The Pay Wall Minority
Posted: September 14, 2009 Filed under: Department of Digital, Department of Print | Tags: don't build the wall Leave a comment »I have made a lot of philosophical arguments about the pay wall in the past. At the heart of those is the fact that restricting access to news, information, content and valuable local resources that are inherent within print institutions, to me, seems like a contradiction of what is the reason for a free press: increasing the marketplace of public discourse.
I am in fact talking about the “liberty” version of free, in this sense, not the cost kind. I just want to be clear about exactly where I drawn the line when it comes to journalists. I believe there is a very important aspect of news, but I also recognize that it should not be reduced to a basic public service and that its authors have a right to make a living off of sharing information.
With those two waivers out of the way, here is the evidence of the day regarding the problem with building a pay wall around that same content these journalists produce.
First, there is a nice long form piece (with the accompanying video) over on CBS from over the weekend that looks at the implications asking if readers will ever pay for news. Outlining the different proposals on the table, CBS noted this important consideration for a paid system of online news:
The ability to decide the criteria to charge readers and not others. This goes well beyond the simple basic vs. premium concept. At some point, usage intensity will have to be factored in. That means the first taste is free but you must pay if you keep coming back. Weirdly, all the papers I’m reading on the subject don’t do much to explore this notion. Yet, it is crucial to readership segmentation.
While this looks at a lot of the ways content may be put behind the wall, it doesn’t necessarily answer the own question posed in its headline. The variety of models and methods proposed doesn’t necessarily get over the elephant in the room that consumers may just not pay regardless of what custom options they have.
This isn’t anything alarming, if you ask me. I have been one to argue that there will always be some way to get to the information (and many of it will likely continue in the two-step flow idea; someone will pay for it, and then they become the hub of their social circle of news as they pass it around). I was surprised to see that there may actually be hesitance from the other side of the aisle (the bold is mine):
A bare 51% of the newspaper publishers in the United States believe they can charge successfully for access to their interactive content, according to a survey released today. The other 49% of publishers either fear that pay walls will fail or just aren’t sure. The survey, which was conducted for the latest in the series of industry conferences this year studyng how to monetize the valuable content most newspapers give away for free, shows that publishers who are worried about charging for content have good reason to be concerned. While 68% of the publishers responding to the survey said they thought readers who objected to paying for content would have a difficult time replacing the information they get from newspaper websites, 52% of polled readers said it would be either “very easy” or “somewhat easy” to do so.
(cc) Flickr User Steve Webel
Add that to the fact that barely two-thirds of these publishers think that the pay wall would keep non-payers out of their content – given the hopes for this method of saving the “news” – I consider this to be a low response.
This is the ultimate zero-sum game. All you need is one publisher to keep the wall open (remember David Simon’s CJR rant that it was all or nothing?) and it won’t work. If publishers can’t universally agree on a wall, than they must universally agree to find a better method of finding ways to earn the needed funds to pay their journalists. The smartest journalists will not only be those who produce the best content, but also find the solution at the bottom of the barrel that will help them become their own foundation.
The Firehose
Posted: September 13, 2009 Filed under: Department of Digital, social media | Tags: michael richards, social media, the firehose, Twitter Leave a comment »
(CC) Flickr User Neil B.
Attention span is an interesting variable, everywhere from Kindergarten classrooms to the corner office. In it, though, may lie the roots of the digital shift in news media.
There is a common metaphor used to describe the overload of news that many face, caused by newer forms of information retrieval. You can’t drink from the firehose (no matter what Michael Richards said in UHF), which means that at some point, if you try to handle all of the media you are trying to consume – via the quest for realtime search, your 1,500 Twitter friends, or your scores of RSS feeds – you will miss something, even if you had intention of looking for it.
The metaphor I’ve been using recently is that Twitter is like a whiteboard. It’s not a posting place for solid reminders: it’s an easily erased, ever-changing form of information that has new information up there every second. 
