Mary Dejevsky: The real enemy of newspapers
In focusing on the competition from other papers, the press ignores the BBC
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Independent Minds
Ten years ago, I was working in Washington and observed – as a newspaper journalist based in that media-obsessed town could hardly fail to do – glaring differences between the US print media and our own. The first was the vast numbers employed. To look across the newsroom of the legendary "local" paper, The Washington Post, was to be awed, but also to ask what on earth all these people contributed to the puny news sections delivered daily to our door.
The second was the domination of classified advertising – pages and pages of it, mostly local and regional. It was highly profitable and helped explain why the Post could employ such an enormous staff. And the third difference, at least then, was the vast investment – of money and faith – in the internet, with success counted in "hits" and peripheral marketing of brands.
That model came an early cropper when the losses of the online operation were revealed and more than 100 people – on this part of the paper alone – lost their jobs. Not only had the online Post failed by a big margin to turn a profit, but the newspaper itself was haemorrhaging its classifieds to new, dedicated, advertising websites.
Since then, many venerable US papers have folded, and the same questions have been posed on both sides of the Atlantic: how can such an antique creation as a newspaper be made financially viable in the digital age? Should it try? If the future is the internet, why don't we all give up the messy business of paper, printing and distribution, and simply commit our words and pictures to the bandwidth?
The reason why not – although it is remarkable how many apparently sane and sensible people fail to grasp this – is that, while newspapers present a sickly financial model, the present internet model is even worse. Internet journalism has still not proved that it can exist without readers who pay.
Most online-only sites do not originate material, or if they do, many contributors are unpaid. Editors are primarily collators: they pick and choose from articles that we in the old-fashioned media are paid for by our employers. They survive essentially by piggy-backing off others. Is it not obvious that, so long as online journalism cannot pay for itself, it cannot be the exclusive shape of the future?
Now this is something not to be shouted too loudly in liberal British circles, but I have recently felt grateful, for the second time in my career, to the media magnate, Rupert Murdoch. The first time was when he broke the power of the print unions by summarily moving his London-based papers to Wapping. This was something only a proprietor with his money and determination could have done.
It was not pretty, and the ruthlessness and deception the move entailed left wounds that remain unhealed to this day. But it freed British newspapers, and that includes journalists, from the blackmail and censorship of the print unions. By cutting operational costs, it also made new newspapers, such as The Independent, possible. The lack of a similar shake-out in US newspapers, along with their dependence on classified advertising, is one reason why they have fared so badly in the current climate.
The second reason for being grateful to Murdoch is that he has just pledged to do something else that only someone with his determination and clout would have a chance of carrying through. He has said that his newspaper group will start to charge internet readers for what we have learnt to call "content": the words and pictures that journalists produce.
While some papers, including this one, have tried to charge for online material, no one has really succeeded, except the financial press. It is not only that payments reduce the "hit" rate and attendant advertising. It is that published articles can be usually be found elsewhere on the internet for free. Charging then becomes counterproductive.
What this means, though, is that online readers everywhere are subsidised by those who buy a printed copy. And while paper, print, distribution and the rest probably should make a physical copy of a newspaper more expensive than an online version – and the convenience and aesthetic attraction of a real newspaper should not be underestimated – is there really no intrinsic value in words and pictures that someone has worked to produce?
It is all very well for internet lobbyists and political groups, such as Sweden's newly successful Pirate Party, to argue that a "digital generation" expects free "content" and will never, ever, agree to pay for it. But a logical consequence of giving it away is that journalism ceases to offer paid employment at all. For if no one pays to read the written word, no one except advertisers or agitators will commission it.
It has been a signal failure of journalists, and our trade unions, not to have banded together against the provision of free "content" on the internet. Yes, it was flattering to gain so many readers, and maybe in the paper's interest. But the journalist's stock in trade has been grievously devalued. If it was not feasible for the papers to charge for our online material, we should have lobbied for another cost base, such as a copyright tax on internet providers. That should still be an option.
Which brings us to a final, perhaps decisive, difference between newspapers in the US and and Britain: the special place occupied here by the BBC. Murdoch may yet succeed in charging for his newspapers' content. But his chances are far better in the US than here. This is not just because many US papers are in an even more parlous state than ours, but because, in focusing on the competition from other papers, the British press has ignored a much greater presence.
