Monday, August 4, 2008
Al Diamon
Welcome to the Web.
Now, Pay Up
Free is bad: “One of the major reasons, I believe, for declining readership of newspapers is simple: they’re giving away their product on the web.”
Who said that? The same guy who said this:
“This has had the effect of devaluing the newspaper’s product. What used to have an intrinsic value that you could only get by plunking down a few quarters is now worthless, even in the eyes of its owners and publishers. Every day is like Portland’s annual heavy-item trash pick-up day — it’s all right there, free for the taking.”
These quotes come from an entry posted in May on the blog of Dennis Bailey, public-relations guru, spokesman for the possible purchasers of the Blethen Maine Newspapers and – who knew? – blogger.
Bailey writes that papers should limit their sites to headlines, requiring payment from online readers before they can get the full story.
Yeah, that sounds as if it would work.
In 1998.
Worthless is bad: Trying to figure out why the Blethens are having so much trouble selling their papers in Maine? Check out this New York Times analysis (don’t worry, it’s still free) of the declining value of newspaper companies nationwide.
To understand how the Blethens fit in to this mess, check out Bill Richards’ excellent report on the latest implications from Seattle at Crosscut.com.
It won’t be long before you’ll be receiving e-mails from Nigerian princes promising to sell you an entire newspaper chain if you just send them $700. At that price, the offer might even be legitimate.
Criticism is bad: On July 31, Dan Billings, a Republican political activist and columnist for the Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel, sent an e-mail to the Times Record in Brunswick concerning a headline in the previous day’s paper that read “Treasurer anticipates slim return on $20M.”
“As someone who closely follows developments in Augusta, I took the headline to mean that State Treasurer David Lemoine had somehow recouped the $20 million in tax dollars that he invested last summer in a mortgage-backed fund that became valueless overnight,” Billings wrote. “A slim return means a return of principle plus some earnings …. However, once I read the story by Victoria Wallack, it became clear that the headline was false. As of June 30th, Lemoine's $20 million investment of our money was estimated to be worth only $7 million. If Maine's share of the fund was sold today, Maine taxpayers would lose $13 million. How can a $13 million loss, be called a ‘slim return’?”
Seems like a legitimate point, one worthy of, at the least, a clarification. That, however, was not the Times Record’s response. Instead Billings got this e-mail from Robert Long, the paper’s opinion page editor:
“Dan: It's our practice not to publish submissions from those who regularly write columns for competing newspapers. Unless you have severed your relationship
with the Kennebec Journal, we would not print this submission. I do appreciate that you took the time to write, though.”
Odd policy. Particularly when it’s employed to avoid dealing with an error.
Al Diamon can be e-mailed at aldiamon@herniahill.net.
Posted on Monday, August 4, 2008 in Permalink
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Reader Comments:
Dennis Bailey isn't the only with the pay-for-content theory. David Simon, a former Baltimore Sun reporter and producer of the HBO series "The Wire", feels the same way. Here's Simon's January op-ed from the Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/18/AR2008011802874.html
Perhaps Bailey and Simon are living in the past, but their argument isn't without merit. If readers indeed value the news, then why give it away? Consider all the incessant whining on AMG and pressingtheherald about the PPH's recent website problems. The PPH's newsgathering may be a joke right now, but people clearly still rely on it for the news. Perhaps there's a way to profit from that need that doesn't include devaluing the PPH's last remaining asset - bringing the news.
There are occassionally things of value in PPH but that is rare. That's why I don't buy the print version as a whole. The value is not there. If the paper required a fee to read any of their online articles, I would seek out that news elsewhere rather than paying for it. If the news is out there, someone will post it somewhere for free. The better way to make money is through advertising on your website and cutting costs.
Talk to the Sun Journal and Village Soup about their efforts to collect money to read the news from online audiences.
Free online sites are not the problem. Papers have been losing readers long before the Internets.
"If the paper required a fee to read any of their online articles, I would seek out that news elsewhere rather than paying for it."
- You're right in those instances that there's actually an elsewhere. The Forecaster is a fine paper, but it only publishes weekly and it doesn't have the resources to consistently cover the State House or conduct investigative journalism. The Bollard is irrelevant unless you're into agenda-based journalism (an oxymoron if there ever was one) or the wedding engagements of Portland city councilors.
I'm not saying charging for content is viable. It's probably too late for that. But what if the paper actually did put out a more valuable product by, say, actually covering local news?
What all the commentors are missing is that newspapers have a bigger audience than ever. The Press Herald between the print edition and online combined have more readers than they have ever had. The problem is structural as no one has figured out how to replace the revenue lost due to the thinning print audience with the low revenue producing Web sites. Part of the problem, no doubt, is that newspaper owners got use to 25-30 percent margins. But the immediate result is that media is laying off more and more of the newsgathers and reporters, killing the product. Whatever anyone thinks of any of the news products in the state, everyone likely can agree that less people watching and reporting is not the answer and is bad for democracy at-large.
Al, you didn't quote me accurately. What I said was that newspapers made a mistake in the early days of the Internet by giving away their content for free on the web and now it's probably too late to go back. I said a paid site couldn't possibly work unless, one, you had something worth paying for, and two, all newspapers started charging, otherwise all the traffic would go to the free sites. I doubt that will happen. On the other hand, the current media business model has to change if newspapers are going to continue to be viable and profitable.
Anyway, glad to know someone is reading my blog.
Dennis
"But the immediate result is that media is laying off more and more of the newsgathers and reporters, killing the product. Whatever anyone thinks of any of the news products in the state, everyone likely can agree that less people watching and reporting is not the answer and is bad for democracy at-large."
Count me among those who agree.