Bad news for newspapers, great news for journalism
A few weeks ago Rupert Murdoch announced News Corp new sites would begin charging for content in the near future.
“Quality journalism is not cheap,” Mr Murdoch said. “An industry that gives away its content is simply cannibalising its ability to produce good reporting.”
The Punch (owned by News Corp) looked at the issue of paid content with a few pieces, one by Paul Colgan Psst, Twitter: You might want to help save Big Media, another by Leslie Nassar (better known as fake Stephen Conroy) Not all media dinosaurs have small brains and some comment from UTS journalism students about how they see the future of journalism.
David Penberthy also asked readers if they would pay for content.
Of the 177 comments (at the time I wrote this) on the Punch thread, most people say they would NOT pay for content, and Penberthy conceded that “we don’t have the answers,” which is probably why he asked the question in the first place. Still I think it’s an honest admission, because nobody knows if paid content will work.
Of course the argument for paid content is about defending commercial news organisations and not journalism. Problem is the two aren’t mutually exclusive anymore.
For starters, it excludes the competition from government subsidised media – SBS and ABC - who probably can’t wait for News Corp and Fairfax to start charging for their content. A senior news person at SBS told me just yesterday that he “WANTS those sites to charge!” – not because he believes in paid content, he doesn’t, but because it certainly brightens his future.
James Murdoch (son of Rupert), made a similar, but misguided, point on the weekend with regard to the BBC saying that it inhibited the ability of commercial competitors to invest in news and implied it could put newspapers out of business. But News Corporation (of which James is chairman and chief executive) has only increased the threat of sites like the BBC and even ABC and SBS by deciding to put its content behind a paywall. The issue is not about good journalism, which the BBC, ABC and SBS have proved they can do well online, but about saving “Big Media” (a point Colgan made in the heading of his Punch piece.)
The question then is what is the value proposition of news sites like theage.com.au, smh.com.au and news.com.au. What can they do better than anyone else? The answer in their CURRENT form is not much. That’s exactly why most people would not be willing to pay for what they can essentially find elsewhere for free. Quite simply their product isn’t good enough. This isn’t bad news for journalism.
The issue of paid content has led to some internal questions about ways news organisations can better what they offer their readers. And if news sites had any doubts about how they are “valued” by their readers, I think the Punch comments should go someway in cementing the fact that it’s not very high.
It’s not all bad news though.
I think there is commercial value in a number of niche sites that news rooms are still in a strong position, in Australia at least, to make an impact on. Advertising has proved successful on a number of these sites overseas – advertising is highly relevant to their audiences, which means a higher CPM (the current ad standard of measuring per thousand impressions). And because I could never imagine doing it any better, I think the Niche Manifesto is one of the best pieces written on this area, in fact on media. Ever. Read it.
As Umair Haque so eloquently puts it:
“The 21st century’s great challenge isn’t selling the same old “product” better: it’s learning to make radically better stuff in the first place.”
As for whether paid content will work or not remains to be seen. There is still the question about the ethics of it. And journalists do like bang that drum when they need to.
Do we really want a world where knowledge is a privilege for a few willing and able to pay for content? Don’t we all have the right to be informed? A point BBC business editor Robert Preston made earlier this year when he asked whether it was desirable we have news only available to those who will pay for it.
Free online news has increased our democratic value, why would we the Fourth Estate want to take that right to be informed away from us now? What are we protecting ? Journalism or big media?
Disclaimer: I’ve written a few pieces for The Punch. I don’t get paid, which only adds a whole new layer of irony. As long as people are willing to produce good content for free, news organisations are stuffed. I’ll save that for another day 
The reason why a lot of people wouldn’t pay for news is that a lot of what constitutes news nowadays is frankly just crap. Most news is just fluff; titillating filler material to fill up the space around advertising. Once you take out all the celebrity gossip, bizarre (but frankly inconsequential) crimes and devastating (but frankly not extraordinary) natural events then what you’re usually left with is a lot of slightly interesting but largely irrelevant international news stories and if you’re lucky one or two stories that are actually pertinent to you in your locality.
I’ll pay for news the day that a newspaper editor throws his or her hands in the air and says that there’s no newspaper today because there’s nothing newsworthy.
So you recommend turning to journalists and saying ”the answer to your problem is simple. Don’t ask people to pay for your product. Just produce much better stuff, for less money”.
Right, that sounds like the perfect solution???
Quality journalism is still out there if you look for it, and teh vast majority of it is done by salaried journalists.
Someone’s got to pay those salaries, else that journalism will go away. Smart journos can always find better jobs – most often they jump the fence to the burgeoning ranks of ‘consultancy’ or private and public sector PR, dedicated to manipulating the non-quality media in order to get biased messages into the public sphere.
