Newspapers need to move into the future and stop clinging to the past.
Two bloggers I respect greatly, Tim McGuire and Alan Mutter, blogged favorably this week about efforts to force Google to pay for linking to content from newspaper web sites. Because I respect both of these men and consider McGuire a friend, I read each blog again and considered what they had to say. Reluctantly, I say they both are mistaken.
I don’t claim that I or my company have the solutions for how to move forward into a prosperous future. But I am sure that the future lies in moving forward, not back. I’m glad our company is seeking solutions by looking forward. I think the business success equation that Chuck Peters has identified, Success = Attention x Trust x Convenience, is on the right track. And charging for content will harm each of the factors leading to success.
I won’t go into all the reasons that paying for content won’t work or into all the ways that newspaper companies have squandered opportunities to innovate before they became desperate. Steve Yelvington, Martin Langeveld, Jeff Jarvis, Tim Windsor and Danny Sullivan have made those points better than I could.
To those eloquent arguments, I add (or reiterate) these points:
- Newspapers never made our money by charging for our content. We barely pay production and distribution costs, if that, from our circulation revenue. The costs of gathering the content have always been paid by other revenue streams, primarily from revenue we collect from businesses who want to connect with our audience.
- Newspaper companies have done an abysmal job of developing new revenue streams online from sources such as direct transactions, lead generation, marketing services, local search, email advertising and video advertising. When and if we figure that out, we will want a large audience, not an audience diminished by misguided efforts to charge Google or consumers directly for content.
- Collusion won’t work. We are not the only sources of online information. If we try to band together to force Google or direct consumers to pay for content, we will see alternate sources proliferate faster than we can imagine. And they will have a willing force of experienced journalists to gather content for them, people who lost their jobs as we were downsizing because of our inability to generate new revenue streams.
- We have tried and tried and tried to charge for content. If it worked, we would have figured out how to do it by now.
- It’s sad to see the industry that has so vigorously defended the First Amendment and freedom of expression now talking about going to court and wasting lots of attorneys’ fees trying to attack the doctrine of fair use.
- If we are banking our future on an approach that the New York Times likens to airlines charging for luggage and to the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, do you want to bet on our future. Did you even know Brittanica was online? Are you a subscriber?
I love newspapers and I think we will find our way to a prosperous future. But not by clinging to a past where we were able to charge for content and act like monopolies.
Update: I just read Ken Doctor’s proposal for what he calls “fair share,” a next phase of the “fair-use” doctrine. It’s more persuasive than McGuire or Mutter, but still represents a step back and another excuse for newspapers not to innovate, in my view.
Newspapers made a profit thanks to classified ads, from really sad little personals and 1-900 numbers and people who lost their dogs. What a legacy…
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[…] = Attention x Trust x Convenience Reading Steve Buttry’s latest blog post this morning Clinging to the past wont’ save newspapers he summed up (apparently in Chuck Peters words) the exact philosophy we have been thinking about at […]
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[…] Clinging to the past won’t save newspapers (stevebuttry.wordpress.com) […]
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You Got it Steve!
Forging on regardless is necessary.
The package will look like something out of tomorrow; and it will be a good one.
John
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Twittering around congratulating each other ain’t gon’na get’ter done neither.
We are still Iowa folks and it should be fairly simple to cover newswise, but sitting around ” Twittering” instead of getting out and covering whats really happening ain’t go’nna cut it.There is a whole state out here , not just a “corridor”.
What you folks are putting out is not what people want or need to know>>-Oh well- what the hell.
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If you are inteeted in progress look back at some 1930’s Gazettes ,They covered the NEWS. The gazette Editor came by our farm one day ,he was out pushing subscriptions and took a couple of chickens for a years subscripton. He new what people wanted.
Times were” realy” bad.
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Cutting newsroom staff to the bone won’t save newspapers either. But you didn’t have a problem doing that a few weeks ago.
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Dan, I believe it’s actually called ‘twatting’ at least according to Stephen Colbert. That, or ‘tweeting’
Mr. Buttry:
This notion that people never paid for content is ludicrous. Yes, papers made their money off advertisers, but why were businesses advertising in papers to begin with? Because people were buying and reading them FOR THEIR CONTENT. You’ve conveniently ignored that every single time you bring it up!
The only day I buy a newspaper for the ads is the day after Thanksgiving.
I want CONTENT and NEWS in my NEWSpaper
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Jorge,
You misunderstand. Yes, you buy and read newspapers for the content (though many do buy especially Sunday newspapers for their ads). And we’re glad you do, but we the money you pay doesn’t cover the costs of gathering the content you want to read. It barely covers the production and distribution costs. We support the content operation by selling ads to people who want to put their messages in front of you while you’re reading the content. And we’re not going to make our money online by charging for the content either.
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Steve: I’m mostly in agreement with the post. The newspapers’ response over a decade and a half now has been at best uneven, sometimes abysmal and often sadly clueless. Just as our new President has made a point of multi-tasking, I think the industry clearly needs to do two things right now: 1) innovate strongly and smartly, embracing the wonder of the Internet for what it is; 2) and make the business case for the value of its content as it lets it flow freely on the web. That’s what is behind my Google post — a business reckoning — and, I believe, the anti-piracy push of AP. Both can be done. You’re right that newspapers have too often rounded the wagons around point 2, and unevenly innovated. I just think both are strongly needed at this point. Ken
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[…] that I will be repeating myself, I offer seven reasons that newspaper companies need to stop looking to the past (paid content) to […]
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[…] sin” are delaying our development of solutions that will really work. But I have written plenty about the issue of paid content. My primary point in this post is to criticize the secrecy […]
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[…] But I am concerned by a conceit I hear and read too often from journalists and newspaper executives hoping to get by with incremental approaches to innovation. It certainly underlies the notion that if newspapers suddenly all started charging for content, the freeloading public would have to buckle and start paying. These people dismissively proclaim that their communities would suddenly starve (or pay) for news and information if the newspaper went out of business or its content vanished behind a paywall. […]
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[…] (my opening remarks for a panel discussion at First Amendment Day at Iowa State University) and Clinging to the past won’t save newspapers (18th in traffic for the […]
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[…] Clinging to the past won’t save newspapers […]
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