Posts tagged newspapers
Sonsabitches Stole My Idea
In today’s news: News Corp confirms tablet publication is close
Ok, I probably wasn’t the first human on the planet to come up with the idea for an application-only publication (though I think it’s premature to limit the app just to tablets right now), but I think what pisses me off the most is the fact that it’s News Corp that’s the first big media company to jump on it.
Why? Because if they screw it up (and knowing Rupert Murdoch’s cluelessness in new media, there’s a good chance they will), it will set back app publication development as a whole.
So this puts me in the uncomfortable position of actually cheering for News Corp, a fact that brings about a nausea similar to the one brought about by the thought of Murdoch’s creepy old man hands all over a shiny new iPad.
Thoughts?
The Next Newspaper will be an App
NOTE: I wrote this in September 2010, right after the launch of the iPad, long before the iPad 2, Galaxy Tab, Kindle Fire, etc. had made this prediction a reality. Um, I told you so?
The dominant trend for mainstream news and magazines has overwhelmingly been paper —> website —> app (or occasionally website —> app for newer media organizations) for the past few years. The problem with this model, other than the obvious lack of ability for these organizations to find a way to generate revenue online, is that rather than eliminating a previous platform when making the switch to something newer, the content is simply replicated across the different platforms. Worst of all, one or two of the platforms charge for access to the content, while the other one or two offer the exact same content for free.
But what if we got rid of those first two steps, and simply began a media source* as an app?
A media entity that starts as an app is unencumbered by the burden of “free”. It was never free to begin with, so there is no initial gut aversion from the public. But more importantly, it ends the disconnect between customer and content, because when readers pay for what they’re reading, there is no longer room or need for advertisers to worm their way into that relationship; the editors and writers once again work to please readers, not corporate overlords.
The concept of in-app purchases is becoming accepted as a way to pay a fair price for new or additional content to an existing product. In fact, there are already whole categories of apps (comic book companies, for one) where this is the norm. A couple of media outlets (McSweeny’s is the first that comes to mind) are doing this already. So why can’t media apps work this way, in which they are initially bought for free or for a very low price, and every day or week or month a new “issue” of content is available to pay for and download within the app. It could be tied to an email system that informs subscribers that a new issue is ready for download, or entices casual readers to purchase the issue by giving a small preview of what’s inside.
The beauty of this system is that it would eliminate the need for both print and online versions.
Granted, for this to become reality, several things must happen:
- iPads and similar devices must become ubiquitous.
- App development must become either easy enough for a non-developer to handle, or app development apps, if you will, must become ubiquitous.
- Apps must be made cross-platform by default, just as websites can be opened in a variety of browsers and most programs are made for several operating systems. OS limits can only harm media apps.
- Our concept of “app” needs to change completely, from being a pretty icon on a phone screen with limited use to being part of an overall system. iOS4’s folder organization is definitely a step in that direction.
My guess is that it will be at least five years before these conditions are met - or at least enough of these conditions are in place so that slowly but surely media organizations can once again see a profit. But with any luck, the iPad and whatever devices follow will allow for a renaissance of quality journalism.
Hey, a girl can dream.
*I’m hesitant to use the words “magazine” or “newspaper”, even though that’s still the closest approximation. Perhaps a fifth condition should be the invention of a new word to describe these new forms of media.
“ TV can offer live pictures of an event (and local stations were on the scene quickly on Wednesday), and newspapers can provide context and fact-checking, but for raw speed and real-time eyewitness accounts, it’s now virtually impossible for the mainstream media to keep pace with the likes of Twitter.”
Twitter breaks story on Discovery Channel gunman James Lee
I might be a little late on this, but can we say that September 2nd, 2010 is the day that the newspaper died?
RIP printed news, you were a resilient little bugger, but your time has passed.
“ We’ll have young people reading newspapers,” the 79-year-old Murdoch said during the company’s Aug. 4 earnings call. “It’s a real game changer in the presentation of news.”
