“AP Gateway will serve as the launching pad for new products and services from AP and other interested news publishers,” Tom Curley, president and CEO of The Associated Press, said today at the annual meeting of the Colorado Press Association. “It will allow the news industry to deliver the news directly to the consumer in a variety of exciting new ways.”
Jane Seagrave, senior vice president and new chief revenue officer of AP, said the first set of products from the new Gateway unit would be applications for several new devices that have been introduced or announced in recent weeks, including the Apple iPad.
In developing new digital product and service opportunities, AP Gateway will tap AP’s previously announced News Registry, a service for tagging news content with usage rights and source attribution. Publishers using the services of the Registry, now in beta operation with more than 200 participating newspapers, will be able to opt into opportunities developed by the AP Gateway business unit.
AP Gateway expands the work started by AP in 2008, when it launched an initiative to ingest news content from AP members, categorize it and tag it with rich metadata. That aggregation of AP and member content enabled the launch of AP Mobile, a set of services for smart phones that feature AP content and local news from more than 1,000 member newspapers and broadcasters.
William Dean Singleton, chairman of the AP Board of Directors and chairman and chief executive officer of MediaNews Group said in the press release, “We’ve already seen the power of the AP Cooperative in AP Mobile, among the most popular news applications for smart phones worldwide. AP Gateway builds on the strength of the Cooperative in the era of digital publishing.”
The announcement of AP Gateway comes less than a year after AP announced the News Registry, a platform for tagging, setting rights and tracking usage of news content across the Internet. The Registry will move out of beta operation this year and be open to all AP members and broadcasters by year’s end.
Over the past six years, AP has transformed its content creation, processing and distribution methods to make it easier for members of the news cooperative to take advantage of the new ways consumers are accessing news and information. At the heart of AP’s new platform is a searchable, multimedia database of AP content that members can access using flexible, Web-based portals.
“AP Gateway is the natural extension of our ongoing digital strategy,” said Curley in his Denver announcement. “Rather than just repurpose our content across formats, we now have a real opportunity to innovate and create differentiated experiences of the news across formats that will excite all of us, from producers to consumers of news.”
Curley also said that AP immediately would begin seeking feedback from members and customers.
Source: The Associated Press
Can’t wait to see the app. The size and power of the ipad should bring about some awesome apps.
Ah… iPad is a launch pad!
This will be interesting to watch. The iPad will allow the legacy news organizations to toy with their very existence, by restricting their content to paid apps on the iPad (and presumably elsewhere). This will allow other sites, which keep all their content online and freely available, to flourish as a result.
Apple’s iPad allows the legacy news bodies to try their experiment, without incurring any significant risk for Apple if that experiment fails – people will just keep visiting other news websites on the iPad’s browser instead.
Also, regarding the “News Registry” mumbo-jumbo mentioned in the article, this sounds like Associated Press’ pipe dream of trying to “DRM” the news.
I won’t pay for something I can get for free on a 1,000 other web pages.
Great, now we can get propaganda and fake news images in full multi media.
What’s interesting is that those who offer opinions on matters like this often do so from a position of ignorance and yet presume to understand.
In a Pew Research study conducted last year on Media they did a study of Baltimore. They found that 96% of the news in that city began with the daily newspaper. It may well be true that government agencies and other official outlets of news will find their information spread by an army of underpaid bloggers but many other stories come from on the street journalism created through institutional memory (the collective experience and contacts of reporters) and a collaborative process that news organizations use to produce content.
Content is regularly stolen, paraphrased, and reproduced. They’re just ‘facts’ after all, right? Not quite. Many stories of any value come from news organizations that develop the content themselves. Today, stories of this type are linked to on a website and given attribution. That may be ending.
Short form, breaking news items will still flow through the Twitterverse and Facebook fan pages but longer form, exclusive stories, that provide depth, insight, and offer more value will go behind pay walls.
The reason is pure economics. Most blogs, don’t make money. Twitter has yet to make any money. So simply being used to something doesn’t mean it will be there in the future.
Newspapers and other news organizations have lasted for a very long time because they could be economically sustained.
Content if stolen will be taken to litigation. Not many small websites want to go to court for copyright violation.
The iPad is ushering in an age in which you will pay something (as we used to) for good quality news and information.
