Newspapers won’t die, but some should

The OJR posted an article that is by far the stupidest argument I’ve ever seen on why journalism is bound to fail. The gist of the argument is that people never paid for news, thus people will not pay for news. I believe only the former is correct, agreeing with Rupert Murdoch that people will be inclined to pay for quality information. I also believe that news and journalism are ENTIRELY different things and journalists should have some kind of bar or authorization process like attorneys and doctors, but that is another story. The reasoning that precedent predicts the future is a weak one because paradigms shift. For instance, a few years ago, the western world was skeptical about virtual goods. “Why would anyone want to pay to get something that’s not even real?” I remember one guy asking at the Virtual Worlds Conference a couple years ago. But lo and behold, it’s happening now. But to get back to my point…

So you ask, why aren’t people paying now for news? My answer is: duh, because they don’t have to. If it’s free on the Internet, you would have to be pretty darn stupid to pay for it. (Other reasons other than stupidity could be that you are full of yourself, have eye disorders and are unable to look at a monitor, or have some kind of paper fetish…). There is far too much information and much of it is the same. Newspapers initially died (and this was before the Internet came along and fanned the flames) when you couldn’t tell a NYT article from a Washington Post article. Think of the basic supply, demand, and cost graphs used in marketing. Excess of supply always results in low costs. Newspapers failed not because the industry solely relied on advertising revenues, but because they were ignorant of the exponential rising curve of supply.

We should be asking ourselves: do we really need to pay people to cover things a zillion other people are writing about? Maybe we should let the wires cover the hard news and focus on features. Maybe newspapers and broadcasting companies should merge. Fact of the matter is, there are too many reporters and god knows who is reliable. Amid all this cr** content, maybe it’s okay to let some newspapers die. Maybe it’s okay to let all newspapers die. It’s like when the walkman or phonograph died. That didn’t stop us from listening to music. If anything, we’re listening to more music than ever. Newspaper consumption does not equal news consumption.

Secondly, (and I’ve also talked about this before) is that it’s all about the convenience of financial transactions. Which is why people spend money on iPhone apps, or buy the NYT on the Kindle. People are willing to pay for content as long as it’s super-easy. So this changes the questions we should be asking. How do we make online payment easier? Adding everything to your mobile phone bill could be one example, like they do in Korea.

Thirdly, make it attractive. Visually. People are willing to pay for pretty stuff. Why would I subscribe to Wired when I can read all of its articles online? Because it’s aesthetically pleasing (and I don’t have a computer in my bathroom– at least, not yet). News is a product and I can’t believe how some ‘vendors’ (I dare not even categorize them as newspapers) think they can get away with selling an ugly product.

So, what happens with local news? Well, I’ve proposed before that hyperlocal news can work if it really engages its local readers. Really crappy “local” magazines are still running because people buy them for $5 on a quarterly or biannual basis for a copy, even if they have no special content. Why wouldn’t they pay $10 or $20 a year for a good quality local newspaper (sans the paper)? My hyperlocal news model involves two editors, a bunch of freelancers, and “community reporters.” Note that I say hyper local news– not newspaper! As much as I love paper– the grains, the weight, the colors– trees are a valuable resource and we should be cherishing them more for semi-permanent, beautiful things like scrapbooks and cards instead of throwing them out everyday and letting our dogs pee on them (one of the greater reasons my parents continued to subscribe to a physical paper was because the paper could be “recycled” for our house puppy).

To make a long rant short, my points are: 1) newspapers may die, but news will not. 2) People will be willing to pay if there is quality content with limited availability.3) Make it visually attractive (The pretty girl will always get more dates than the ugly one) and finally, the newspaper industry and the news industry are NOT the same, as journalism and news reporting is NOT the same.

Hyperlocal News Needs Social Networking

I’ve argued for some time that hyperlocal news is the future of newspapers and today’s article in the NYT points out several ventures that are trying out this model. These startups, however, don’t really utilize social networking, and they are missing out on something big. I think that is because they are thinking of social networking as Facebook or MySpace, which is very self-oriented. The kind of social networking that will work in hyperlocal news, however, is the old-fashion “community” features that were popular in the early days of the Internet. Well-organized forums and discussion boards are key elements.

Hyperlocal newspapers need to highly engage their readers primarly for three reasons. 1) Readers can provide content. 2) Readers create market, and 3) Readers attract readers.

No.1 is pretty simple. In an environment where a newspaper is run by one or two editors (who should have very strong editorial standards and good journalistic skills) there is always a need for citizen reporters. If there is a fire, your best bet is that the people in the building, people across from the building, and people on the street are going to provide the fastest news. A Twitter-like “breaking news” feed can be added to the site; even if some people put up wrong information, the turnover of the content will be so fast that it won’t really matter that much. Citizen reporters can also be a good source in providing community events news.

No. 2 is interesting in that it brings back the old cash cow of legacy newspapers. Although ads can help with revenue, there is nothing like the old-fashioned classified that can build profits through microtransactions. Although there are sites such as Craigslist or Monster, there is a limit to what they can do for a hyperlocal community. Allowing people to post classifieds for a small fee (but allowing people to view it for free) is a way to get more traffic to the site and bring in some money. Hyperlocal newspapers can also charge for featured obits, marriages, or other corporate/family PR.

No. 3 is a no-brainer. Hyperlocal news is bound to attract discussion, and it is the discussion that will keep readers coming back. The important thing is that the commenting tools should be more sophisticated. Most commenting tools now are linear, but they should be arranged in a way that give them hierarchy, because sometimes you want to comment on a comment instead of on the original article. Because there is a slight learning curve for people who do not use the Internet, the Knight Foundation should not be funding individual newspaper projects. Rather, it should be using that money to create an easy-t0-use site builder and educate journalists how to utilize this business model.

