Journalists! Now is the time to start your own news site.
Confusing their need for income with a desire among customers to pay for content, the papers are about to hand over their audiences following the lead of the Dirty Digger.
They made you and you friends redundant, they froze your pay, they made you write umpteen stories a day during 12-hour shifts in increasingly empty newsrooms. And all the while they creamed off ludicrous profits. Now they want the online reader to foot the bill.
It’s an enormous mistake but it’s great news for the future of journalism.
Murdoch’s wrong because everything about the net is moving towards sharing and the free movement of content. Hiding content behing barriers simply ignores how most people access it.
Murdoch, Lionel Barber and the other pro-chargers assume that because they need a lot of money that people will pay to access news and comment online. But that’s not how life works. Something is only worth what people will pay for it.
Charging for news has alwyas been bonkers. How can you put a barrier round “Lord Jones is dead”? It is instantly, immediately copiable without contravening any known or possible copyright laws.
In essence, the problem is that of Spotify vs iTunes. Spotify lets you listen to unlimited amounts of music from a vast playlist. It’s free but the catch is you don’t get to download or keep any of it. If you want to own it, you need to hop onto iTunes and buy a download.
The problem is that online news and comment is like most music on Spotify – you access it once and walk away. Unlike with music, though, there are very, very few news or comment items that you would pay to keep for ever.
However, news media companies do have access to a suite of products that people will pay to keep – and that are more suited than the web to the presentation of all that high-quality fabby content that the moguls have been boasting of: print.
You see, it’s not the online products that are broken: it’s the print ones. Just because large numbers of readers don’t like the one size fits all version doesn’t mean that that’s it for print. And it doesn’t mean they’re suddenly going to want to pay for material online.
So what’s the good news for journalism?
Well, when J Arthur Reader pops online to enquire after the health of Lord Jones, what will he do when he sees that all the “Lord Jones is dead” stories from the mainstream news organisations are behind payment barriers? Will he A) get out his chequebook or B) read the story for free somewhere else?
And what is to stop journalists from setting up their own nimble news enterprises to supply that free news? (Sure there’s the BBC but it can’t do attitude or opinion.) These specialist enterpises would have no legacy costs and which could make use of targeted print products to boost revenue. They could even co-operate with other non-competing enterprises to buy back-room services (ad sales, printing, IT).
When the big boys shoot themselves in the foot, it’s a great time to challenge them to a race.
12 Responses to Start your news site now – thanks to Murdoch
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Isn’t there (also) room for innovation away from commodity news? When you ask:
“Well, when J Arthur Reader pops online to enquire after the health of Lord Jones, what will he do when he sees that all the “Lord Jones is dead” stories from the mainstream news organisations are behind payment barriers?”
isn’t the obvious answer either (i) the BBC or (ii) the news agencies, in the long run? If so – and I think the answer to this is inevitably yes – then the titles telling me something others can’t, or won’t, will hold all the cards. And one of those cards will be the ability to ask a user to pay for the intelligence they offer.
That, of course, may be easier said than done. But it’s already happening in financial journalism, and could happen elsewhere. It just takes imagination – which today’s religious free vs. paid debate lacks.
another interesting piece. News has to be v specialist (like the FT’s, say) for anyone to stump up and, like music even more so, is immensely pirate-able (if that’s a word)
I’d like to hear calgacus’s thoughts on Guardian online v Observer. The Guardian will have to take a hefty hit on the bill for at least one of them. but which?
I just realised I don’t need to call you Calgacus, Stewart. Your name’s at top of the page. D’oh!
@completetosh: the problem with facts and intelligence is that they have no inherent value once published.
They can be quickly communicated by people who have paid to those that have not. Once you have the key facts, will you still pay to read the original?
Take a niche interest as an example, I regularly read HibeesBounce.com for news of a certain football team. I’ll scan that for interesting headlines (“Ronaldo: Tortolano was my inspiration”). As it is I rarely click on the original sources. If there was a payment barrier I never would -I’d just pick up the gist from the discussion thread.
All of which brings us to opinion and comment – lengthy pieces which are better suited to print than reading online.
As for GK Chesterton’s headline, I think there’s a commercial opportunity around option (iii) small, free, specialist sites that are better written than agencies, more opinionated than the Beeb and free of the costs that make charging attractive.
My problem with charging is that it’s all to do with the producers and pays no attention to market demand.
@ Johnnnie: The Graun would be mad to soft-pedal on Guardian Unlimited (a lot whose success can be credited to Mr Tosh above). But they’d also be mad to shut the Observer.
They’re on the right lines when they talk about changing the print product but they need to realise that part of the future lies in putting various Observers in the news agent, not one print product. They should also conserve the print version that’s being bought by tens of thousands of people right now.
yes, it’s interesting that when you see a piece by Nick Cohen or Obs news story or, say, a piece by AA Gill in the Sunday Times, it goes straight under guardianunlimited or timesonline respectively. no wonder the Sundays’ identity gets a little lost. The Observer and Sun Times need stronger online identity, don’t they? as well as the various Observers of which you speak. Obs Music Monthly, and Sport, could be newstand products if beefed up.
Do the premium subscription articles on the Scotsman make much income?
@ Wes Mantooth: It’s been a long time since I left The Hootsmon so I don’t know. When I was there the strong impression we had from our first experiments with charging was that we’d have made more money from dropping the barrier and getting ad revenue from the increased traffic. That was years and years ago, tho, and I have no idea what the numbers are now.
Stewart, I suppose a good indicator is the lack of comments on the subscription articles, apart from the few dribblers, who acknowledge they divine the gist of the article from a few sentences, there are rarely any comments on them, therefore few subscribers, presumably.
One senses that Murdoch has been waiting ages to apply standard business practise to online news and start charging. I think you’re right and more journos should turn their skills to their own blawgs/newsfeeds.
forargyll.com being the perfect example of an independent press concerned with local issues.
[...] does this have to do with online news? Well Stewart Kirkpatrick, Shaun Milne, Iain Bruce have all had their stab at the recent chat over paywalls. They think [...]
Oh dear.
This whole argument simply makes me want to weep.
More opinion. Just what the world needs to replace the kind of journalism that used to hold various ne’er do wells to account.
Because, as David Simon (ex of the Baltimore Sun) has pointed out, your average “citizen journalist” or opinion peddler is hardly going to get out of their jammies to go and knock doors, challenge officialdomw or do the other difficult/unpleasant/time-consuming/boring/risky grunt work that is the bedrock of good journalism.
Free news is great – as long as it is free news worth having.
Just how long will it be worth having if the choice comes down to either state-funded BBC – or unchecked opinion from a bedroom activist (no matter how pretty their turn of phrase)?
Up to a point, Lord Copper. As long as it’s not cash point, eh?
Ah, yes. User generated content, How very 2008. Not a big part of what I’m suggesting, you’ll notice…