Helluva a piece from a J-school student

A colleague made a good point today.

Let's say you live in Helena, North Dakota. Your friend, who now lives in Washington, DC, tells you the Washington Post has a great story on the anniversary of Watergate. You want to read it. Why should you have to subscribe for the entire year of the WaPo just to read one story?

My and my colleague's solution? Newspapers should:

A) offer Full Subscriptions — which would include the print product, a PDF version sent to you inbox (or an ezine type of production you can't simply forward on), all slide shows, blogs and video on the site.
B) upload to or make available on an iTunes type of database each story on an individual basis so if you are that person in Helena, ND, you just pay 50 cents or a buck for the one story.

And, as a note, if you live in Washington, and are environmentally friendly, you can pass on the print product and still receive the PDF — thus, "going green" and saving the WaPo money.

 

What if there was some kind of universal account you could subscribe to?

What if your Google news feed cost you $30-40 a month and collected news from however many papers Google could sign up (paying the papers, of course).

It would make it much less cost prohibitive than signing up for 20 different $10 per month newspapers would be, and would at least show a little effort on our part beyond what we currently do. It would give someone a new service to purchase rather than just charging them for exactly what they now get for free.

You could break it down into regions or categories. For instance, you could get all the news from the state of Georgia, or just from Atlanta, or, maybe all the college football news from the papers that staff the SEC. Maybe you signed up for $40 a month and got to pick five different categories. Local news, Bulldog football, SEC Football, Falcons and Braves. Or set up a price structure like cable or DirecTV.


As for the idea of people still stealing the content, even if it's behind a firewall... I'm not sure we know how people would respond. It's hard to say now because not only do we not fight to keep our product, we encourage people to take it, e-mail it, pass it on. If we actually made it clear that we didn't want people to do that, that it was illegal, the major blogs would have to stop. They'd be way too big of targets. The rest, well, how much damage could they really do?

You can still steal music. Bit torrents and what-not work just as well and probably more efficiently (for grabbing huge amounts of content, anyway) than Napster and the like ever did. But there's an extra step. You have to download extra stuff and work just a little bit harder to make it work. On top of that, you now know damn well that you're not supposed to do it. Plenty of people still do, but plenty others simply don't seem inclined to steal the fruit when it's not placed directly under their noses.

 

Pilot, I like your ideas. You could sign up for packages (i.e. entertainment, sports, baseball, food, travel, whatever). Or, like you said, regions.

My question then is: Why can sports reporters across the country come up with these ideas, but the people in charge can't?

 

It would take some sort of massive newspaper collation to make it work. Maybe someone out there can scape together $123 and go buy them all here in a few years.

 

(Regarding iTunes vs. CDs: aren't iTunes songs mostly mp3? Not quite, according to some audiophiles, "CD quality audio?")

Kid graduated from Cornell and now attends Columbia. Therefore, he is smart.

But seriously . . .

The lead's analogy to "Make-a-wish" was cheesy, but the truth of his point is indisputable. He's at a Columbia, which like many J-schools is indeed stocked with veteran journalist professors who tell war stories left and right, often forgetting to mention the fact that the old world they knew no longer exists. It's amazing how many young people I have spoken and worked with, from different and often prominent J-schools, who are either shocked at the state of the business, or who - more likely - have been fed such pretty accolades by their professors that they think they are that special talent who will rise above all of the others. Because hey man, the degree says Columbia/Northwestern/USC, etc.

(His note about Columbia's tuition is also well-taken; this is why a friend who has a master's always says if you must do grad school - especially in journalism - get someone else to pay for it).

I do take issue with his final graph about the newspaper industry "choosing" to give away information for free. They would have loved to make money; they just missed their chance. Those who attempted to charge for reading their newspaper, have found that people do not need to pay for what they are reporting.

If I read the Los Angeles Times for news on the LA area, including sports teams and local politics, I will not pay for it online if it started to charge. If the news is big enough, it will appear elsewhere. A blog like LA Observed will have the important stuff, as will the TV news. Do I - does the average reader - really need pretty prose to explain the fact the state budget is up a creek? If sports news is big enough, I will find it at espn.com or any number of sports blogs. Or, again, on TV.

The Bloomington, IN paper charges for Indiana Hoosier news. No problem; if there is anything really big, the Indianapolis star will also grab it, and ESPN too, if it's truly news.

Yes, it is absolutely true that giving away news content for free is a situation that has helped newspapers fail to tap the Internet revenue stream. It is also true that news itself cannot be copyrighted. The importance of the individual, "trained" newspaper journalist is lessened each day as people seek out their news from other sources, often with like-minded opinions (see: the continued popularity of Hufffington Post and Town Hall).

It is over for newspapers. The only way charging for content works is if all major outlets collude, and agree to begin charging at the exact same moment.

And even then, people would still distribute the news to their friends via e-mail. What do they care if it's paraphrased, and not written by one of us?

 

Why not just make that day's paper available as a PDF for the same price as the newsstand copy?

 

That sounds like a great idea. It makes sense.

Therefore, the suits will never go for it.

 

This is why "micro" or "per" or "a la carte" is a toubling concept.
It wouldn't make the NY Times enough money, what about the rest of the publications?
We've done the numbers here, and the expected drop in "ad sees" would outweigh any revenue delivered through "micro" charges.
It would be like shooting your foot to try to rid yourself of a limp.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/opinion/10kinsley.html?scp=1&sq=kinsley&st=cse

 

I like that idea. It won't fly but I like it.