Even before the Internet, news was pretty close to free

Couple of points.

1. Woot! nice to see a post, been goin thru blog withdrawal this week.

2. On the one hand I find it extremely disturbing that next gen won't pay for news. How can you expect to be informed/outraged/motivated etc while depending on free news. While cost is not always a perfect indicator of quality, it is a partial one.....you get what you pay for when you pay nothing.

3. On the other hand - I suspect it is time for journalism to reinvent itself. I am probably waxing nostalgic for the old days (specially since I wasnt around for them), but it seems to me that being a human dictapad is no longer a value add proposition in the news - and that's what too many news people are it seems like to me. I'd like to see much more interjection of fact checking here. Candidate X said Y on the trail today about Z should be more like Candidate X said Y about Z, but here's a fact check - 2 years ago they said A or this is not entirely true etc etc. - interjected right into the news itself - not something that happens 2 weeks later on 60 minutes or some other analyst show...

I realize their is Fox News already, but I mean objective fact checking...take back the intellectual high ground from the right and left wing bloggers...

And eliminating the 90% human interest fluff that is in there. while human interest stories can be used to encapsulate a broader trend/issue - Yousif burn boy capturing secatarian violence in Iraq - too much of is nonsense - cat predicts death - cmon...this is why I dont watch evening news anymore...

4. That said, I wouldnt pay for TIME either. This blog and the tv one are all I read for intellectual and/or entertainment value. Swampland is sadly a masochistic addiction akin to panning for gold in a septic tank.

What I still don't understand is why news providers fail to recognize that there is a massive market for advertising -- I mean, newspaper ads are a feature, not an annoyance, for most people -- and people look for that Target ad, or check to see who has the best price on tires this week, or whether to go to Pathmark or SuperFresh for this weeks groceries based on their ads.

The technology is certainly there -- make people register and give their zip codes, and you can direct ads to that specific area.

And the demand for ads directed at "day to day" consumption is definitely there.

Yet most ads I see at news portals are for products (cell service, cars) and services (banks, loans) that most people have no interest in buying at that moment.

I'll also note that mainstream journalism as a profession has suffered from irrelevance as well.

Case in point-Joe Klein

I started my career in newspaper circulation many years ago. Our purpose was to get the paper in front of eyeballs for our advertisers without losing any money. In other words we were revenue neutral. It seems to me that the internet does that quickly and easily today. The trick now is to get the advertisements there also and some today are doing that better than others.
I buy a great deal off internet advertisements and the problem I am finding is when there is a problem many companies (IE Dell Computers) are impossible to get a real live person to help with a screwed up order.

Nice post, it is good to see someone looking a little deeper than just the notion that people buy papers for the news.

I'm sad to see so little innovation in the face of the internet revolution. From the music companies reaction to mp3's and the newspapers reaction to the internet.

Good post.

It's said you'll never understand newspaper economics until you understand why newspapers are happy to put their product out in boxes where you pay a single quarter and can take as many copies as you like. I somehow get the feeling that Lazarus has never managed to get his brain around that one, either.

It's easy to mock the argument that newspapers should charge for content online if you're not required to come up with an alternative.

Here's the basic problem: newspaper content takes money to produce. Unless you believe that people reporting and writing in their spare time can produce articles that match in quantity and quality those produced by full-time professional reporters, that revenue has to be adequate to pay a few salaries.

It would be nice to see online ads pay that salary. Sadly, as anybody who has reviewed the numbers will tell you, there is little reason to hope that online ad revenue will grow enough to replace print ad revenue before the latter slumps too far for many papers to survive. Why? Because not only has the Web created a vast surplus of advertising outlets, it also is less efficient as an advertising medium as print -- so advertisers are not willing to pay as much for online ads.

What's more, newspapers' decision to make their material free online has allowed any number of Web sites to copy, paste, excerpt, or link to newspapers' content for free -- and then sell ads on their own sites, competing directly with the newspapers that provide their content.

