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Hub newspapers in death spiral
By david_yamada on Fri, 01/02/2009 - 6:55pm
As Boston's two major dailies head towards a seeming financial death spiral, it's time once again to ask whether they should be charging for access to online content.
When the computer age dawned, a "hacker ethic" emerged, holding that information should be free and accessible to all. (Steven Levy's fascinating book, Hackers, is especially recommended.) That ethic has permeated the Web, which in less than a decade has become an incredible free library of human knowledge and a great source of informed and diverse commentary.
But wait a minute: What happens when we're not paying for it? Doesn't it mean that someone else is basically writing for free, or at least isn't being compensated fairly for their labor?
That may be OK on the blogosphere, which allows any of us to post and comment. However, this expectation of free access is contributing to the death of our newspapers and threatening to turn journalism from a vocation into an avocation. (Uh, one gets paid, the other doesn't.)
Like many people, I've got my quarrels with the Globe and the Herald. But some of my issues may well have to do with the fact that their newsrooms are emptying with each new round of cuts and falling ad revenues. Would their situations change if they charged, say, a buck a week for full access? Would those of us who are now so used to reading their content for free be up in arms or realize that newspapers need revenue to stay open and pay their reporters and columnists?
Community journalism complements but cannot replace professional news coverage. If Boston goes from being a two-paper town to something considerably less, the result will be a huge void in our civic culture.
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Comments
The scariest consequence of
The scariest consequence of journalism's death is how much govt and business will try to/be able to get away with. the nyt and wp will be pretty much it.
not enough online to charge for it
The Boston papers don't have enough good content online to charge for it.
To be very general about it, they have a top-down undemocratic idea of politics that rarely attempts to connect cause and effect. When they do make the connection they tend to be wrong, especially on bread and butter issues like the economy.
What does top-down mean?
What does top-down mean? Thank you.
Top Down in Boston
At the Top: Harvard, the heads of Big Development, heads of Big Institutions, the liberal old wealth.
The specific example I cited is the bootlicking attitude of these papers to Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve system, run by a few bankers and financiers, which is one factor killing newspapers with high inflation and high newsprint prices.
You can find a concrete expression of the top-down in business development, by travelling along Longwood Ave or Western Ave or more and more, Commonwealth Ave by BU, where there are shiny smooth new buildings but less and less life.
Federal Reserve
From what I understand, the Federal Reserve system (and related constructs) is like colonists taking America from the natives: it's not right, but it happened a long time ago, we've built our society around it, and overall it's been good to the society that evolved.
Here's hoping the day of reckoning doesn't fully come and we citizens have to actually understand how money is created, since I think we'd really prefer not to know. :)
The People
Neil, the system is fine, but it's based on people making decisions, and so sometimes goes haywire. I'm interested in how people discern when these things go wrong. I think they have a better understanding than you or I, or certainly the Globe will give them credit for.
On some level I believe that politics is an act of national survival, and it uses something like our instinct for personal survival, which must operate or we would have gone extinct many thousands of years ago. The population, given a variety of choices, will always make the best choice. Maybe not the right choice, but certainly the least bad.
If you're the Globe and you think Al Gore should have been president, or John Kerry should have been president, then you have to discount the results of popular expressions of will like elections. You have to believe that the majority can be deluded repeatedly. And you have to believe that people cannot connect cause and effect. It's basically a nihilist worldview, but most damaging to a newspaper is when it infects your reporting, because the editors stop believing that they have to predict things that will happen on the basis of facts and not hopes or spin. Then the newspaper quite literally loses its usefulness.
Just to be clear
I wasn't talking about the subprime mortgage meltdown. Other than that, I wouldn't know where to begin responding.
Pay-for-access has been
Pay-for-access has been tried and failed. The end. Bemoan as you wish, but there's no going back.
And actually, it's the Globe that's in immediate trouble. The Herald will survive the Globe - for a while, at least.
Part of the problem
Is the papers are still saddled with huge "legacy" costs, from printing presses to giant fleets of trucks to deliver the papers to the paper itself.
It'll be interesting to see what happens in Detroit, where the papers have just abandoned home delivery during the week.
Also, let's not forget that even in their heyday, newspapers got a relatively small percentage of their revenue from subscribers - what's killing them now is not so much that their subscribers are dying as the collapse of their classified markets (Craigslist and eBay) and then the dramatic shrinkage of their display ads (due to both consolidation in retail - remember when Downtown Crossing had two department stores, three if you count that giant Woolworth's? - and, now the overall economy, in particular, cars).
It is possible to make money online through free content, supported by advertising. Whether you can do that AND continue to support a traditional dead-trees infrastructure, though, is what I guess we'll be finding out over the next couple of years.
What Adam said
I was about to start typing until I saw Adam's comment. Exactly.