Remember Napster? Remember people saying that the music business was dead since it was all free now?
That was 10 billion downloads ago.
@ PR – I’d agree with your first statement, and invite you to techdirt.com to learn about business models which don’t rely on turning back the clock and pretending that content can be protected from copying. The genie is out of the bottle, and there are quite a few new opportunities for those who are willing to adapt and change.
@PR
Right on.
To you folks who think you are getting good quality information for free, remember what your grandparents told you, you get what you pay for.
Look at broadcast and cable television where “news” has been reduced to a bunch of loud mouth hacks who spout forth their opinions and label it as “news”.
I would really like to be able to buy, for a reasonable price, some “real” news service on an iPad.
another $30.
Isn’t it ironic that the iPad may usher in the age of no more free information.
I’m not opposed to subs, but the management of AP has moved decidedly to the Right Wing after decades of playing it down the middle.
I also have no problem with partisan editorial writing as long as it does not pretend to be neutral.
Daily Koz, FDL, World Net Daily and Drudge are very political and make no pretention to be otherwise.
During the last couple of years, AP has had it’s lunch eaten and ass kicked by McClatchy on Washington coverage because the AP has been all too happy to be a Beltway Villager.
I won’t pay for that.
@Gabriel,
I read some of what your link presented.
I have yet to see any model that makes news on the web a universally sustainable proposition. There is no standalone news website (by standalone I mean site without another or existing affiliation) that does what old line news organizations do, that is profitable. Show me any site that does it’s own reporting, with a staff that must be funded at a professional level generating a profit from it’s online advertising alone.
There’s a lot of talk and hand wringing and conjecture about finding a workable business model but in a world of tens of thousands of sources and $5 per thousand ad rates (if you are lucky) you can’t make it work.
The old model was, as you allude to, based on scarcity. We are now in a state of oversupply. This, coupled with the fact that the sheer physics of vision and the size of most online ads are limiting factors. Hard to attract or intrigue someone in an ad the size of a matchbook.
It’s likely that content will see a split between short burst facts into the twitterverse and longer form depth or feature content you will need to pay to access. If it’s made easy enough, complete enough and accurate, and coupled with other content you like it’s not unlikely you’ll pay to get it.
The chilling effect of lawsuits on content theft may come as a surprise but old media is not going to simply roll over. Only by offering higher quality content, protecting it, and creating a kind of scarcity can those companies preserve the value and pay to have it created in the first place.
If there ARE models that you think have merit please detail them.
The fact that the entire media world has been searching for them for some time shouldn’t dissuade you.
Jeff Jarvis, Steve Outing and many others have discussed their vision of the future of journalism, talked about BackFence and other citizen journalism models that have yet to scale. Newspaper Next and others have explored ideas in which the advertiser creates their own ad (doesn’t work). Certainly the pull of attention (and lack of innovation and capital to explore it) keeps old line news companies from building the new models, even those with promise.
The ipad offers a platform that makes copying harder. Have you tried to copy content from an app? Not the web…but an app? it’s awkward at best. If I see a news app that shows me a video analysis of a favorite quarterback’s throwing motion, coupled with an interview before the big game, in addition to a fantasy football league, exclusive photos and video of past games, and offer this at a reasonable price. I’ll pay. If that content is presented in a format that ALSO permits BIGGER ads and BETTER ads (more interactive, more content)…then advertisers will pay because the value is there. That’s what the iPad can bring to the table.
Any other purely web based news will keep wallowing in an uncertain, shifting, and massive pool of sites all competing for attention amid the the shifting sands of optimization tuned to the latest algorithms all for a diminishing profit margin.
@ deepdish,
“I won’t pay for something I can get for free”
I said that too, then I got married anyway. Some people never learn.
It will be great to see those that try to DRM news fall on their faces, and waste $$, after seeing that it doesn’t work. These companies have to realize that the consumer is not ignorant and stupid. We can find other sources of news for free and/or at a more reasonable charge.
@ Bib Als MPB
Re “”I won’t pay for something I can get for free”
I said that too, then I got married anyway. Some people never learn.”
I as well. Perhaps ‘it’ should never be free.
Then we would learn to :
1. Appreciate the value of a dollar
2. Learn to manage our money better
3. Get what we want, when, where and how we want it
4. Get it more often
Problem is, we have to change society, i.e., take the checkbook back from our wives.