Quality written journalism was paid for by classified ads,display ads and the cover price.
The cover price didn’t even cover the cost of the dead trees it was printed on, let alone the factory producing it and the army of trucks and newsagents distributing it. So theoretically we should be better off online.
But classifieds have divorced themselves from journalism online, and display ads are diluted by the vast array of other forms of online content they can attach themselves to.
A pay wall is a way of making up the difference. If it doesn’t work (and I admit, it doesn’t look likely), and we can’t find any other revenue model, we will end up with the ABC and SBS as the only quality news producers.
From the outside, that might not sound like a bad thing. But from the inside, I can tell you it means you will get a small fraction of the amount of quality news that you currently get. You cannot cut the number of professional journalists by nine-tenths (or more) and not get a big hit in quality and quantity.
SBS might be happy… until they realise how much harder a full news report is without print media leading the way (and, incidentally, helping pay for the wire services that provide much of the international news feed).
So the theme of your piece is sort of wrong. Pay walls may not be the answer. But if the alternative is the death of major news organisations that produce quality content, then that is most definitely BAD news for journalism.
“So you recommend turning to journalists and saying ”the answer to your problem is simple. Don’t ask people to pay for your product. Just produce much better stuff, for less money”.”
No Nick, that’s not it at all. Rather, it is this: if you’re going to expect people to pay for your product, it has to be better than the average. It’s all about value perception. AFR gets away (presumably) with charging for their content because readers perceive it as of higher value than the rest.
Seems to me these days mostly what you pay for in print media is opinion – Reuters, and AAP do all the journalism, everyone else embellishes that. I suspect the result is will be that people will only pay for the opinion they agree with, or value. For example, you’d have more luck paying me to read Andrew Bolt than expecting me to pay to read him.
As for James Murdoch winging about the BBC, my heart bleeds for you mate!
It’s clearly about protecting big media. This is such a simple situation for which economic models were developed centuries ago. ‘The barriers to entry will determine the level of competition’. The barriers in media are gone forever. And so the competitive advantage of large media ‘which was capital infrastructure costs’ is also gone. They will go the direction of the buggy whip. end of story. This will only be compounded once our TV’s are all hooked up to the internet – in which case I’ll never watch a FTA program again. I can watch Ted talks, documentaries and anything I desire.
Journalism will live in a micro format with niche content which people will pay for directly or via specific tailored advertising.
Good night big media, I hope you enjoyed your stay.
Love Stevie.
Richtea: ”Reuters, and AAP do all the journalism, everyone else embellishes that.”
- I don’t know where you got this idea, but I think you must be reading the wrong newspapers because it’s so wrong as to be absurd. If anything it’s exactly the opposite. I often spend all day (or a week, or a month) writing and researching a story, then the next day the wires rip it off the web, rewrite the top, and don’t even check with my original sources to make sure I was right! The wires do this in the morning, then rewrite press releases or regurgitate press conferences during the day. I don’t think that’s a bright future for journalism (not to mention: who pays for the wire services? Big media)
Steve: ”Journalism will live in a micro format with niche content which people will pay for directly”
If this was true, then gradually those niches would be gathered together under a big media umbrella, and we’d be back where we started. What would be missing? Political coverage? Police and emergency services? Transport? Social affairs? Will all these niches add up to a society that’s as well informed as this one, or less so?
If you check the stats in Australia Fairfax and News corp have it all tied up SBS gets no where near the traffic these two get, which should tell you something.
I wouldn’t say SBS or ABC are producing cutting edge stuff (follow the BBC is the motto I think) in fact I would say the offering in Australia overall is of a poor standard when put up against timesonline, guardian or the independent just three papers off the top of my head. If these brands choose to charge people will pay.
The brand it self is prestigious and people rightly or wrongly want to be associated with those brands. How many people do you reckon are quoting this blog saying “oh well it was in the bronwenclune.com” no one. It costs commercial operators a lot of money to keep those brands running and they want those cost covered you can’t blame them for that.
You also forget to mention that SBS, ABC and BBC are government owed so have a lot of restrictions on what they can and can’t publish and also how it is published.
Paying for content will happen, a matter of when not if. It will have a huge effect on the Australian market as people look for value in their subscriptions so Fairfax and News Ltd will need to lift their game as the market switches from local to international.
Expect the ABC to do what they do best local news and SBS will niche in with their minority news and minority sport. Fairfax and Murdoch will carve up the rest.
As for bloggers like yourself you just don’t have the reach to compete in fact I would say you will go backwards. After all, who are you?
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