Newspapers vs. the Internet – Deathmatch!
Last week, I was out to dinner with a group of friends. At some point in the meal, the topic of newspapers and print and their future. This was a table with over 50% of those seated at it making their living off people reading things printed on dead trees. The discussion came around to the death the newspapers in Seattle and Denver. I brought up a point that I had read in the New Republic:
Whether the Internet will ever support general-interest journalism at a level comparable to newspapers, it would be foolish to predict. The reality is that resources for journalism are now disappearing from the old media faster than new media can develop them. The financial crisis of the press may thereby compound the media’s crisis of legitimacy. Already under ferocious attack from both left and right for a multitude of sins, real and imagined, the press is going to find its job even more difficult to do under economic duress. And as it retrenches in the face of financial pressures, [director of Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, Tom] Rosenstiel says, “More of American life will occur in shadows. We won’t know what we won’t know.”
Paul Starr’s point is that without local journalism, the lesser Blagos of the world will run rampant. Throw in that the formerly two-paper towns will be losing one side of the story, and you start to get the picture: the views that people will be exposed to will be narrower and less in-depth.
Enter the hero of our story: the Internet! Yes, one of the things that brought about the all of the above will actually save the day. Besides, as one of my friends mentioned, those guys weren’t doing a very good job anyway. There are always standouts, but most of the time, local newspapers (due to declining ad revenues—we’ll get those momentarily) were laying off Starr’s venerable reporters and serving as reprint services for the wire services like AP and Reuters. The variety of views online will replace those reporters and keep our public officials honest. Well, almost. Much of what it found online is just aggregation of and commentating on existing sources, including those being “driven out of business” by the situation at hand! Are we caught in some sort of vicious circle?
Well, there are some innovators out there. There are places like ProPublica, trying to do unbiased reporting as a non-profit. Think PBS or, better yet, NPR but as an online-only newspaper. “ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest,” reads their About Us page. Their funding right now comes from the Sandler Foundation. There are questions about the possibilities of bias but from what I’ve read, I don’t see it but it is worth noting. Much like the one-paper town only getting half the story, it can’t be ignored.
Another story (in fact, the one that inspired me to finally get all these thoughts organized) is that of GlobalPost. They’re starting from the premise that ad-supported news sites (there’s that advertising thing again — I promise we’ll get there) can essentially be loss leaders. In yesterday’s NY Times, there’s was a borderline hagiography of the idea that it would be possible to *gasp* make money in the news business on the internet! It’s by harnessing the latest trend in media—communities and user-generated content— and making it feel more like being part of the club. By signing up for their Passport service (currently $199 or $50 for students), you not only get exclusive content but you actually get to help shape the content. The Passport “allows you to join [them] in the editor’s chair. As an active member in an elite community, you’re invited to present story ideas on topics you think matter, stories that you want to read and share with your Passport colleagues.” It seems great on paper but here’s the key grafs from the Times piece that puts the lie to their plans:
Only a couple of dozen people have signed up for Passport, said Philip Balboni, GlobalPost’s other founder and the president and chief executive. The site is depending on marketing partnerships to generate subscriptions, some discounted, and hopes to have more than 2,000 by year’s end.
Two months in, the Boston-based company says demand for the free site — the mainstay of the business — is ahead of expectations. It has logged 250,000 unique users who have visited at least once, compared with the 90,000 Mr. Balboni had hoped for by now, and 1.1 million page views, more than half from returning visitors.
I give them points for coming up with something new but most users are used to free content. The Internet is littered with the bits and bytes of failed attempts at subscription-only content: TimesSelect, Salon Premium (which still exists but loses money and can be gotten around by viewing an interstitial ad). Eric Clemons writes very clearly about this in the fantastic article Why Advertising is Failing on the Internet. This is something that’s near and dear to my heart since this is how I’m making my living. He’s spot on in that people don’t want, need, or trust advertising. People like Clemons have some good ideas. The ideas of social search, a hybrid of a search engine and your social network, and contextual mobile advertising, which is really only limited by mobile technology but could be a big growth opportunity, are the ones that make sense to me.
I’ll admit, I’m don’t know where all this is going to end. I do know I get my news from a variety of sources online, both “traditional” and “new” media. I don’t think that print newspapers are going away. They’ll probably continue to consolidate or just plain go out of business. I think new publications like ProPublica and GlobalPost are going to be great. They’ll probably fail too and be replaced by those who will learn from their mistakes. Clay Shirky said it best:
For the next few decades, journalism will be made up of overlapping special cases. Many of these models will rely on amateurs as researchers and writers. Many of these models will rely on sponsorship or grants or endowments instead of revenues. Many of these models will rely on excitable 14 year olds distributing the results. Many of these models will fail. No one experiment is going to replace what we are now losing with the demise of news on paper, but over time, the collection of new experiments that do work might give us the journalism we need.
Coming Soon: The Kindle, the ebook, and print – living in harmony