Using social networking tools to get readers involved is extremely important, because at the end of the day, they will be the ones paying for the newspaper. Let’s look at the figures:

Simple and not-so-simple answer to future of newspapers

My dad was in town for a conference last week and so we went down to New Haven to see my sister for a few hours, where most of the conversation that we had (when not playing games on the Wii) was about the Kindle 2. Now my sister is a digital native, my dad is an elderly gadget whore, but both are voracious consumers of a range of multimedia (from text to audio and video), so it was interesting to listen to their thoughts about the Kindle.

Having been in the print industry for several years and being currently involved in a case where the recording industry is suing a student for downloading files via p2p, I worry about the future of the Internet. I disagree with Jonathan Zittrain because I don’t think that people will want tethered devices because they want more security (so you could say I’m a fan for all the wrong reasons). As far as I see it, people are pretty simple; as long as someone else takes care of the security, they’ll be fine– so it doesn’t matter whether or not the device is tethered or open; the thing that does matter is whether or not there is a good A/S system that can shoulder all responsibilities and an interface that is easy to navigate.

However, I agree with JZ that tethered devices are dangerous; and I think it will be the content vendors that push for tethered devices, because those devices allow the content vendor to monetize their content (take a look at iphone apps for example… you also probably know the argument about how the nyt can save money buying their readers kindles. Newspapers and record companies could continue to make money if they could control content through tethered devices. It would be different from DRM because people could be allowed to share via blutooth, which still has enough physical constraints that it is not as damaging as p2p. It’s great that content developers have a way to monetize but the model can be abused. Look at the iTunes store– apple is in a god-like position to control the prices of the songs Had it not been for competitors like Amazon, Apple may have raised all prices of its songs instead of lowering some and raising some.

You may argue that in a DRM-free environment, people could always download songs on their PC and transfer it to their phones, or ipods, or whatever. But what happens in a world where the majority of people don’t have separate computers? We’ve been talking about convergence for such a long time, but convergence has mainly happened between mobile gadgets. For instance, now the iphone is an ipod, phone, multimedia player, and mobile game console rolled into one. But we are soon looking at an age of mobile computing– where there will be no need to have a separate computer and a smartphone.

Of course, developers, graphic designers, and people who use the computer for professional purposes may still need desktop computers, but the bulk of the population won’t.When on the go, they will use their mobile devices; at home, they can then plug in that device to a large screen that can double as a TV. What with the falling prices of flat screens, I wouldn’t be surprised if, in the future, all classrooms were equipped with flat screens at every desk and all rooms at home have flat screens.

I’ve strayed to a completely different topic. Let me go back to the Kindle.

Before we kill ourselves with pessimism, we can be excited about the fact that people are willing to pay for quality content on these tethered devices. (I know my father and sister are not a fair representation of the rest of the world, but still.) How do we apply this to the general Internet? Why is someone willing to pay for the NYT on the Kindle but not on the Internet? Well, for one thing, everything’s for free on the Internet, so duh, why would you pay for it? But the NYT tried the premium model and even that didn’t work out, right?

In the end, I think it’s about financial transactions. People are willing to pay for content as long as it’s super-easy. (I’d love to do some experiments on this) So this changes the questions we should be asking. How do we make online payment easier? Does this mean we should let ISPs be the middlemen for all online transactions? How will we maintain security of financial transactions when everything is virtual?

A Pulitzer Prize for Global Journalism

The Pulitzer Prize is the shining medallion for journalists, one that is revered, flaunted, and used to prove one’s contribution to the industry. Yet it is only about America. In the journalism category, newspapers must be U.S. papers; in the letters category, publications must be those published in the US by American authors, the only exception being if you write about US history.

That’s fine. Certainly Pulitzer doesn’t have obligations to cover the entire world, and for literary works, there is the Nobel Prize although it would be nice and more along the lines of true journalism if it weren’t so nationalistic (The Nobel is incomparable to the Pulitzer- far less are given out every year).  I just think it’s very sad that the award that has become the staple of recognizing what is good journalism and not is only focusing on the United States. It’s even more disappointing that they are accepting online news but not global news.

You may argue that other countries have their own awards, but no award is internationally renowned as the Pulitzer. In Korea, there is a journalism award, but your publication has to be a member of the Newspaper Association in order for your article to be considered. That is not fair, because a newspaper’s alliance with a labor group is a political decision, which shouldn’t affect decisions in which articles are good or not. Forgive me if I am sour about this because the paper I used to work for was one of the three biggest national papers and we weren’t a part of association (actually seceded from the association but that’s another story).

It is true that journalistic standards, ethics, and such in other countries are in some cases, not on par with U.S. standards. But sometimes they are, and sometimes, there is a lot of excellent reporting. Those efforts should be acknowledged. Newspaper design, for instance, is acknowledged by the Society for News Design, and you can see that a lot of amazing designs come from all around the world.

There are a number of small prizes for a global community, like the Bastiat, Knight Awards, and numerous others, but they all cater to a specific topic or demographic.

It would be wonderful if some organization could begin a global journalism awards that is comprehensive like the Pulitzer. Especially now, with new media endangering quality journalism, such incentives are needed to inspire journalists. Journalists don’t work for money- they never have- all they want is to communicate to the public, hoping their efforts in seking truth will be respected. Journalists are being stripped of their honor and without honor, there is no reason to be a journalist.