“The chilling effect of lawsuits on content theft may come as a surprise but old media is not going to simply roll over. “
You cannot copyright facts. A specific written VERSION of the telling of a story, yes, but you cannot copyright the facts behind a story.
Just linking to a story, telling the world that the NYT has a story about this-and-that isn’t copyrightable, either. Nor is the summary such a link would be surrounded with, as long as it is not a direct quote – and even THAT can be done, too. That’s called fair use.
Perhaps you should have read TechDirt a little closer.
You’ll need to distinguish between news and journalism, such as in depth investigative journalism. The latter CAN be copyrighted and put behind a pay wall, and people will even pay for it, since it is unique content. That’s TechDirt’s point.
Raw news, not so much, people will go to where they can get that for free.
That’s what makes this so hard, trying to get the mix just right – how much unique content can we put behind a pay wall, and how much to put out front for other sites to link to, so we can draw people into our site?
Anybody that either tries to put RAW news behind a pay wall, or sues to stop other sites linking to their news is an idiot and deserves to fail.
Which they will.
@rwahrens
Thanks for agreeing with me. That’s correct, raw news cannot be copyrighted. But let’s break that down.
What is meant by raw news? A reporter gets a tip and follows up, does a story. Are the facts as revealed then free for anyone to reproduce as long as they paraphrase? Or not?
Or are you referring to a press conference with 100 reporters and an equal number of stories?
Or are you referring to information as produced by government agencies which is already ‘public’ by definition?
What I’m referring to is that broadly covered news, public information and multiply sourced data WILL likely remain free. But as you correctly point out, in depth journalism you will likely need to pay for.
So…fast forward 7 years. The number of news sources has exploded into a constantly shifting mass of essentially personal sites, some survive based on their geographic specifics, many others come and go. A few major sources remain offering a mix of in depth reporting and other data that is available to anyone. You have a subscription to two of them at $8 a month. Where do you spend your time? On the service you pay for that has ALL this material or a few free favorites that only give you what everyone else has?
It’s also a question of attention saturation. How much time do you have to absorb information? 12 to 14 hours a day often looking at a screen?
The real question is about money. Where does it come from? Who pays for the reporter in Santiago to report on the earthquake? What would happen if we simply took Dragon Dictation, hooked it up to Fox News or CNN and then
paraphrased what they reported minutes later? Is that ethical? Or is the idea of ethics old fashioned and no longer applicable?
If MDN for example charged, you’d go to Apple Insider since it was free, even though you might miss the ‘takes’ but taking it further, if MDN had exclusive access to some information, prevented deep linking, the walled garden would likely be worth MORE than the miniscule return on the ads.
You can look at Rupert Murdoch and suggest he’s out of touch and repeat the tired phrases “the genie’s out of the bottle” and “Information wants to be free” but they truly have little meaning.
A lawsuit doesn’t have to be successful to have an effect. How many “news bloggers” now feeding off the television, radio and newspaper website sources would keep going if they had to pay an attorney a retainer?
Funny that you start out with the kind of thing that usually results in an in depth investigation.
Raw news is “stuff” happening that we see all over the place, every day, that isn’t limited to the investigation of one reporter. Yes, one news outlet often breaks the story, but others jump on it and cover it too. Newspapers have been doing this for decades, and haven’t gotten into copyright fights over it. Nor will new outlets on the internet, for the same reason.
The FACTS of the news cannot be copyrighted, while YOUR unique investigation and its resulting story can. It won’t take long for idiots like Murdock to realize that he’s spitting in the wind with lawsuits. It’ll be like whack-a-mole, he can’t sue *everybody*.
However, other news outlets can talk about it, link to it if you haven’t put it behind a pay wall. They will, too, as has been happening in the news business for decades.
Murdock’s efforts will fail. Why? Because most of what he wants to put behind his paywall is still just normal, raw news. Stuff I can go elsewhere for, for free. He still hasn’t gotten the message that what we WILL pay for is unique content. What his reporters write about the disaster in Haiti isn’t unique, every Tom, Dick and Harry on the internet is writing about that.
But if his reporters do an in depth investigation on corruption in say, Congress, or the White House, THEN I’ll be willing to go behind a paywall to read it. Why? Because it’s something nobody else is writing about. Because he’ll be talking to sources no one else has access to.
