Jay Rosen weighs in on newspapers in a brave new world at the Britannica Blog.
One weakness of the old subsidy system was that it hid the true cost of serious journalism from the people who benefit. Instead of finding new ways to hide the cost, a wiser course might be to increase the number of people who understand that serious reporting is a public good, who have a grasp of the economics. In other words, public opinion might have to come to the rescue.
Frank Wilson is contributing to a Britannica Blog forum this week called “Are Newspapers Doomed? (Do We Care?)” You can see the titles of upcoming articles on the main page. Today, Nicholas Carr writes:
So if you’re a beleaguered publisher, losing readers and money and facing Wall Street’s wrath, what are you going do as you shift your content online? Hire more investigative journalists? Or publish more articles about consumer electronics? It seems clear that as newspapers adapt to the economics of the Web, they are far more likely to continue to fire reporters than hire new ones.
Speaking before the Online Publishing Association in 2006, the head of the New York Times’s Web operation, Martin Nisenholtz, summed up the dilemma facing newspapers today. He asked the audience a simple question: “How do we create high quality content in a world where advertisers want to pay by the click, and consumers don’t want to pay at all?”
The answer may turn out to be equally simple: We don’t.
Clay Shirky replies (in a way) by saying newspapers must experiment. Shirky’s thinking seems in line with what usability expert Jakob Nielsen has said for a long time, that pay-by-click advertising doesn’t work well and can’t continue to fund websites. In this article from August 2007, he refers to studies showing again that web readers ignore web banners, and even when they look at them, they rarely remember company names or info. “Users almost never look at anything that looks like an advertisement, whether or not it’s actually an ad,” he says, so funding an online newspaper through web advertising won’t work in the long run, even if it pulls in some money now.
So the call for new business models for newspapers is the right call, but what will the answer be? I’m not a businessman, so I doubt I can help, but I will shoot the hip. News orgs. need loyalty networking.
As James Levy says in a Britannica comment: “The experimentation you propose needs to get to the core of what journalism needs right now: transparency and trust. There is no longer any scarcity of information, so journalists should be disclosing everything, archiving everything. And that’s what will make them professional.” That’s right. Take your newspapers online by building trust, honesty, and depth. Aren’t the news magazines doing this already? How successful are they?
Alan Patrick explains the issues behind the story of bloggers spending way too much time online trying to beat the other blog to the story. “One of the more ironic parts of the whole FreeConomics thing is that many of the people writing about, and strongly supporting the whole concept of FreeConomics, are those getting most nailed by it – ie Tech bloggers blogging for money.”
Some are worried that the blogosphere will simply promote the lower common denominator to the exclusion of serious journalism or commentary. Alisa Harris quotes Eric Alterman saying, “And so we are about to enter a fractured, chaotic world of news, characterized by superior community conversation but a decidedly diminished level of first-rate journalism.”
Commenter Bob Buckles notes, “When a cow is milked, the cream rises to the top. So to, the best of internet ‘journalism’ will be the stuff that is aid attention to, unlike the professional ‘journalism’ of Dan Rather.” Naturally.
I learned about the blog “Stuff White People Like” from Jared at Thinklings. Can’t say I would have clicked on a link to this blog if I had seen it in a list of 10 popular or interesting blogs from some reputable site, but I saw in the NY Times that the writer has received a book deal at $300k. The writer, Christian Lander, comments on this deal:
The combination of white people and books has been a pretty solid combo for the past few hundred years. So whenever a white person is given a chance to write a book, it’s considered a pretty big deal. This is especially true when it happens to someone who started a blog that they never expected to reach more than 100 people.
I gather this is site is inline with the white mascot joke seen in this remarkable line of products, though maybe it’s the reverse of that. Either way, Random House thinks Lander has something going for him, so bully for him.
Silicon Alley Insider point to a survey that says Nearly 73% of respondents sometimes or always use blogs in their research. From the report:
Seventy percent of respondents say public opinion of journalists has gotten worse during the past five years, and 52% believe the general public has a “somewhat negative” opinion of journalists.
Nearly 73% of respondents sometimes or always use blogs in their research. The most often cited reason for using blogs was “to measure sentiment.”
She’s on the road again. She’s back in the driver’s seat. She’s, uh, she has returned. Anyway, Sherry’s blogging again, and she points out an interesting book by Peter Kreeft, commented on Pascal’s Pensees. It’s called Christianity for Modern Pagans. Good thoughts.
“How use doth breed a habit in a man!” Valentine said, and blogging has become a habit for some of us through use. Maxine talks about her sucessful blogging experience on The Digitalist.
Many book authors are bloggers: I have had some fascinating online conversations with authors of books I have reviewed online, on all kinds of topics. When one has read a really gripping or involving book, this can be really rather a heady experience.
Commentary is publishing one of Buckley’s last essays, “Goldwater, the John Birch Society, and Me.” Here’s the start of it:
In the early months of l962, there was restiveness in certain political quarters of the Right. The concern was primarily the growing strength of the Soviet Union, and the reiteration by its leaders of their designs on the free world. Some of the actors keenly concerned felt that Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona was a natural leader in the days ahead.
But it seemed inconceivable that an anti-establishment gadfly like Goldwater could be nominated as the spokesman-head of a political party. And it was embarrassing that the only political organization in town that dared suggest this radical proposal—the GOP’s nominating Goldwater for President—was the John Birch Society.
The society had been founded in 1958 by an earnest and capable entrepreneur named Robert Welch, a candy man, who brought together little clusters of American conservatives, most of them businessmen. He demanded two undistracted days in exchange for his willingness to give his seminar on the Communist menace to the United States, which he believed was more thoroughgoing and far-reaching than anyone else in America could have conceived. His influence was near-hypnotic, and his ideas wild. He said Dwight D. Eisenhower was a “dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy,” and that the government of the United States was “under operational control of the Communist party.” It was, he said in the summer of 1961, “50-70 percent” Communist-controlled.
Welch refused to divulge the size of the society’s membership, though he suggested it was as high as 100,000 and could reach a million. His method of organization caused general alarm. The society comprised a series of cells, no more than twenty people per cell. It was said that its members were directed to run in secret for local offices and to harass school boards and librarians on the matter of the Communist nature of the textbooks and other materials they used.
The society became a national cause célèbre—so much so, that a few of those anxious to universalize a draft-Goldwater movement aiming at a nomination for President in 1964 thought it best to do a little conspiratorial organizing of their own against it.
Several writers on Commentary’s blog, Contentions, are paying tribute to Buckley. Max Boot says, “He managed on a number of occasions to keep the conservative movement as a whole from lurching into loony-land.” The above essay is a case in point, I believe.