This lack of permanency has its place in reporting and breaking news, but not in telling the whole story and certainly not in lasting impressions and legitimate news sharing.
Where attention span fits into this is a chicken or egg moment. Do people flock to Twitter because they can rest at ease if the miss something? Or was Twitter the inevitability of the movement from a newspaper (a source of news with finite information, but developed a sincere time investment) to the television/radio broadcast (less amount of news, but still significant in terms of content, with lower time investment) to blogging and blogging’s cousins of RSS and Twitter? In the latter, the well of news is the deepest it has ever been, but there is no human amount of time or ability to consume it.
By developing our own content, we had options on what to do with our news reading time.
- Option 1: Try and consume it all, anyway, and fail.
- Option 2: Filter down to a few sources that are not connected, basically becoming our own editors. Personal bias creeps in here, and we start shrinking down to really few.
- Option 3: Turn to a trusted, “third-party” editor, who isn’t associated with a central content developer, and see what they say to read. (This is the “I’ll read what the smart people read” model).
I have found, across the hundreds of sources I stumble upon – creeping up on thousands if you combine all my feeds and Twitter friends – that the last model is the most efficient way to get information. In my most honest moments, I’d like to think that I’m at least contributing to that for my own friends and followers and providing them information about what I follow closest, turning to them to pick up the other slack.
As it exists right now, that unbelievable majority of us are consumers, relying on the few who, even without access, are able to be sources of information. Media history called this two-step flow, but there are way too many steps in between than there used to be to think its simply two. The point remains the same, and, ultimately, this is the theoretical and actual root of social media. Even when it comes to news, we rely on our social connections before the institution, and we have for hundreds of years.
You can’t take a straw to the firehose, it’s an awful way to get anything to drink. However, the most useful source out there is the person who tells you where in the spray to stand to actually get something useful.
Please note, in the clip below, Michael Richards is not helping:
The 17 Theses of Online Media
Posted: September 9, 2009 Filed under: Department of Digital, journalism | Tags: future of journalism, The Internet Manifesto Leave a comment »In just the last two days, the work of 15 German bloggers has been promoted and translated into seven different languages. It’s a short, to-the-point, brilliant way of thinking about the very different rules that cover the user-generated media of the Internet. These bloggers, as noted by one of the contributors, Janko Roettgers, in a post on GigaOm, put together this to publish and embrace 17 declarations about the future of media production online:
“At the core of the text is the claim that the Internet is a different medium with a disparate social and cultural impact than traditional mass media, and that publishers need to acknowledge these differences, rather than pretending they don’t exist or trying to make them go away.”
Sure, it’s about 78 points short and roughly 490 years off the mark, but this is our equivalent of a Church door, and these are the really smart declarations they agreed upon. And there’s definitely a recurring theme across the seventeen points:
The rules of the Internet—the governing principles and perceived credibility—are created by the audience, and that audience is a pushing force of content, not a passive, receiving audience like those of old.
The Internet is free (as in the speech kind of way), it’s accessible, and it is nearly universal as a communication platform. Ultimately, that centers itself on the idea that the starting point of the online community is a nice horizontal floor, not a high hurdle to be overcome for inclusion.
My favorite example of how this community works is the comments on the English version of the post. Everything from critiques on the “German Internet” through the volunteerism to translate it into more languages. Everyone has an opinion. The silver bullet of the Internet is that we have the means to express them. It’s a dangerous world to try and regulate that in favor of saving how things used to be.
I’ll give the last word back to these smart folks from the continent, but seriously take a minute and read the whole thing.
12. Tradition is not a business model.
Money can be made on the Internet with journalistic content. There are many examples of this today already. Yet because the Internet is fiercely competitive, business models have to be adapted to the structure of the net. No one should try to abscond from this essential adaptation through policy-making geared to preserving the status quo. Journalism needs open competition for the best refinancing solutions on the net, along with the courage to invest in the multifaceted implementation of these solutions.