So the answer is just what TechDirt says, sell scarcity. Sell unique content – investigative reports, famous columnist’s columns, Interviews with famous people, in depth travel commentaries, etc.
I am sure that a dedicated, smart journalistic staff can come up with all sorts of stuff that can make a site unique – hell, magazines have been doing it for a very long time.
But that’s not NEWS, its journalism, and you’ll not be able to sell news. It’s too available anywhere. Newspapers are not used to this kind of competition, it’s always been too expansive for newspapers in other cities to circulate to places outside of their own city. Not every paper has the resources of the NYT. But the internet means that I can see the headlines of every newspaper in the country, and many in other places outside of this country. So newspapers will never be able to charge for their websites. The websites for competitors are too available.
“Is that ethical? Or is the idea of ethics old fashioned and no longer applicable?”
Oh, come on. Newspapers have been jumping on news stories broken by rivals for years. They’ve just been smart enough to paraphrase instead of plagiarize. That’s always been considered ethical as well as legal.
The major news stories will always be covered by the big names, for the same reason it always has – it costs money to put reporters on the scene, and only the big companies have that kind of resources to do it. And the little guys will still link to their sites, paraphrasing their news, because the little guys will be news aggregators, and lots of people want that.
So that’s why I and lots of other people won’t spend a lot of time behind a paywall. I’ll go to the places that aggregate the news, that summarize it, and if I want a closer look, I’ll go to where they link to for that more in depth read. A smart outfit like, say, CNN, won’t put that story behind a paywall, because they know the little guys will be sending viewers their way.
They’ll be putting *unique* stuff behind that paywall, not stuff I can read anywhere.
As I mentioned, this will be paid for how?
Online advertising is currently running somewhere between 10 cents per thousand pageviews and $15…with the emphasis on the low end. The average online reader is only worth 1/40th to 1/10th that of a print reader given the rates charged for advertising. Couple that with the fact that online ads are measurably less effective (for a variety of reasons) and you find that the news ecosystem as it is currently shaped falls apart. The idea that people will go to news aggregators presumes that the sources they pull from will even be there.
Quite an assumption given the well recognized fact that newspapers produce the most news in most communities. Television stations sometimes do feature reports and investigative pieces but these are shrinking too. So news partnerships have formed. Good luck with that.
I wouldn’t bet against Rupert Murdoch. BTW…he doesn’t have to sue “everybody” just a few high profile cases is enough. The smaller sources can be ignored, they won’t impact the audience or profit margins. When they do, and they step over, they get served…in high profile.
Here’s an interesting example
Do a search on the phrase
Iran moves nuclear fuel
You’ll find a number of links of course…including this one
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/02/27/iran-moves-nuclear-stockpile-to-above-ground-facility/
While they LINK to the New York Times story
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/27/world/middleeast/27iran.html?hp
What happens when the Times goes behind a paywall (and they will)?
The hotair blog buys a subscription and then paraphrases?
In this case they literally cut and pasted a chunk of the Times
story.
If it become economically non viable to produce the news in the manner it is produced now the news you get will change. A reliance on “official” reports will become dominant (they’re free), and the quality of the reporting will fall.
There are lots of local newspapers that aren’t going out of business. CNN seems to be doing quite well, both on air and online. Not all news outlets are hurting.
The Wall Street Journal seems to be doing ok, too, and plenty of people seem quite satisfied to subscribe to their site. As I said, unique is the key.
Just because Rupert Murdock is an idiot doesn’t mean that the news industry is going down the tubes, it just means that he’s greedy.
I wish him luck – he’s going to need it.
@ pr
Hot Air has done nothing illegal. It is simply commenting on the NYT article which they quoted in part and properly linked it to.
If Hot Air had published the Times story in full or a significant portion of it and presented it as their own, sell it without authorization as a copy or diminished the value of the original article, damn right they are in trouble.
Why do you suggest that the Times will plagiarize somebody else’s work? They have their own reporters and if caught, as some have, there are retributions.
@mdmac
Don’t misunderstand. I am not suggesting they’ve done anything wrong under the current structure. This is how things have evolved.
It’s based on the equation
More Pageviews=Advertising Revenue.
