Earlier this week I sent out a Tweet asking my followers what, if anything, they would be willing to pay for news content online. While I didn’t get a large response, what I did get didn’t surprise me. People don’t want to pay for news they can get else where for free.
As a newspaper editor, working on three papers in southwest Minnesota; the subject of online news interests me greatly. Recently we launched three new online editions of our paper, all free to the reader. We’re still working on our online model and watching with great interest what others are doing.
Earlier this month the New York Times announced plans to begin charging for most of its online news content, starting shockwaves throughout the Newspaper industry. Sure it has been done in the past, the Wall Street Journal has been charging for years and many other publications charger for back issue content.
I have been in the midst of many newsroom meetings, discussions and debates about the merits of charging for online news content and at this point I see both sides of the coin. We have been offering this content for years now, conditioning readers to expect news content to be free.
There are many similarities to Napster in the late 1990s and the way news is handled today. When newspapers began limping their way online more than a decade ago no one truly knew what it meant to put news online. There was as much debate then as there is now. Today we’re faced with the decisions that were made back when newsprint started to go digital.
The genie is out of the bottle and it’s going to be near impossible to get it back in there, no matter how many wishes the industry makes.
Of course my analogy of illegally downloaded music through services like Napster and the newspaper industries decision to put its content online for free is somewhat false. Newspapers pretty much universally did it willingly. Where the similarities merge is the difficulty the newspaper industry faces, how do we demonstrate value in purchasing when similar, if not identical content is available freely to readers around the world?
Over the last decade the newspaper industry has seen a great shake up with publishing firms, newspapers and magazines folding, selling off and letting people go left and right. It’s a scary time to be in the print industry.
The unfortunate side effect of this comes in where news originates from. A large majority of good news reporting still comes from newspapers. Sure television and online bloggers are doing fine journalism, but the first stories almost always find their home in print.
As newspapers continue to close down around the U.S., smaller communities are going to begin to lose their voice. A few years ago I was involved in the coverage of a story in the small town of Cottonwood, Minnesota. Four children were killed in a bus accident that made headlines around the world.
It was covered on Fox News, CNN, the nightly news programs and countless blogs online. A large amount of that coverage originated from the newsroom I worked at. We were inundated with phone calls, requests and inquiries. The Marshall Independent newspaper is where that story grew and early reporting was done.
Would the Cottonwood bus crash have been covered if the Independent hadn’t been there? It’s a difficult question to answer, but many of the iconic images that helped tell the story would not exist.
I have heard the argument that bloggers can do as good a job as newspaper reporters. I don’t disagree with that, however most bloggers don’t have the same mandate that a community newspaper does. I don’t see many bloggers sitting in on RTR school board of Lake Benton City Council meetings. I don’t think that would change if those communities no longer had newspapers. Those meetings and events would go un-noticed.
This is where I admit that the majority of the news I consume comes from free online sources and even a number of blogs.
I am not attempting to change anyone’s mind on the subject. I still don’t know if charging for news online is a model that will work. I just hope people don’t dismiss the importance of newspapers in our world today. We’re still relevant and have our place. I just ask that you recognize that and support us during this difficult transitional period.
I agree with your point about local news. There is tonnes of news I wouldn’t be exposed to if I didn’t read the local paper. I think the issue newspaper faces is that they can’t beat the immediacy of the web and Twitter in particular. Citizen journalism seems to be gaining traction more and more. One of the sites I read regularly was reporting today a story I saw on Twitter yesterday as a news piece. It’s gone from reporters being on the scene to now everyone being a reporter and having a network to distribute news. The reality is we’re probably going to sacrifice local news and event coverage in the name of progress, as sad as that is.
I think papers like the three I work on are safe for the moment but I do think the New York Times, Star Tribune and other “national” papers are the ones who are on the chopping block.
Citizen journalism is a good thing but we’re also entering a world where opinion is news re:cable news channels.
I’m heading to a newspaper convention next week and I’m sure it’ll be the talk of the show.
The point is very important for newspapers (and their readers) to come to terms with. If readers are not willing to pay because they can get their news from “free” sites, pretty soon those free sites — which at some point down the line get their news from paid reporters — will cease to exist, too, and certainly those that offer exclusively local news will go away as well. I don’t think anyone is going to cover local council meetings or ball games for free.
* portion edited by RJW3
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