Sour Alba

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.

Gordon Brown’s troubled premiership last night suffered another blow with the news that a Chocolate Teapot was distancing itself from the Prime Minister “for the sake of its reputation”.

Sources close to the cacao-based container said it was “deeply concerned” about its standing within British politics if it continued to be associated with the Brown regime. 

This shock defection follows a slew of similar movs by key figures, including:

• One Legged Man at an Arse-kicking Competition
• Inflatable Dartboard
• Spare Prick at a Wedding

Friends of the PM moved to play down the split, saying: “I, uh, I mean the Primer Minister sees this as an opportunity to promote thrusting, new talent such as a Catflap in a Submarine and Fart in a Wind Tunnel.”

The row overshadowed an attempt by Mr Brown to defy his critics by organising a piss-up in a brewery – an event which featured a range of beverages supplied by the Temperance Society.

An earlier attempt to find his own arse with both hands and a map floundered due to a compass error.

 I’ve just hotfooted (hotfeet?) from BBC Scotland’s Politics Show where I chewed the fact about the future of Scottish papers. If you’re reading this before 1 March you can watch it on iPlayer. (I’m at 80 minutes in.)

I was pleasantly surprised to find myself agreeing almost totally with John McGurk about the net and the importance of “distinctive content”. He and I crossed swords many times over just these issues when he was managing editor at Scotsman Publications and sales figures loomed large in his mind.

Those figures have been brought into sharp relief by the departure of Mike Gilson through the revolving door of The Scotsman’s editor’s office.

On a personal level, I like Mike but it’s hard to be positive about his record.

He was parachuted in from a local newspaper in southern England. He was Johnston Press’s man. Like others at JP he can be accused of not understanding The Scotsman, thinking it was the Edinburgh Morning News. The paper is demonstrably poor. And, of course, sales collapsed to the tune of 14,000 sales.

However, this is far from the full story. Mike had many strong points. He was an enthusiastic editor and an imaginative journalist. He was the ninth to sit in the editor’s chair since I joined the paper in 1995. He was by no means the worst or even the second worst to occupy that bloodstained perch.

Those sales figures cannot be laid solely at Mike’s door. To support this assertion I would point to Johnston Press’s impact scotsman.com, which I edited for seven years. Thanks to the team I worked with, we built it up to be one of Google News’s top sites worldwide, a multi-award winner, 4 million users a month, blah, blah, blah.

But then JP got rid of the team, ditched the lovingly crafted site and imposed their own one, better suited to the Craphampton Argus than our huge international audience. Unique users have halved. 

My defence of Mike is based largely on this. As JP’s short-sightedness did to the websites so it did to the resources that the editor of the paper had at his disposal.

And unsurprisingly when you cut costs, sales fall. Unfortunately, that process will continue under the new ubereditor, John McLellan. This is no reflection on John. He’s a very strong choice. A shrewd, instinctive news man, he has been at TSPL since shortly after the relief of Mafeking. He has a gut feel for the readers. And he has for a long time been the most web-friendly editor at Barclay Towers. Also in the editorial hierarchy he has Tom Little and Ian Stewart, two talented stalwarts who *gasp* have more than a passing acquaintance with the TSPL products.

If anyone can make the (much denied) seven-day model work in practical terms, it’s these guys. Former Marine Ian Stewart’s been shot at, getting subs to work an extra couple of shifts won’t be much of a trial.  But in quality terms the move is a disaster – as is the Record’s similar move. Even Citizen Kane couldn’t save that situation.

It doesn’t take a genius to work out that making the product weaker does not make it more attractive to the customer.

The Scotsman is dying. So is The Herald. Here are some notes towards a plan to save them – and all newspapers. I’d like to see a consortium to put this into practice and save Scotland’s native, quality, national press for the nation. This isn’t born out of delusion but rather a few discussions I’ve had with like-minded senior journalists who believe that the money can be raised and that this is last chance to save these two titles.

All hail the New Media Company Generator – a worthy successor to the almost prophetic Web Economy Bullshit Generator. (I know companies that really do “exploit viral markets” and “scale robust communities”.)

The wickedly observed company generator came up with ThirstyBadger, which on the while I like better than w00tonomy.

It’s 18 months since I left scotsman.com. I knew the new Johnston Press redesign was, to put it very, very, mildly, unworthy to lick the boots of the 2001-2007 model.