Perception [Today in Infographics]
Posted: September 8, 2009 Filed under: journalism | Tags: bloggers v. journalists, perception Leave a comment »Take a minute and read through all of C.W. Anderson’s excellent analysis of the perception of the role of news organizations. In the meantime, just enjoy this chart:
Newspapers as the Community Hub
Posted: September 7, 2009 Filed under: Department of Print | Tags: austin american statesman, posterous, social media Leave a comment »There are some things that will newspapers will always be able to uniquely contribute when it comes to news and information. For a fascinating example, Steve Rubel pointed to a case at the American Statesman down in Austin last week, and it’s worth taking a close look not just because of the technology that Rubel is currently poster-childing.
Posterous is a cool idea when it comes to expanding what can be done with the current “its” of social media: lifestreaming and microblogging. Looking in part like a Tumblr blog, it’s controlled through a very low participation barrier. No registration – just e-mail what you want to say and it starts your very own stream. That’s it. There is plenty of customization you can do, but there’s no need. It wins on two of the levels that Twitter did – simplicity and universal access – and that’s probably why Steve has gravitated to it.
This post is not about Posterous, though, it’s about what the Statesman is doing with it. The paper is using the tool as a new way to continue what papers have been doing for hundreds of years:
…bring the local community together with unique content that relates to them and only them.
Robert Quigley, the social media editor of the paper, wrote on a site he co-authors with Daniel Honigman, Old Media New Tricks:
The results for us
We put the photos into a gallery on statesman.com, and it was the top page-view driver for our site on Monday with more than 70,000 page views. We also gained some valuable experience using Posterous and proved the concept for future projects. We published the content we received several ways: Posterous, Twitter, in our photo gallery and in print. That type of cross-platform publishing is healthy.
The results for the community
The quality of the pictures were really good. Some were funny, some were artistic, and all were thoughtful. Through this project, Central Texans could all feel the pain of a hot summer and share a small slice of their lives.
I think Quigley missed out one other really important result for the newspaper: it makes its online home a personal destination that the community connects to. I think back to the own connection I feel with the Boston Globe’s sports section, which to a Red Sox fan *is* a personal bond, but more importantly, also the neighborhood weekly from the town I grew up in that used to highlight the youth soccer scores every week in the fall. Playing U8 soccer and seeing your name in the paper – it’s the little things – help build a connection to a pub.
There is a place for the local newspaper far beyond its advertising section, and some of that is irreplaceable through individual bloggers. The Statesman has recognized that they can become the community hub by providing a forum that is traffic driving, local, and, ironically, an aggregator of community content. In the same way that a small town relies on a reporter to get to the school board meetings, the online version can be the center of the spoke for related content.
I’m interested to see other ways newspapers toward in toward the community to help build content and reach, as opposed to blocks them out and holds relevant information hostage. Open projects like this generate traffic – a key measure for publishers to base on ad placements – and there may be other unique ways to build ads into the stream (perhaps some transparently sponsored posts that highlight local business?). Either way, it’s giving Austin residents a reason to go to the site beyond what they can get in the paper.
When Media Shares Audiences
Posted: September 3, 2009 Filed under: Department of Broadcast | Tags: Nielsen, Simultaneous Usage, Tweet-Peats Leave a comment »
(cc) Flickr user *USB*
One area where print and broadcast will always differ is in the duration of its consumption. While the heart of the newspaper industry is still news, there is enough entertainment and original programming to drive advertising revenue and support the journalistic efforts.
YouTube was never going to have the same effect on prime time that the print folks tell you the news aggregators have on their effort – no matter what Viacom tells you. Still, the corps moved quickly to adapt by offering video through their own properties or intelligent partnerships and projects.
And, as Nielsen research from earlier this week shows, even though the digital video audience is growing – 70 percent growth in people watching some video on mobile, and a 46 percent increase in those who watched on the Internet – our TV viewing habits still rule. The study shows those trends to be at an all time high of 141 hours per month.