Save the Trees
If the dead-trees side of the business is losing money, why not take radical measures, and shut it down or switch to a more economical print format?
newsprint costs and paper suicide
I've writ to the papers begging them to pay attention to newsprint costs and the connection of all commodities to monetary inflation.
Both parties and both papers are currently in support of a Federal Reserve system which places the value of the dollar in the hands of a small number elite bankers and financiers. Sometimes these people keep the dollar stable, sometimes they screw up and, as in 2005, begin inflating the dollar rapidly. The first things to go up in that case will be gold followed by other commodities like oil and newsprint. (Our salaries go up last!)
So to tie up all my comments: the top-down attitude of the Globe especially is friendly to elites running the economy, often in contradiction to the wishes of the populist masses. This makes them friendly to a system which is killing their business at least in the form of high costs.
The Herald could be a populist alternative, unfortunately it was for a dumb war. Furthermore never questioned the way things are done at City Hall, because Republican big development is in the bag.
how 'bout 6 days online, Sunday print?
Adam, yes, thanks for pointing out the economics of the newspaper business re ad revenues vs. subscriptions and the ongoing impact of legacy costs.
I agree with those who say that the Globe is a huge disappointment content-wise. It is very top-down; its op-ed page should be unwritten by Harvard, the Boston Foundation, and a few other select institutions; and its local coverage is often lacking in heart quality.
The Herald is more entertaining, but instead of being a maverick tabloid it's often just that, entertaining, and seemingly unable to dig beneath the surface of much of anything.
OK, so here's an idea: Go web-only six days a week with modest subscription fees and online advertising, but bring back the lovely tradition of the huge, overstuffed print Sunday edition, full of special features not online until a week later, and packed with weekly retail ad flyers and coupons. Make the Sunday paper an event again.
They could even use this for a commercial
oh that's great!
Cracked me up.
Obviously that didn't work...
newspapers
You forgot debt. The NYT takeover of el Globo created a debt structure that even a healthy economy would have trouble supporting. When you dump in all the other schtuff, it's smothering. CPR, anyone?
"It is possible to make
"It is possible to make money online through free content, supported by advertising."
Is that why the new UH header has the logo in a teensy space with banner ads adjacent? ;-)
But is that really true --
But is that really true -- can an online journalism org fund original, fact-based reporting with an ad-only business model?
Blogs and other aggregators can do that because they don't bear the cost of producing journalism.
I am willing to pay for a high-quality online news product: well-written, tightly focused, and inclusive of public input more meaningful than the ubiquitous comments section.
Online Advertising Way Behind Print
I agree with Adam. I would also add that it is far too cheap to advertise online (e.g. banner ads), and for that reason the traditional publishers are hurting.
Online advertising revenue models are based too much on traditional concepts-- banner ads and the people who click on them (a parralel to print ads and people who look at them).
In reality, the web allows brands to create their own experiences for customers, and these "experiences" are worth far more than banner ads.
Traditional publishers, like the Globe, should look to see how they can:
1) Use online and offline brands to drive traffic;
2) Determine what is popular within their online presence and try to figure out why (so they can rinse and repeat);
3) Work with advertisers to create more of branded experiences that capitalize on online and offline content (and yes, there is a way to do this without hurting journalistic integrity).
By the way, what's also scary to me as a media consumer is that my age group (30-35) appears to be the last that actually wants to hold a newspaper in their hands. I buy and read the NYT ever day-- have since college. But my younger brother never buys a print paper.
Good discussion!
Ross Levanto
Beacon Hill
Who is the Audience for a Buck a Week?
If the more honorable of the Fourth Estate charged, I'm sure that the propagandists would be more than happy to take up the slack with their free publications.
If ad revenue just isn't doing it for the good guys... How about make the real news (and genuinely good op-ed) free, and charge for some of the junk food sections like sports- and celebrity-worship. Have a percentage of each flavor of junk food free as teasers to keep the non-paying readers coming to your site and incidentally being exposed to real news.
Do this right, and someday neither half of the country will think that WMDs were found in Iraq. :)
What content
Another problem - if we had to pay for access, I'd like some real content. boston.com/globe is 1/2 fluff and 1/2 recycled AP reports.
The Globe does some real,
The Globe does some real, original journalism. Witness their current Spotlight series on health care. and there are daily examples.
Though I agree, it is disturbing some of the times that the Globe runs the AP report on an important story *in Boston*.
Although some of the investigations puzzle me
For example, why should I care that HP sells printers in Iran? A printer isn't very useful as a weapon.
Duplication devices were banned in the Soviet Union
So if HP is selling printers in Iran, that's a good thing - subversive thoughts put to the printing press are a valuable tool of revolution. That's simply Common Sense.