The expansion of the BBC, not just into a myriad radio and television channels, but also online, has brought it into direct competition with newspapers. And while much of its material originates in broadcasting, much of it is unique to the web. It may be too late to ask why newspapers did not challenge the BBC's online proliferation sooner. After all, the websites were developed with licence-payers' money. But if newspapers in Britain are serious about charging for content, they have little choice but to unite and take on the BBC.
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Comments
What a funny little world!
Apparently some reporters have just learnt their unpopularity by learning the number of those “surfers” who pass through the articles and the time they (don’t) muck about them (including me, of course).
In a 'twittering' frenzy, opinion has sneakily risen to the top of our agendas; a social unity formed through discrimination and fearings. Journalists can step up to this challenge, and provide new, challenging material that allows us - the subscribers to these notions - to once again debate the true topics of importance with vigour, rather than nonchalant flotations of self-idolatry.
PS - I buy the newspaper as and when, however internet reading is invaluable; it is after all partly a marketing tool, and without it I would possibly buy it less often.
I thank you
Firozali A Mulla
Nail on the head there, Mary - but you only see that as a bad thing because you are a journalist and will suffer, newspapers are antiquated and virtually useless now, either make a viable, online news service or go bust
I don't see why the BBC shouldn't have gone online - they've moved with the times and provide information people want, I wasn't aware the commercial news services had laid an exclusive claim to the net
One of the problems, as I see it, is franchising. Just about half the English language newspapers in the world now reproduce content authored by journalists employed by the New York Times, in Manhattan. I don't see that as news ... I see that as a monopoly devoted to a peculiar and poisonous kind of political indoctrination.
Therefore, one of your root problems lies with news gathering. If the only newspapers who can afford to employ reporters who actually go out and gather original news content, are the BBC, ITN, London Times, New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, then we will continue to be trapped inside this Zionist-friendly, "Communism with a Smiley Face" world.
Far too many British Journalists have been politically indoctrinated when at College, without ever realizing they have been. The tragedy is that they truly believed they were gaining an education. Now, they can't split the difference between Socialism, Communism, Liberalism, and Zionism, because there isn't any, yet they go on pretending they can. The Straw Man is a Western Journalists greatest friend.
More and more people have woken up sufficiently to identify the terminal sickness that ails Journalism in Britain and much of the Western world. They see, correctly, that the mainstream media has become a tool for demonizing white people, white history, and white culture ... whilst celebrating vacuous and self-destructive concepts such as 'diversity' and 'multiculturalism.'
A sure mark of mass insanity is when sardines in a tin can are warned NOT to complain when someone tries to stuff pilchards into the same can, lest they be accused of racism.
Journalists, just like the Police Force, should belong to the people and should protect the roots and traditions of that people ... not be the promoters of some sick, immoral, hidden agenda, which at the top, is being steered by Corporate Vultures and Bankers who simply want populations of compliant cattle to milk until kingdom come.
Responsible journalists should put an end to this childish left wing / right wing tittle-tattle, and ban the use of the terms "racist" and "nazi" and "anti-Semitic" so a proper, informed, and mature debate can begin.
When I look at the photographs of the male correspondents writing for the Independent, one of the fundamental causes of the problem leaps out at me: nearly all display head cocked to one side like a coquettish young girl, wimpish smile, eyes averted, chinlessness. The same characteristics can be seen in correspondents employed at the Telegraph and elsewhere, so don't take it too personally. Ever studied a photograph of the Telegraph's Religious Affairs (Catholic) Correspondent? I suggest you grab a strong coffee before you do.
And its not just the men. In her original Facebook page, the so-called 'Religious Affairs' Correspondent for the London Times newspaper used to have---until she got wind of me notifying Independent readers via a comment I posted early this year---a large photograph of herself sitting down on a sofa, in a mini-skirt, so short you could clearly see her crotch because that is what she wanted to display. And this is the behaviour of a married woman! Such is the immaturity and conceit of an educated, late 30-something woman in Britain today, who writes for a living.
If British Journalism cannot overhaul itself, and pick itself up by its boot-straps, and eject the legions of crypto-Communists that dominate its opinion pages, then it will have to die a natural death ... or be killed off. The future of Britain and the racial preservation of its dominant Anglo-Saxon and Celtic populations are far more important than the preserving the ability of failed or corrupted journalists to shop at Sainsbury's.
The shame is that not enough of you have aspired to match the high journalistic and moral standards of the highly principled John Pilger.
