that we have Public Defenders), but I definitely think it’s flawed Constitutional legal reasoning.
It would be no different if the Supreme Court suddenly decided one day that the government had an obligation to provide any citizen who asked for one a printing press and the means of distribution, because otherwise, the 1st Amendment right to a free press would be meaningless since most people can’t afford to print anything. If they did do that, suddenly government would own a lot of media outlets.
So even though you aren’t saying at this point that government should force/subsidize information flow via the internet, the practical effect of such a declaration of a right would be exactly that – with all the control and loss of freedom that goes along with it. Think the medical-decisions-via-government-bureacrat that leads so many Canadians to come down here for their health care.
News providers of any stripe owe no more or less to society than any other citizens. (I don’t believe in shield laws, either.) People need to eat, but grocery stores and restaurants shouldn’t be expected to give their product away for free. People need shelter, but construction workers and contractors deserve to get paid. So too is it with reporters/bloggers/media magnates.
Jun 18, 02:29 PM
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Ryan Jerz is an all-around good guy who shoots photos and video, builds websites, and works in athletics at the University of Nevada, Reno. He received a Masters Degree in 2007 from the University of Nevada, Reno's Reynolds School of Journalism.