Why you might care
It brings into question whether our overall embargo against Iran is working, since, obviously, it isn't.
International Coverage
It's a significant story, but my reaction was: "The Globe still has staff overseas?"
Spotlight
In addition to "real news and genuinely good op-ed" that neilvandyke brought up, newspapers can do local investigative reporting like nobody else. Frankly, that's what I fear losing the most, because of its unique history of speaking truth to power. On the national scene, all I can think of are "60 Minutes" and its sensationalist ilk on tv, and fledgling nonprofit Pro Publica on the Web. Locally, the Phoenix (print) does some spotlight stuff on occasion. Would any of them have had the interest or resources to dog the archdiocese the way the Globe did in 2001? What's the new model for that? (I know, right? Joe Bergantino...)
[Sorry, simultaneous post. We're saying the same thing.]
credit where credit is due
The Phoenix's Kristen Lombardi was dogging the archdiocese before the Globe's Spotlight team was. They had more manpower to throw at it, but she got that story rolling.
Kristen Lombardi
Kristen Lombardi was an excellent reporter who gave the Phoenix a bonafide investigative journalist. Last I knew, she decamped for the Village Voice. I don't know if she had applied to either of the Boston dailies, but they should've swept her up and given her the green light to dig, dig, dig into the nooks and crannies of this town.
thank you mike lacey
And in true VV style, they fired her. A month later, she took home the Association of Alt-Weeklies' top investigative journalism prize for 2007. Dunno what she's up to now. But there's little love (read: money) for her ilk in the business right now.
If I were her--after having lost a million-dollar libel lawsuit (a verdict that would later be overturned), and bravely kept going, only to be shitcanned by her new paper, then watch as they took credit for her awards while publishing stories that undermined her investigative work--I'd tell the news industry, alt and otherwise, to go fuck itself.
p.s.
Oh, good. Here she is.
more info?
Harris, could you share anything about her legal and employment situation at the Voice? I was completely unaware of this.
Sounds like she went through hell. But hopefully her new gig is a good one.
sure thing. timeline, with links. bear with me here.
2003: Lombardi writes dirt-digging child sex abuse story for the Phoenix, promptly gets sued for libel.
http://think.mtv.com/044FDFFFF00EF698C0008009931FC...
October 2004: Lombardi skips town for Village Voice.
http://www.poynter.org/forum/view_post.asp?id=8104
December 2004: Lombardi and the Phoenix lose their libel suit.
http://www.rcfp.org/newsitems/index.php?i=4111
2005: Legendary New Times overlord Mike Lacey hates the Village Voice so much he buys it.
http://www.nationalreview.com/seipp/seipp200510270...
August 2006: Libel verdict overturned.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/art...
November 2006: Lombardi writes cover story for VV about how dust from the Twin Towers is giving New Yorkers cancer.
http://www.villagevoice.com/2006-11-21/news/death-...
May 2007: Lombardi gets the axe.
http://gawker.com/news/the-quiet-evolution-of-the-...
June 2007: Lombardi's 9/11 cancer story gets top investigative prize, to much crowing from VV.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/06/18/fired-vil...
September 2007: VV publishes story pooh-poohing 9/11 cancer link.
http://www.observer.com/2007/village-voice-turns-p...
thank you...
Harris, thanks for assembling all those interesting links. I will look at them. That took a lot of time; much appreciated.
David
P.S. I met Kristen when I invited her to speak at a program hosted by the university I teach at (Suffolk), and I found her to be a smart, no bullshit person of integrity.
The "print" part is dead, but is the journalism part dead too?
It's clear a day of reckoning is coming for the Globe and Herald in their current form. For me the question is "What will the fully online Globe and Herald be like?" It's possible that yes, once having dropped the "legacy" costs of the dead-tree media, the Globe and Herald could survive online, and perhaps make enough money to pay for investigative journalism. But I can only point out that so far, no investigative journalism entity has become profitable on the web - where only a handful of mostly-commentary, national-audience "magazines" have profitably survived. So far, there's no model for web investigative journalism (outside of a charitable-foundation model), which hints that maybe there's no profitable model at all, period. Of course I hope that's not the case. If the web destroys investigative journalism, well - that could kind of make the web look like a bad thing, couldn't it. Still, there could still be hope for "pay for access" - perhaps earlier prices were too high; or perhaps online journalism will have to become the task of a local charitable foundation. There are still options - only someday we may be looking back fondly on the Globe and Herald, warts and all.
They need readers to sell
They need readers to sell ads.
Maybe not giving the paper free to colleges for dorm distribution anymore was a bad idea.
(obviously)
How many still subscribe in dead tree form?
I subscribe to both in dead tree form and enjoy both more in dead tree form. I don't really care for the internet versions as much but I would still read them.
*sigh*
I can't imagine life without them.