Media: News Corp. plans national newspaper for tablet computers and cellphones - latimes.com
While I think the idea overall is a good one, this quote sums up just how out of touch Murdoch et all are. A device such as the iPad allows for something much more than just a newspaper, but as long as Murdoch (or whoever is in charge) views it as just a new way to deliver the same product, the news industry as a whole will suffer.
The question those at the top should be asking is, “What’s the best way to deliver top-quality journalism utilizing the available technology,” not, “How do we put our newspapers on these shiny new devices so the kids will think it’s hip?”
So far, only Wired’s got it right.
“ But even Lester, who is keen on the idea of getting paid £5 each for the 30 or so new bands he listens to each day, reluctantly has to concede that the site looks “incredibly tacky”. In response to complaints from journalists, the list of publications has replaced a list of individuals. As James Sherry, a rock PR, puts it, having a price next to your name is “really not a good look”. If bands are in desperate need of good PR, perhaps freelance journalists need it even more.”
Website pays music journalists to review bands | Media | The Guardian
Very telling article, but perhaps an even more important part is a comment by the Guardian’s film and music editor:
However, budgets are tight here and I am no longer able to use freelance album reviewers (all our reviewers are either on staff, or have contracts to write for the Guardian). That means I have lost some specialist knowledge - where once I would commission Alex Macpherson to review UK urban and R&B, or Angus Batey to review hip-hop, those options are no longer open to me.
One of the greatest losses to modern journalism is the death of the specialized journalist, now confined to infinite Blogspot fan blogs (in the case of music journalists) or the unemployment office in the rest of the business.
As for the actual subject of the article, this is not the least bit shocking for someone with any experience in the music business. Hype begets hype, and every band is hoping that by some miracle the right influential journo will fall in love with their basement-recorded, CDR masterpiece. But realistically, there’s no chance for that to happen anymore, due to the sheer volume of music being produced every second.
So I don’t blame bands who are turning to this method, as shady as it seems. I do, however, blame the industry for not having a better filtering process in place.
“ My admittedly strange opinion is that we need to try harder with print. We can’t just give up on it. Inevitably there will be some loss of newspaper readership, but even that will stabilize. Not everyone wants all their news online. Do we all want to look at screens from 8am to 10pm? There’s room in the world for both online and paper. It doesn’t have to be zero-sum. I guess that’s one of the things that’s always frustrating to hear, that the rise of the Internet means the death of print. There’s always this zero-sum way of painting any given industry or trend, while the reality will be more nuanced. I think newspapers that adjust a bit will survive and still do great work. But we do need to give people reasons to pay money for the physical object. The landscape right now does require that we in the print world try harder. We have to think of the things that print does best, and do those things better than ever before. We need to use the paper, maximize the physical product.”
Maybe because I’m involved in both worlds, but again and again I can’t help but grasp the parallels between the music industry and the newspaper industry. Like in this quote by Dave Eggers, I can clearly see one way the latter can go.
Mp3s did not kill the CD. Hell, the CD didn’t even kill vinyl like everyone said it would. Sure, sales of both have gone down, which was inevitable when a non-material format was introduced that could be replicated indefinitely for free. But people buy vinyl for the sound, buy CDs for the artwork, buy either because they’re collectors or because they want to get the band’s autographs at the concert or for any number of reasons that translate to sales of physical products.
The same can be said for newspapers and books. How many people bought a copy of their local paper the day Obama was elected? Hell, mine is still hanging over my desk at work. How many people buy a new copy of a book they already own because a new edition has come out with a different cover and new forward by the author? Maybe not enough to single-handedly keep the industry afloat, but enough to ensure that print will not simply disappear overnight.
Like the obsessive record collector with shelves of alphabetically arranged vinyls, the obsessive bookworm will continue purchasing books. The obsessive news junkie will keep savoring the daily trip to the newsstand. But the industries need to adapt to a model when these people are a minority, not the majority. They need to be profitable, to be able pay musicians and journalists and editors based on a digital model, while still producing the physical objects for those who want to purchase them. It’s never going to be black or white, print or digital - the model needs to encompass both, but in different degrees than it has ever done before in the past.