So what's the solution? Too many media critics throw up their hands and say newspapers need to find a "new model." Well, what's the model? Lazarus is suggesting one: charging for content and, presumably, protecting that content to increase its scarcity and therefore its value to advertisers.

Don't like that model? Well, instead of taking the easy path of dismissing it, offer a better one. But it has to meet the following criteria: It must produce adequate revenue from whatever source to replace print advertising within the timeframe permitted by that source's slump; it must provide adequate revenue to pay for sufficient full-time reporters, editors, and staff to meet the expected level of quality and quantity for the publication; and it must provide adequate revenue for a reasonable mix of news, from hyperlocal to international reporting, the specific mix obviously depending on the specific needs of the publication and its readership.

Oh, and since this seems to be a consistent demand of media critics, the model must also provide sufficient revenue for a robust in-house technical staff producing and supporting blogs, video, podcasts, wikis, etc.

Ready? .... Go.

But it has to meet the following criteria: It must produce adequate revenue from whatever source to replace print advertising within the timeframe permitted by that source's slump; it must provide adequate revenue to pay for sufficient full-time reporters, editors, and staff to meet the expected level of quality and quantity for the publication; and it must provide adequate revenue for a reasonable mix of news, from hyperlocal to international reporting, the specific mix obviously depending on the specific needs of the publication and its readership.

Sorry, but you can't set those kind of criteria for a business model and expect it to succeed. A business needs to maximize something, not try to make enough money to maintain its current size. And so far, for general interest newspapers, charging for content online hasn't succeeded in maximizing much except for reader irritation.

Now the bigger question might be whether we should be considering models other than business models. Maybe nonprofits are the future of newsgathering, or at least a much bigger part of its future than they are of its present. But it's hard to see them charging for content.

What many hand wringers in the print journalism world fail to understand is their "product" -- the reported, written and photographed news -- has never made any money for the owners of newspapers. It has only cost money. Audiences made money for the owners of newspapers, in particular the audience that they delivered to advertisers. While the money some (actually, very few) newspaper owners made in the last centry was heavily invested in the journalistic content of their medium, for the most part it was not. Public service in newspapers is a luxury most press owners could ill afford, and even those who could chose more often than not to ditch it. The vast majority of newspapers in this country are and always have been low-rent affairs, local monopolies, written and amateurishly produced by low-paid scribblers, while their employers made gobs of money. It was the medium, and who PAID to be in it, that dictated the business model -- not what was between the ads. True, the content is a significant factor in delivering an audience to advertisers, but it is not the only factor; only the most expensive. The hewing of staff at most metro dailies is the cost journalists pay for being tools of business, instead of tools of the government.

The Web is an entirely new medium, and it will dicatate the business model, including whether it will include journalism. The game will be won by those who deliver what advertisers want, not what editors think readers want, or need. And to believe that the two are compatible, while appealingly romantic and even at times true, is to delude one's self.

What many hand wringers in the print journalism world fail to understand is their "product" -- the reported, written and photographed news -- has never made any money for the owners of newspapers. It has only cost money. Audiences made money for the owners of newspapers, in particular the audience that they delivered to advertisers. While the money some (actually, very few) newspaper owners made in the last centry was heavily invested in the journalistic content of their medium, for the most part it was not. Public service in newspapers is a luxury most press owners could ill afford, and even those who could chose more often than not to ditch it. The vast majority of newspapers in this country are and always have been low-rent affairs, local monopolies, written and amateurishly produced by low-paid scribblers, while their employers made gobs of money. It was the medium, and who PAID to be in it, that dictated the business model -- not what was between the ads. True, the content is a significant factor in delivering an audience to advertisers, but it is not the only factor; only the most expensive. The hewing of staff at most metro dailies is the cost journalists pay for being tools of business, instead of tools of the government.