I'd have paid for this. Really.
Here is an example of Mr. Pilger's journalistic cutting edge and perceptive powers of truth:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C62KAmMz
Enjoy!
You might as well point the finger at Sky News online and say that is causing the decline of newspapers.
Lets be honest here, this article is part of an agenda by News international to encourage the breakup of the BBC purely for its own profit and not for the benefit of the British public.
Hands of our BBC Murdoch, you make enough money already.
I reckon 50p a weekday, that is £130 a year, would be around the break-even point for me. Yes, I reckon that would be reasonable. After all, a newspaper keeps me quietly occupied and informed for around an hour so 50p is good value. But then I would not want the ads (I have to turn off Flash in my browser), or to be pestered for each article.
I also wish media people would lay off the BBC on this issue. We would need an alternative to the private newspapers, which have, let's be honest, often exploited BBC news for their own material. Its charter requires it to be politically neutral (and seems to be doing that as both sides scream about equally) so it provides a necessary counter-balance to often one-sided newspapers.
So what? Jounralism is so bad, poorly informed, self-opinionated, lazy, led by the nose by spin doctors and lobby groups - look at the lack of an proper journalistic investigation, thinking and debate over Globalwarmism - that journalists do not deserve to be paid.
It is why Internet blogging has taken off so.
There are plenty of amateurs who can and will provide news and opinion and in far greater variety freely. Their on-line accounts - in the so-ccalled Blogosphere - are cross checked and commented on by a spider's web of other on-line contributors, and of course anyone can contribute.
What is happening is just like Murdoch's move to Wapping, the closed shop of journalists and their proprietors and their political and ideological affiliations, deciding what we shall know and think, has been busted.
Farewell.
It's still a full on battle of the ego, people wishing to make a change be it in their name.
I agree with elements of Ms Dejevsky's argument, why and how should we expect to read all our news for free? Atleast we are given some element of truth in the fact that these people have investigative minds and practice this through research in the actual field, in the aptly named 'blogosphere' it is only subjects that matter to the individuals life as they continue in it and how they wish for their interpretations to alter others views - journalists are there to satisfy our inquisitiveness, not completely their own needs or desire.
Walter Cronkite has turned.
People who blogs are in many cases scinetists, teachers, doctors, climatologists, police, businessmen so they can talk with authority. We can get the information straight from them without being filtered and sanitised by lazy jounralists with their own prejudices.
By the way. You can get thing free... not "for" free.
The rest of these newspapers' content is just opinion pieces, to attract certain types of reader who will agree with the paper's line, nothing to do with news - so when you say we're paying for investigative journalism, we're not - most journalists are simply writers, and ironically their greatest area of knowledge is their own industry, obviously some know what they're talking about more than others, but so do bloggers, they both have fields in which they specialise - the major difference is the security and authority, obviously you don't have the safety of knowing what you read in a blog is true, or even close to it - but that said, the open market of the blogosphere does a good job of sorting it, and why should I trust a columnist picked by an editor for their particular views anyway? The rise of the internet is probably doing a very good job in creating a much more discerning public, whereas once they read one newspaper every day and swallowed it, now they read several newspapers and blog pieces online
Couple that with the fact that we still receive authoritative news from the BBC/ITN/Reuters and there really isn't a problem in losing the dead tree press
~Oscar Wilde.
"The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable, and literature is not read."
~Oscar Wilde.
"We journalists make it a point to know very little about an extremely wide variety of topics; this is how we stay objective."
~David Barry.
No, there isn't. Isn't that obvious?
PP says instead that there is a will to pay for online content, the industry has only to find out what people are willing to pay for.
If I'm only interested in e.g. the latest scandals concerning Prince Charles, I might be tempted to pay a small fee to receive that information.
Newspapers worst enemy is their own drive to appeal to everyone instead of putting an effort to bring quality journalistic content to the readers - "Why shold I pay for information in a paper (or online) that is available on the net for free?"
To be able to compete with free you must offer something better, and to do that you need an understanding of customer needs (even before the customer knows about it)...
In Italy and France a lot of cheap communist papers are printed and owned by communist cooperatives, which is one survival model MD doesn't envisage;) Personally i'm prepared to pay for le monde diplomatique or better - no in-depth essays and cutting-edge investigative journalism, not interested. They illustrate their articles with modern art too, which i'm really into, but i imagine they have about 10 subscribers..