Most sites today use Pageviews as a primary metric. While CTR (click through rate) is important, and Time Spent are useful and have value the model is still based on eyeballs getting presumed exposure to the ad. It’s the serendipity model. You don’t go to the site to see the ad. You go for the content. The ad appears in association with content. The other primary model is search based that Google has taken to high art. While news sites can use the contextually senstive model that AdSense provides it doesn’t provide much revenue.
What I am pointing out is that once the Times goes behind the paywall sites like this…the free ones…will be able to COMMENT on the content, as they do, even paraphrase the facts, but to the extent that they drain off readership for the site that originated the content the people who paid to get the information created will be less able to do so.
The web is simply not exceptionally lucrative for news providers and there are no models on the horizon that will make it so…EXCEPT
putting content of depth, uniqueness, and quality on a platform like the iPad, made harder to easily steal, and enforced with high profile legal action.
While units of unique content, in the form of music were easily curtailed by legal action and threats of it from the RIAA, when iTunes appeared it just made it EASIER. So I guess my point is that while raw news can’t be protected in the same way (and won’t be) if the providers give you both the RAW news AND better quality content in an attractive package with depth, the paywall makes it worth it for both the provider and the consumer.
One more note on this…
As I mentioned, legal precedent is what matters…not “suing everybody”
You can gain some insight from this story.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2011202624_ryan28.html?prmid=op_ed
Oh, please, Italy? That story has no bearing on what’s happening in the US, because Google has immunity through the safe haven’s provisions of the DMCA. That prosecution could never happen here.
Just what that means to the current discussion isn’t real clear, care to expand on your point?
Oh, and a prosecution by the State is not the same as a lawsuit by a private party. No precedent at all.
Yes…legal proceedings in Italy do not have a bearing here except as an example. You might want to contact the Seattle Times to let them know you think they are wrong about the chilling effect legal decisions can have.
What I’m getting at is that if bloggers are either made to believe they must vet all information or are forced by lawsuits to do so, it will change the nature of how they proceed. Most don’t have deep pockets. Lawsuits against bloggers are on the rise and will increase as certain mainstream media goes behind paywalls and/or the AP itself takes action against them.
It’s tough enough to try and be a local news blogger. Imagine trying to pay an attorney just to defend yourself. If if you win (and it can take a LONG time)…you won’t really have won. While news of victory in a case like that will pass through the blogosphere, the mainstream media still has more money and a bigger megaphone.
And what kind of an example is that? That was a PROSECUTION by the Italian state prosecutor. Over privacy.
Not targeting a blogger, not over linking to a news site, not over copyright. Next time, pick a better example.
I’ll tell you what, when I see bloggers stop linking to news sites because somebody got sued, I’ll believe your alarmist attitude MAY have some validity.
Remember that lawsuit by Apple a couple of years ago against that blogger? They got slapped down, and while the blogger had to close down (he was just a college kid), Apple hasn’t sued another one, have they? They even had to pay legal fees, and had to reach an agreement with him rather than try to win via lawsuit.
And other sites that cover Apple rumors are just as hot as ever, and one even had the balls to offer $$$ for information!
Doesn’t sound like your fears are too well founded.
While some sites MAY try the paywall route, not many will, unless some one like Murdock gets it right and starts making money. Some HAVE tried it in the past, and failed miserably.
In the meantime, information is still free, news still is too.
Newspapers are still publishing, many with web sites that publish the exact same stories, sometimes earlier than the printed version! There’s a newspaper in Maryland that also has an online version – free with a subscription, or you can get it for $10 a month without a subscription – that’s an exact replica of the print version, ads and all. You can print the ads, too, including coupons. Nice for those that travel and like their daily newspaper, too.
Lots of newspapers allow links, hell, they can hardly stop it. Most of the time, they don’t even know about it. I can send links to folks via email all day long, is that copyright? Can I be sued over it?
I don’t think so, and sooner or later, IF someone tries, they’ll hit a blogger with the cash AND the balls to fight back (or a lawyer willing to work either pro bono or for a percentage of winnings) , and they’ll lose, because a link with a summary is not a violation of copyright, it’s fair use, and the courts’ll prove it.