The Web is an entirely new medium, and it will dicatate the business model, including whether it will include journalism. The game will be won by those who deliver what advertisers want, not what editors think readers want, or need. And to believe that the two are compatible, while appealingly romantic and even at times true, is to delude one's self.

What many hand wringers in the print journalism world fail to understand is their "product" -- the reported, written and photographed news -- has never made any money for the owners of newspapers. It has only cost money. Audiences made money for the owners of newspapers, in particular the audience that they delivered to advertisers. While the money some (actually, very few) newspaper owners made in the last centry was heavily invested in the journalistic content of their medium, for the most part it was not. Public service in newspapers is a luxury most press owners could ill afford, and even those who could chose more often than not to ditch it. The vast majority of newspapers in this country are and always have been low-rent affairs, local monopolies, written and amateurishly produced by low-paid scribblers, while their employers made gobs of money. It was the medium, and who PAID to be in it, that dictated the business model -- not what was between the ads. True, the content is a significant factor in delivering an audience to advertisers, but it is not the only factor; only the most expensive. The hewing of staff at most metro dailies is the cost journalists pay for being tools of business, instead of tools of the government.

The Web is an entirely new medium, and it will dicatate the business model, including whether it will include journalism. The game will be won by those who deliver what advertisers want, not what editors think readers want, or need. And to believe that the two are compatible, while appealingly romantic and even at times true, is to delude one's self.

I dunno, I think succeeding on the Web has more to do with appealing to readers than succeeding in newspapers did--because readers can so easily go elsewhere. Then again, I wouldn't get too romantic about reader tastes: I was just on SFGate.com, where 4 of the 7 most read stories were about tigers.

Justin: I find your responses disappointingly vague. You dismissed my basic query with a hand-wave toward nonprofits as a possible solution and claimed that charging for content "hasn't succeeded" -- though I would argue it's never really been tried, at least in any large-scale manner (individual experiments obviously won't succeed when the majority of publications continue to offer similar products for free).

Are you just giving up? Is journalism simply too unimportant to try and fix the basic business model of publication? Personally, I think professionally produced news -- from my local city council to the events in Pakistan to your column to, yes, a tiger attack in San Francisco -- is important, valuable, even necessary. And, frankly, I am tired of people dismissively saying people will "never pay for it" or that newspapers need to "get over it," or suggesting that blogs, aggregators and portals are the "new" delivery mechanism -- as if the content that supports those models simply appears magically out of thin air.

Be part of the solution. You're an influential reporter for a major international publication. Use this space to solicit and explore solutions to this problem, not merely to dismiss the ideas of others seeking an answer.

AT&T, Yahoo, Comcast Google and all the rest would not have any news without newspapers getting it and then having the above steal it from them. AP CEO Tom Curley has it right that people die taking photos and reporting the news.

And what would any town do for news if not for newspapers? The author says we can get it free on the radio. Local radio, outside of the biggest markets do not have any news staff--local radio news is what's read verbatim from their local paper, of course without telling anyone so.

Same for TV news, where story ideas come from the local paper.

Newspapers should make all of the web sites pay-only deals. They should make all of the radio staions that steal their work pay for it or go get their own news staff. Shut 'em off and see how valuable Yahoo and the rest would be.

Without newspapers, there would be very little if any news available. Newspapers should charge for reading their stuff. Quit letting TV, radio (especially radio!) and others steal their hard work.

Ranting about those who "steal their work" didn't work for the MPAA, and it won't work for the news business.

As a newspaper reporter, it's pretty depressing for me to see others recirculate the falsehood that Google, etc. "steal" news. Anyone who thinks that is not educated in the way these companies work. They provide brief summaries and *refer* readers to the Web sites of journalistic outfits. And anyone who doesn't want Google crawling their pages can block them.

People like David Lazarus should know better, but there's no cure for invincible ignorance.

People like David Lazarus should know better, but there's no cure for invincible ignorance. Ranting about those who "steal their work" didn't work for the MPAA, and it won't work for the news business.

