Leaked NYT memo on paper's future on the web (hint: it won't be free)
poynter.org
poynter.org
It's a simple problem really: In the past - before network news came along - the newspapers had a near monopoly on news coverage. With the coming of the networks that changed, the newspapers focused more on giving the background and the in depth version of the networks based 'sound bytes' and flashy presentation.
Then the web came along, a disruptive technology if there ever was one. So, now both the networks and the newspapers are manning the pumps. A nice example is the plane recently downed in the Hudson, within minutes there were photographs on Flickr and facebook, from the eye witnesses themselves.
Newspapers would be a day old at a minimum when they landed in your mailbox, but it was news to you. Now they feel like something that you might as well put under the cats litter box right away, you've already had plenty of opportunity to read everything in there except for the background & opinion pieces online 10 times over by the time you get the paper version.
And it's not like there is a shortage of background and opinion pieces on the web either. Maybe not from salaried journalists, but interesting and often informative just the same.
To quote Nicholas Negroponte: If your business is shipping atoms carrying information you have a problem.
The problem isn't so much competition from Flick and facebook as it is Craigslist stealing all the classified ad revenue. And the fact that people don't like paying to read things on the web.
First one to crack a business model where they can send out reporters a-la the NYT but without the overhead of running a full fledged newspaper is going to hit it big time.
Oh, and about that secret CIA prisons thing, that was actually leaked by someone inside to a reporter, it could have been leaked on the web just the same.
Top news reporters have vast networks of sources that help them dig up that sort of information. That particular story may have leaked one way or another, but without well-connected journalists, many of the leaked stories we read would never be told, or would be lost among the thousands of rumors and innuendos published on blogs daily.
There are very few web-only sources that get quality leaks. It's fairly common for a website to break a story that the big dogs passed on, then to have it take off, but to actually get the information before the MSM is fairly rare.
The problem is that 80% of the news newspapers sell are commodities. Go to news.google.com and you get 10 articles from different papers on the same subject.
90% of people will not pay anything to read the 10% of investigative stories.
But local (and Texas political) news is owned by us. esp in depth news. It's a small market and really no one else wants to compete.
Local is the near-future of news organizations. Nationals are fucked.
[EDIT] Some more light research on Steve Brill leads me to believe that he does not work for the Times Company.
What about broadcast TV stations? Anyone with an antenna can receive them and has been able to for decades, and I think they're a "viable business."
And you, jackowayed, could you please split that line in two?
Please?
TV producers have been slowly moving their expensive content to pay TV and producing new low-cost shows ("reality TV" and gameshows) for broadcast. Plus, they use their broadcast channels as the stick to beat cable/satellite operators' into paying more for their cable channel bundles.
For example, Disney moved Monday Night Football from ABC (free) to ESPN (the most expensive non-premium channel). Larry David effectively moved "Seinfeld" from NBC to HBO. Dance and singing contests, primetime gameshows, and hours and hours of news broadcasts (5:30-11:00am, 12:00am, 4:00-6:30pm, 10:00-11:00pm where I live) have replaced dramas and comedies. The dramas and comedies that are left are whatever ones that HBO didn't want.
But saying that no solid business has ever been based on free is just plain wrong.
Bottom line is that there just isn't enough money in online ads to support the Times' journalism.
This also has the bonus effect of greatly reducing delivery costs. More revenue and less overhead.
Incidentally, my thought was to make articles 25c on the day it's published, free from 7-21 days, and then $1 for articles older than 21 days.
Pay for things that are newsworthy, or that are 'archive', but still let the web spread the info for free. The folks who depend on being early to the party, or the folks who are late to the party, pay for that privilege.
I find cringe-making purple prose on the front page of the NYT every time I pick one up.
The writing is entirely too "precious", in spite of the many good writers they have.
Further, their recent strategy of hiring alt-weekly writers to try and give them an "edge" to their reporting has only accelerated the decay - people can tell when you are posing.
I wonder, could this work? NYT is trading below $5 today, so that's like ~10% discount on a year's subscription.