That divide is probably unconquerable – Internet time isn’t always spent with video, even if it is one of the most popular activities online. Also, when you consumer video in 1-2 minute chunks, it adds up a lot slower than 26 minute sitcoms. There may be one other factor, also shown in this research, and it also speaks to a different advantage (other than embracing digital) that broadcast has over print.
Looking at Nielsen’s convergence research panel, June results show that 57% of consumers simultaneously watch TV and go online at least once a month. An estimated 130 million used TV and the Internet at the same time at least once during June. Nielsen says the average time spent doing this was two hours and 39 minutes.
Broadcast can work as a complement to online media; it’s hard to read a newspaper and surf the Web, and its counterproductive since you can search the newspaper ON the Web. The rate of growth of simultaneous consumption is higher than adoption of Internet video and that’s not to be laughed at.
If you want to take it a step further, I’ll even give Twitter and other status-based elements of social networks like Facebook a lot of credit for making this happen. Major media events dominate the trending topics and news feeds of these services – and the range is incredibly large to include everything from Iranian civil unrest to Tennis to Glee. And, in the case of the last one, Fox is even encouraging it.
The thesis of this post is not that rising levels of digital consumption have an inverse effect on print while a direct effect on broadcast. That can’t be explained through one study. But it is worth noting that there are methods to move a story and an audience from one medium to another without boxing them in.
Can print act like a startup?
Posted: September 1, 2009 Filed under: Department of Print | Tags: don't build the wall, free, future of print 1 Comment »
From Flickr User mathoov
A post by Om Malik this morning has me contemplating an idea that I realize no one who can make the decisions will buy into, but it’s worth considering: As a long-standing, institution can you look at yourself in the mirror, determine that you need to reinvent yourself and say, “Maybe it’s time to act like a startup?”
The inspiration from this comes a little from Om’s really helpful advice on making a freemium model work for a startup company. Pulling on examples like Evernote, Remember the Note and Flickr, the focus is on how to make money off of something for free. First, give a loss-leading service away for nothing (say, access to music, a simple repository for anything), but then set some sort of bar or restraint to where it requires an investment. On Pandora, it’s a certain number of free music hours each month; on Flickr, limited file types and storage. Then the meter starts, and usually it takes away the advertisements often served on free services.
Flickr Pro vs. Flickr Free
This is the exact opposite thinking of a print newspaper. Subscriptions are relatively cheap, but its support is still the department store ads and what’s left of classifieds (read: not much). If you want to adapt, you can’t think like the print beast that has audience stats they want to sell for placements.
The other lesson is don’t try to make the for sale item the exact same as what is currently free. Don’t build a wall around what exists – use that as a carrot into a new garden of content. This is where the success lies in the freemium experiment. The no-cost buy in turns into a necessity. In Om’s case, it turned into a reason to stay with a certain service:
A few weeks ago I decided to move all my data from Dropbox to another online service, Jungledisk. The reason: I wanted to archive all my folders and information from 2008, for which I needed more storage than my current Dropbox account could offer. It was about 45 GB of data, which meant I’d have to upload it to Jungledisk, and even with a really fast connection, it would take forever. Suddenly it dawned on me that the more stuff I put on Dropbox, the more difficult it would become for me to switch to another service. Instead, I upgraded to 100 Gb a year.
So it isn’t building a wall – it’s more like a picket-fence. You can see a little bit of the light through it, and for many people, that’s enough of a peek at what’s on the other side. The business will come from those who want to look at all of the space you have to offer, and that means that if you make it lush, unique and necessary, they will.
It’s up to newspapers to stop thinking they can charge for what has been available. It’s really about finding what the incentive is beyond just what the audience has already enjoyed. This goes against everything you thought for the last century. Tough. Sometimes you have to adapt – because the advertisers are going elsewhere. Make the content the service, not a frame for ads and there is success to be had.