As a newspaper reporter, it's pretty depressing for me to see others recirculate the falsehood that Google, etc. "steal" news. Anyone who thinks that is woefully naive about the way these companies work. They provide brief summaries and *refer* readers to the Web sites of journalistic outfits. That boosts traffic. And anyone who doesn't want Google crawling their pages can block them.

Those comfortable in the stultifying bureaucracy of large journalistic outfits will have to learn the hard way how ignorant they are of the new world that is taking shape.

Ack! I have my own troubles with technology sometimes. I apologize for the double post.

Hey Bradley J. Fikes,

Thanks for your reply.

But I find even the summaries to be too much unless someone gets paid. I love newspapers, read three a day and wouldn't know what to do without papers. But OK, I'll grant you the summaries deal but I still think papers should charge for their websites.

What I really, really hate is local radio stations shouting to the world about their great news staff and how much information these stations provide. They produce zero original content, they just read the paper. I don't understand why newspapers allow this, do you, Bradley? It baffles me why this is permitted.

One of my local AM radio station boasts of "the largest news team in the area!" How big is their news team? One guy. Just one guy who reads stuff from the paper. But I guess when the other stations have zero news people, a staff of one, even if he just reads the paper, is an improvement.

This Justin Fox guy is pretty smart when he stays aways from politics.

I've never paid for news. In Europe nowadays newspapers are given away for free and the only people who buy the ones that charge do so as a snobbish status symbol.

Something else that has deeply hurt newspapers and news reporting in general is the increasingly desperate (and obvious except to the perpetrators) political postering done in reports claiming to report facts and not opinions.

TV news is free? Really? You get CNN for free?

Try neglecting to pay your cable or satellite bill for a few months, then see how free it is.

Oh sure, you can hook up a rabbit-ears antenna and get the local crime-and-fluff report. Is that what you're talking about? Cuz a lot of folks actually have a different idea of what kind of news we want to watch on TV, and we continue to prove that we're quite willing to pay for it.

"No one will ever pay for cable TV, because they've been watching TV for free for decades." ... "No one will ever pay for online news content." ... "A bundling model inspired by the cable TV business model will never work for online content. It must be impossible, because we haven't done it yet." ... "If man were meant to fly ..." ...

Recycling columns you wrote for another publication shows a lack of imagination, yet another reason print journalism is in a free fall.

Instead of whining about how deadbeat consumers are to blame because they have decided a lot of the print stuff isn't worth the paper it's written on, every newspaper and magazine should be sweating it out every day to fill their print and online editions with stories that are fresh, compelling, tightly written, humorous, intelligent and relevant. Then the print editions will get readers, the online versions will get eyeballs and both will get advertisers.

Mr. Fikes:

I have no real problem with search engines indexing newspaper Web sites. But let's not delude ourselves here: these companies are not providing this service to boost newspapers' Web traffic. They are providing the service to serve up their own ads adjacent to the news search results or to increase the usefulness of their core search product -- which is ad-supported. Either version makes these companies a de facto competitor for advertising dollars that once supported journalism.

Far more troublesome, to me, are the many Web sites that provide long excerpts or even complete reprints of newspapers' content with their own advertising attached, a business model that newspapers bafflingly have permitted to become an accepted practice. It's not clear to me how that genie can be stuffed back into the bottle, but I think it has to happen somehow.

I suspect eventually media corporations -- those that survive the coming five years -- will turn to a version of the anti-plagiarism software used by schools, coupled with automated cease-and-desist notifications. But I worry about what that means for legitimate public discourse, and I hope another way can be found.

Mr. Philco:

I'm not sure anybody here is "whining" about the situation, and I certainly agree with you that newspapers can always improve. I wish I shared your belief that if only newspapers were better the world would beat a path to their door in numbers that would prove their salvation, but I'm afraid I don't: the most popular Web sites, such as Kos and Drudge, support what are essentially one-person operations; HuffingtonPost, to cite another example, survives through the largesse of volunteer writers.