On the few paysites for news that exist, most notably the Wall Street Journal (a Murdoch company ..btw that’s how it’s spelled) others DO link to stories…but they don’t provide open access to all their content. While financial news is a special case, there aren’t any bloggers that are paraphrasing Journal stories or linking to blocked content (except to the short synopsis versions).
Why, if this information “wants to be free” and presumably someone with a subscription to the WSJ can cut and paste the content to a thousand sites is no one doing this?
You would think this highly valuable information would draw well heeled advertisers eager to reach an audience that, given the free status of the information would flock to it?
My sole point in this exercise is this and ultimately it’s agreement with you rwahrens…
Scarcity drives up value. The iPad has the potential to move a LOT of content behind APP based paywalls, driving up that scarcity. Since the newspapers are doing the bulk of the actual reporting in most places if enough of them (and the AP especially) go into a “harder to copy” mode where searches on stories produce primarily links to half written blogs, synopses, and lower quality content (poor photos, shaky video from the sidelines and flat wrong information) then paywalls will look like a great idea. Scarity will have made an at least partial comeback.
As I mentioned previously, ‘fast twitch’ facts…ie; the score of the game, Michael Jackson’s Dead!, There’s an earthquake in Chile! will forever more be spread instantly. Cell phone videos and emails, tweets and personal accounts will only increase.
But consistent, in depth, cogent thinking, based on institutional memory that is a journalism organization’s heritage will come from those who can afford to provide it. If they can’t because they don’t make enough money, we will get less, we will get it wrong, whatever we get will be skewed by partisans (many believe it is already) or driven by cold governmental calculus.
So…I’m HOPING that we can preserve the best of what newspapers and other larger scale journalism organizations actually do by making it worth their while to do it.
There are thought pieces out now suggesting that the government subsidize journalism. See this book
The Death and Life of American Journalism by Robert McChesney and John Nichols. In fact this was part of the thought process of our founding fathers who recognized that a free press was vital to a functioning democracy. They DID subsidize it through special postal rates. But that is just not going to happen.
So…again, my hope is that the great gaping maw of the public appetite to get everything handed to them for nothing can be at least partially closed so that we can preserve the larger scale journalism organizations and not see the process of information gathering and consumption fall to a constantly shifting army of individual voices all bleating at one another.
I don’t think we’ll lose the large scale operations. CNN, ABC, etc., seem to be getting along just fine. Their web presence is just another division which will be supported by the larger operation.
The WSJ is a speciality outfit that has a large loyal following because of their special financial focus who can expense that cost, where most Americans can’t.
But maybe there will be a few larger speciality shops emerge. I don’t have a lot of confidence in current leaders in the industry, they don’t seem to have the vision it takes to break into a new business model. Maybe the next generation of executives will.
@ PR
“On the few paysites for news that exist, most notably the Wall Street Journal (a Murdoch company ..btw that’s how it’s spelled)”
Actually, The Wall Street Journal is the correct spelling and in fact is registered as such, i.e., ®
@MDMac…I was referring to MURDOCH whose name is spelled that way..and not Murdock
@RWAhrens
There’s no reassurance that CNN or ABC will continue to operate as high level news organizations. ABC in fact just announced last week major cutbacks (or streamlining as they called it).
Having been in the news business literally all my life (well over 50 years) when you see the Rocky Mountain News and the Seattle Post Intelligencer essentially fold up their tent it’s clear that the economics are not there. The online only version of the P.I. is struggling. Other large news organizations are in serious decline.
Another northwest online only publication Crosscut recently announced it’s non profit status because the online ads could not produce enough revenue to support a large news gathering staff.
Newspapers have always been where the great bulk of news reporting has been done. The Pew Research study only confirms this…
http://www.journalism.org/analysis_report/how_news_happens
but you may find this essay of interest. We are clearly at 1500 again and answers are not clear. This piece was written almost a year before the iPad was released but contains some valuable insights.
http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking-the-unthinkable/
As I mentioned:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2010/02/abc-news-to-cut-half-its-domestic-correspondents-shut-down-all-bureaus-except-washington.html
I would counter with this piece:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2360777,00.asp
Just because a few sites are having trouble doesn’t mean that they ALL are, as you allude. Some, like other businesses, make bad management decisions, fail to take advantage of economies of scale or just plain spend too much damn money. Some have been known to have borrowed too much money. Some are failing to adjust to a new medium.