I read John Hersey’s Hiroshima cover to cover tonight. It perfectly exemplifies what good journalism should be: a total immersion in the subject, full of detail, and presenting facts as necessary ingrediants of the main story, not sprinkled on top as a forced seasoning like so many writers mistakingly do.
This century needs this kind of writing just as much as the previous one did; but Hersey wrote about Hiroshima by going to Hiroshima, not by reading about it on Wikipedia. Without the funds to travel, to spend weeks or months absorbed in a single topic, rather than quickly churning out story after story in an increasingly hopeless attempt to raise advertising revenue, journalists will adjust to these ever-lower standards, and quality will be the first victim.
And maybe the next time a bomb is dropped, the world may twitter about it, but will anyone actually take the time to examine just how and why it happened?
“ But no one yet has unlocked the puzzle of supporting a large newsroom purely on digital revenue, a fact that may presage an era of news organizations that are smaller, weaker and less able to fulfill their traditional function as the nation’s watchdog.”
For Papers, a Downsizing Trickle Becomes a Flood - NYTimes.com
Continuing on this topic, the only viable solution for the survival of newspapers is microcharging.
Solely relying on ad revenue to run a newspaper is not only unprofitable (and obviously not working), but it is damaging to the entire industry, as editors are forced to please the advertisers rather than please (and inform) the public.
Despite appearances, people will pay (a fair price) for good journalism. We need to return to a model of payment for quality, rather than an expectation of things being free or for the “common good”. The only rational way to do this on the Internet is to start charging readers a fair and reasonable rate, either on a per-article basis, or on a subscription basis, the same way one could subscribe to a newspaper or buy one that day.
I’d even go as far as saying that the current print/online model should be reversed: print should be free, while online content should be paid for. After all, what’s more valuable? The printed paper, while great to touch and smell and hold over coffee, is still discarded daily. If you want to share an article with your friend, you have to physically bring them your issue of the paper (or much more likely, find the same article online and e-mail it to them). If you want to find an old article, you have to dig through your trash pile, unless it’s already gone. Whereas online, everything is archived, everything is sharable with a few clicks, and those using an article for research can copy and paste a quote straight into their essay, no re-typing necessary. If newspapers were to make enough to cover their costs entirely from their online readers, they could print a set number of physical newspapers as a kind of marketing tool, in the hopes that someone who picks up a free copy of their paper at the grocery store will eventually become an online subscriber.
The main obstacle to this model that I foresee is the mp3 phenomenon: people find a way to share content for free (and copy-pasting text is much easier than ripping a CD). But the solution to this is the iTunes model - make the articles so affordable that trying to get them for free seems unnecessary. Also, just as music fans understand that by buying an artist’s album, they are supporting them and allowing them to continue to make music, readers would understand that by paying for articles, they are supporting journalists and newspapers as a whole, and allowing them to continue to present objective journalism that is unhindered by a need to please advertisers/cater to the lowest common denominator.
a failure of society
It’s very easy to blame the American media for the failure of democracy that resulted in the past eight years; I’ve done that myself many times. But that’s only grasping a glimpse of the problem, and not the whole picture.
A properly functioning democracy relies on a well-informed public; the journalistic community exists to inform that public. It’s easy to say that the public is mostly full of idiots that do not want to be informed, but that’s also looking at a fraction of the puzzle.
The real problem lies in the fact that the journalistic community is tied to the same market forces as normal businesses. It means that a journalist’ first job becomes to sell papers/get network ratings up, when it should be to fuction as a check on the government’s actions. This is an elementary failure of our society, and if it is not corrected it will lead to its downfall.
Newspapers rely on advertisers’ money to survive; television news relies on ratings. Both have been steadily losing credibility over the years as their commercial aspects have been more and more emphasized.
The Internet, meanwhile, began with a lack of credibility, but as people begin to lose faith in traditional media, it has quickly gained ground. With the comparitavely lower costs of Internet journalism, this could easily become a viable alternative with the right organizational structure that checks for credibility. The only thing that’s missing now is the right filter…