The truly successful online companies -- the Googles and Yahoos of the world -- are not content creators at all. They are aggregators and search engines, ad-supported tour guides to the content provided by the rest of the online world.

None of those sites provide much in the way of original reporting -- how large a multitude will it require to support a newsroom of hundreds, or even of dozens?

Here's an experiment for you to try: in your day-to-day perusal of the news, whatever medium you prefer, try tracing the most compelling information back to its point of origin. You might be surprised at how often you arrive in that "print stuff" you seem to dismiss as irrelevant. If the print stuff fails for lack of a working business model, who is standing by to fill that gap?

I don't pretend to have a comprehensive answer to this issue, but I'd like to add another thought to the mix.

All businesses survive because their customers need them, and those customers know it. I'm not sure how many newspaper customers regard their paper as essential.

Beyond those with a lukewarm attachment, there are many audiences that resent journalists. For example, many elected officials would be happy if their local paper did nothing more than cover meetings. They're not looking for an in-depth analysis of behind-the-scenes activities.

Add to those the folks who have seen an error in a story or who know of a friend who was bothered by a reporter when a family member was hurt in a large accident, etc.

Put them all together and you've got a large crowd that have a reason -- real or imagined -- to feel that the fate of a particular newspaper isn't necessarily something for them to worry about.

How do you persuade those folks that a newspaper is essential even if their ox was gored?

Far more troublesome, to me, are the many Web sites that provide long excerpts or even complete reprints of newspapers' content with their own advertising attached, a business model that newspapers bafflingly have permitted to become an accepted practice.

can you cite any prominent websites that do this on a regular/continuing basis?

(one can find such a practice is comments sections on occasion, but the practice itself is frowned on by the other commenters...)

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First off, newspapers remain a highly profitable business --- and one of the biggest problems is cutbacks that are driven solely by stockholder demands to maintain high profit margins -- its difficult to find a news organization of any size that hasn't experienced layoffs (and 'buyouts' of the most knowledgeable and experienced reporters) despite still being profitable -- and this is especially true when it comes to local news coverage. Its impossible to maintain a quality product in a labor intensive business when you are cutting staff -- and replacing experienced hands with novices.

But of the biggest problems with newspapers is that they are still living in a world where TV 'news' was the competition, and their response was to become an "entertainment" media just like TV news is. They've forgotten their core function -- and are bloated with staff who cover nothing but fluff. In some cases, this is based on advertiser demand (real estate and automotive 'reporters' come to mind), in other cases, its simply 'lifestyle' crap. Newspapers have to understand that they can no longer be all things to all people, and get back to covering the news that people need to know, because "the web" offers way too many options for more comprehensive coverage for "niche" audiences.

And newspapers could save lots of money just by eliminating columnists (especially syndicated columnists.) If you want a lively 'discussion'/opinion page, allow reader somments on news stories, and put up a disclaimer in the comments section that what people write belongs to the paper, and can be published in the "dead tree" edition.

Finally, there is the question of the 'quality' of what passes for the jobs done by editors and reporters. How many millions upon millions of words were already printed before Thanksgiving on the 2008 presidential campaign --- almost all of which were completely useless drivel as far as the vast majority of Americans are concerned. And newspapers no longer concentrate on "who what where when why" -- its now "he said/she said" coverage of every news story, and the focus isn't on the issue itself, but on parties and politics and who wins and who loses.

Newspapers will never develop a successful business model until they develop a better business itself. Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door -- or your website.

and under the heading of "what newspapers should not be doing right now", comes the news that the New York Times has hired Bill Kristol as a weekly columnist...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/12/28/bill-kristol-to-become-e_n_78635.html

What's the point? Kristol has his own freaking magazine that is read by the Villagers, so its not like the world would miss out on his "insights" if the Times didn't give him a platform....