New technology always makes an industry go through an adjustment period. Some adjust to the new reality, some do not. This is NOT a bad thing, it flushes out the old codgers that can’t understand how to deal with it and makes room for the newer innovators. This uncertainty always takes the shakier ones first, because they have little in the way of reserves to stave off the hard times that come with it.
Those that do and have the innovative skills and vision to adjust, can prosper. It just takes time, and is not something to fret over.
The Internet is here, and as the piece I linked to notes, news is a social thing. It always has been, we just had to do the social part offline before the Internet gave us the ability to be social as part of a wider net.
Once upon a time, you and I would have had this discussion over a beer at a local pub. Today, we can do it while doing other things, either at work, or at home or on the run.
But we’re still talking about news, and we have to get it from somewhere. As long as that demand exists, somebody will satisfy it. The only question is, who, and how.
You are missing my point entirely.
As primary news collectors decline, it reduces everything in aggregate. If you actually read the Pew study, you will learn that as on the ground news reporting declines, we tend to rely more heavily on government or the police (which is the government after all) for the “official” account. So…if five American cities were to lose their daily newspaper in the next few years, go ahead and pick a city (other than the five largest), and imagine having to rely on government offices, and personal blogs for news from those places. Or if it’s a big story, you might get a version of it from FOX News who has a regional correspondent.
The idea that “somebody will satisfy it” as far as news demand goes ignores the fact that it costs money to do that and that many, many stories will never be the product of the local blogger, or accidental witness. You might think that there is nothing special or unique about a professional journalism organization. Believe me, there is.
The scale, (and as I said, “institutional memory”), ability to stay on a story, work sources, vet facts, and tell a story in depth is in fact what organizations like that do. If they fail, your understanding, and in fact your awareness are diminished.
So…as I will say again, I’m hoping the iPad will create a kind of protected “safe space” for that kind of journalism to continue by making the economics make sense.
Right now, online ads in terms of their ability to support the kind of reporting newspapers do on a daily basis, just can’t.
Ok, one last time:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100228/2356308330.shtml
I read it…and all the comments. The article is rather poorly written and makes a lot of assumptions.
I can tell you only this:
Online advertising produces 1/40th the revenue of print for the same reader…
If the newpaper business in question has all it’s operating costs in place and you say ok…STOP the print side (where all the actual money comes from) and now pay your people, and other ongoing expenses with 1/40th the amount of money.
It simply WILL NOT HAPPEN.
So…they fold.
The most amusing (if in a macabre way) comments say “good riddance” assuming that all the FREE sources out there will pick up the slack.
Yes you will still hear about traffic, and sports, and weather. You will hear a lot government generated stories. You will get the official version as produced by the media officers of various agencies. But the erosion of the informed voice will be a huge loss for us as a nation.
If you truly trust the government to always tell you the truth, to give you insight into what the story means, and if you can get by on a media diet of tweets and postings from your facebook friends then you will be doing real fine.
But for a functioning democracy we are completely misunderstanding how what has worked for 200 years has served us and we are imagining that the network of individuals will be a suitable replacement. I’m telling you it won’t.
You apparently didn’t read it that well. He’s not saying stop the print side. He says clearly that online ads aren’t that lucrative.
There’s a Journal newspaper in our area (that also prints a lot of local papers, all around the East Coast), that throws those free newspapers, just like the one commenter noted. Every house gets one. For free. You can also read them online.
It’s been in business in our area for as long as I’ve been here, over twenty years.
Local news. Free to readers. Ad supported, obviously, as well as classifieds. I’d say that they demonstrate his point very well, as they are obviously giving somebody enough value that they are willing to pay them for the advertising.
I still say you are being pessimistic. Lots of local papers are doing fine, living online too. Sure, some are going out of business, but all industries have failures, and in times of technological turmoil, that’s no surprise. The weaker ones WILL fail, as they are the ones most poorly managed.
But in the long run, the stronger ones that are willing to adjust to the new technology and economic realities of the industry will survive.
It won’t look the same, it won’t work the same, but it WILL provide people with what they want – news, entertainment and local goings on, in a format and in a media that they want it in. Whether they will pay for it directly or through some unknown mechanism, who knows? But the economic void WILL get filled.
http://adage.com/globalnews/article?article_id=142319
people are going to pay…and surprise…they already are