I also knew that traffic would tank. I warned Tim Bowlder, the JP chief executive, of this face to face saying the JP redesign would lose “millions of page views and hundreds of thousands of users”. My warning was ignored and a JP apparatchik later explained that I had not understood how good their plans were.

Well, we can finally see how good their plans were. Audited traffic figures for scotsman.com have finally escaped into the light of day. According to ABCe, the site I edited for seven years now gets about 2 million unique users a month.

I have made a return to newspapers of sorts. My agency, w00tonomy, has formed an alliance with Palmer Watson, one of the world’s leading newspaper design agencies.

Our expertise in online content will help them move into the field of newspaper websites while their knowledge of how design can maximise the appeal of words and pictures adds to our offering to our clients.

I’m still shaking my head over the American Press Institute’s announcement of a closed-door, invitation-only emergency meeting of only CEO-level newspaper executives to, in the words of E&P “ponder ways to revive the newspaper business.”
This is the last thing the newspaper industry needs. First, these are the very same proprietors of the newspaper industry’s decline. [...]

Treehouse Media Project has unveiled a manifesto for embittered journos everywhere. (Thanks to Irish-Swedish internet guru Mark Comerford for flagging this up.) Let me give you a flavour with this superbly passionate line:

Laid off? Bought out? Pissed off? Or just overworked because you’re one of the “lucky” ones still working for the walking corpse that is the daily newspaper? Join us, the diaspora, as we work to recapture the joy and passion of our noble profession.

The project has a noble aim: equipping journalists with the entrepreneurial skills to survive in a Web 2.0 world. It’s right: we should go it alone. But it strikes a bum note for me by starting off its homepage with “F*** Google. F*** Craig’s List.”

Even if this is just a come-hither to embittered hacks, it’s a mistake. Google, Craig’s List and other changes to online advertising give us the tools to be free.

Message to journalists everywhere: The internet is not the enemy, your employer’s business model is.

The internet will last. Big newspaper companies that screw profits out of cowed staff and unsophisticated advertisers are doomed.

Good.

F*** ‘em. Not Google. Not Craig’s List. F*** big media. They deserve to die. They have betrayed our sacred calling. And everyone who’s really a journalist in their hearts, guts and gonads will water their graves in the only way we know how – on the way home from the pub.

I’m inspired by Treehouse’s manifesto. And its prompted me to begin my own. But it’s not a manifesto. It’s a business plan. And while its mired in the net up to its oxters it still has that sickly sweet smell of printer’s ink.

Oh yes, print.

Print’s not dead. It’s just going through a painful adolescence.

Like all true hacks, that ink’s in my blood. Before I moved to the web in 2000, I’d experienced the joy-cum-terror of the “hold the front page” call. Until I became a husband and father, the proudest moment of my life was my first byline (The Scotsman, 1988). I’ll never forget my first splash (The Sunday Mail, 1994) or my first interview (Joe Strummer for The List, 1988.) On my wall I have three copper printer’s plates of The Scotsman from 1972 and 1999 – as well as a framed picture of the first edition of that paper not to carry ads on the front page (1956). And I know that for the consumption of some information print is the best answer.

But it’s only part of the whole picture – and the whole business plan. As I have said many times before, I believe that the net has brought us to the verge of a golden age of journalism. In fact, there has never been a better time to be a journalist. It’s just that there’s never been a worse time to work for a newspaper.

So don’t work for a newspaper. Work for a news organisation which understands the 21st century and isn’t relying on a business model that started looking dated after the invention of radio.

As for Scotland, it has one world-class newsroom in it. One which would stick the heid on the Times, Guardian, BBC and tediously navel-gazing US papers. Sadly, this talented newsroom is spread across dying titles, desperate news agencies and PR-land.

But it doesn’t need to be that way.

Let me paint you a picture of a world of direct communication with the reader. A world that rewarded the best in journalism with the greatest readership. A world of untainted revenue, without advertising department twats in ties with overlarge knots. Imagine a life without 30% profit margins taken out of your pocket. Dream of a life free from megalomaniac proprietors and muppet editors who exist only to trim costs and wouldn’t recognise a story if it kicked them in the old Niagaras with steel-toed boots embroidered with the words: “I AM A STORY, YOU STUPID, PAPERCLIP-COUNTING CHOOB.”

I have seen the promised land. I may not get there with you … but only because I’m going there on a motorbike.

Anyone coming for the ride?

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