Surviving two days now without a real newspaper at my door.
Better than I thought.
I wrote this to a friend of mine at The Partnership (in a slightly different form) and I figure I better publish it on my own before it makes the rounds there (I may be too late).
My position is that it suffers with the resultant reduction in resources to keep government in check.
Two concerns that are intertwined:
- There really hasn’t been a model that shows a way for online publications of any kind to achieve the kind of revenue stream that is anywhere close to the revenue of print publications.
- The staff reductions that would have to eventually be made because of the lack of revenue (and the resulting ROI reductions, or more accurately the inability for the Partnership to meet ROI expectations, even if there is an increase) would eventually reach beyond production and circulation and impact news-gathering and reporting personnel.
What is the principle of limitation of public information in a well-ordered society today? The principle is simply the people's need to know. And the need to know of a free people, in a free and open society, is in principle unlimited. Indeed, this is why, of course, a political censorship is regarded, as I have said, as imprudent and also unrightful, a violation of right. (http://woodstock.georgetown.edu/library/Murray/1964A.htm)
"Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate to prefer the latter."- Thomas Jefferson
I would argue the following:
- If this plan were in place by the end of 2007, Kwame Kilpatrick would still be Mayor of Detroit
- Other media (Television, radio and internet) do not have the resources, influence, or reputation of the traditional newspapers. Their influence on public policy, even though they may be more widely consumed, is incomplete and limited. This is due, in part, because these media rely heavily on newspapers for their news without apology!
- The best outcome of the DNLP plan would be for there to be some miracle to occur and the newspapers would find a way to capture revenue on the internet that would be comparable to print. Barring that, (And this one might really piss you off, sorry) for the sake of public policy in this country, the best outcome would be for the plan to fail and fail miserably. Were this plan to succeed, many more newspapers would follow and the press issues that I have cited would multiply exponentially.
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Well said, and I agree!
ReplyDeleteExcellent points, I absolutely agree. I also think the best thing that could happen with this model is that it fails, and newspaper owners are forced to look at a transformational model. The DNP's plan is just the amputation of another limb on a patient who has no hope of surviving the disease. The problem with newspapers isn't - and has never really been - the economy. It is that owners have adopted a paradigm dependent on large profit margins, rather than the appropriate valuation of their product and the people who produce it.
ReplyDeleteRather than raising ad and subscription prices to meet their increased costs of doing business, newspaper owners started devaluing their product. They slashed news budgets, dropped the size of print news holes, gave away content on-line. Newspapers literally gave away Internet ads to their print advertisers, hoping to lure them on-line, but failed to help their clients understand how to use Web ads. Which makes sense, because nobody taught reporters how to write for the Web either. That would require an investment in the product, appropriately valuing it.
Consider this: I just went to check the subscription prices for at Freep.com and they're selling Thursday/Saturday/Sunday subs for the same price as Sunday only subs - full access to their digital edition plus home delivery one or three days for $3 a week. This is an award-winning newspaper that just cracked one of the biggest scandals in Detroit history and won EMMY awards, for pete's sake!
I picked up a copy of the free Free Press yesterday and read it cover to cover. It was intensely local and included enough entertaining stuff, like puzzles and comics, for me to feel like I'd had a newspaper experience. I can get national and international news on-line. I will pay for delivery of local news. And I'm willing to pay more than $12 a month.
Newspaper owners have eaten themselves alive trying to cut costs enough to maintain their healthy bottom line. And now, they have no bottom line. Because they cut the very thing that created the healthy bottom line in the first place.
Okay, I'm done ranting now.