How will we pay for journalism?
Sep 2nd, 2008 by handolio
An interesting post on Antony’s blog has drawn me into a thread about the commercials behind journalism. In essence, Roy Greenslade has challenged Philip M Stone’s “heretical thought” that papers return to print-first publishing, but he doesn’t suggest an alternative revenue model. Antony notes iCrossing’s experiments with new models of journalism. Meanwhile, Paul Bradshaw (in an unrelated post) believes that ad sales can save newspapers.
So, how will we pay for journalism?
There’s little doubt in my mind that it must be paid for; that is, that there’s always going to be a need for professional journalists with the freedom and security to investigate, uncover and report.
If ad revenue is declining publishers must, as Antony rightly points out, “look beyond advertising for revenue”, but where is this revenue? Can we charge for content? That’s been tried with limited success: there’s so much content around that you have to have something special or unique before people will pay to see it.
What alternative models does that leave? Nobody seems to know.
Cut out the middleman?
I used to wonder, based on our experimentation at iCrossing, whether the publisher was becoming redundant, and what the ramifications of this would be.
Rather than write for a publisher – who maintains the healthy distance between editorial process and the commercial interests of the advertiser – we’re writing directly for the advertiser. Some would argue – as Dave Lee has – that this inherently makes all of our content advertising, but I’d strongly disagree. With a proper editorial process, and management that is prepared to defend it when there’s a potential conflict of interests, it is possible to produce objective and useful, reader-first news.
Is this enough, though? The scope of what we can do is limited, at least indirectly, by the commercial concerns of the companies funding our work.
Where’s the commercial interest, say, for any of iCrossing’s clients to fund an investigation into possible corruption within the police force, or government? What kind of company would have that remit, and how seriously would anyone take the results? As how important would journalism’s role in Watergate be remembered if, for example, Woodward and Bernstein’s Washington Post investigation had been a Wash ‘n’ Go investigation?
And there’s another vital concern: good journalism needs protection. What everyday company is ever going to offer a journalist the resources and support afforded by a publisher, with its experience, influence and – let’s face it – media lawyers? In my recent experience, few firms understand the role, purpose, needs or constraints of journalism. They aren’t going to stick their neck out for it.
Is what the journalists at iCrossing do a viable model for journalism’s future, then?
Yes and no. I’m realising that despite our idealism and ambitions, journalism directly-funded by commercial concerns is perhaps among the future profession’s lowest rungs, and there need to be many more above it. And it’s funding the higher rungs that presents the real challenge.
Excellent thought-provoking post, though you’re more optimistic than me (unless we have a revolution of course).
I wonder if the higher rungs will just be the lower rungs out-of-hours.
Print is alive and kicking in webbed up Denmark. Newspapers cost more, but people value the content more as the publication is less driven by advertising concerns. ‘course, they’re all commies, but hey…
Handolio for vice-president! He shoots moose y’know.
I think questioning whether it is enough to provide objective, useful, reader-first content – only within the realm of interest to commercial sponsors – is spot on. Broad and deep editorial balance obviously has no place there.
But then there’s the question of what editorial balance is in a medium where you’re potentially one click from anything, and where ‘news’ (read: anything) fires along networks of interest.
The notion of people (journalists and otherwise) curating links, as described by Jeff Jarvis, begs the question of editorial balance being something that is created between providers of content, not by them.
Of course that doesn’t solve the problem of how to fund the non-commercial stuff. But projects like ProPublica and Spot.us might help.
More on curatorship by Euan Semple today, whereby “people earn reputations for being able to find and pull together quality content”. An appealing model, no?
Rather depends on somebody else producing quality content in the first place, though. And therein lies the problem..
Tom not a problem but an incentive to make good stuff that people get excited about and point to rather than hawking your soul in front of media execs!
Handolio can’t be VP, he knows what a condom is.
Yep. I’ve got a two-bedroom one.
Sorry, that was a cheap joke in response to some well-considered comments, as is my wont.
@Chris – Beautifully, wonderfully put (first point, that is. The seventh one was a cheap gag, too
)
@David – lovely Denmark. They have proper papers and proper cafes and art and stunningly beautiful women. Maybe I should move to Copenhagen?
@CPev – I love that idea of balance being created between providers, but surely the balance comes from the reader, who chooses which providers to pay attention to? Aren’t networks of attention just another way of outsourcing quality control to the reader?
@Tom & Euan – there is good content out there, hidden under the weight of dreadful content. Euan’s right, though, and his comment may bring us full circle to Chris’ original musing:
I’d defend our fumbling self-analysis on Hackbash above most of what we’ve managed to achieve for our clients. It’s wonderful to be able to write almost anything. Perhaps we don’t make the most of the privilege?
I may be in a grumpy mood this morning, but I remain unconvinced that the great masses of internet users, washed or otherwise, place any greater value in good content than the aforementioned media execs. Or to put it another way: what excites most people, and so what people create and link to, is drek.
And with that in mind, perhaps what’s needed online is two tier online news: if fewer people want good news content, and it’s more expensive to produce, then maybe the “give it away for free and pray for enough ad traffic” model isn’t suitable. Maybe what’s needed is a high-quality, vigorously reported and edited, paid-for news product. Like, you know, a magazine (ahem – due disclosure, blah blah). Hasn’t worked in the past, but if everything else is sliding downhill into chaos, then who knows.
Who said anything about masses?
The way I see it, they’re a necessary part of the equation unless people can charge money for news. Consider four options:
a) Masses + Adverts = Journalists get paid, life is peachy.
b) No masses + Adverts = No advertisers, no pay, doom, gloom.
c) Masses + Paid-for content = We all buy private islands. Woohoo.
d) No masses + Paid-for content = Journalists get paid, life is peachy.
Obviously option C is a fantasy land and B doesn’t bear thinking about. So with that in mind, it seems to me that people either need to charge for news content (D, as per my suggestion) or else they need the masses to be interested in it (A, but see comments about quality above). Or is there a better way?
Woah – that was like being an extra in Life On Mars and being shot back twenty years – warn me before you do that again!
People inreasingly aren’t masses that can be milked to shore up bad products or shoddy journalism. Passionate niches is closer to how I see things. I already pay for some blogs and some podcats – not journalists but journalistic activity – and I was saying to a big ad agancy the other day that I would actually seriously consider paying a premium for good, relevant advertising instead of tha mass market stuff I have shouted at me on a daily basis about products I have no interest in.
Sorry, my time machine’s playing up – but then it is overdue an MOT. Should go back to last week and book it in. In any case, I wonder if we’re actually talking about similar systems, but with a difference of scale?
I suppose my key concern with relying on non-journalists for news is time: who’s going to have the time to put into worthy but research-heavy stories of the drags-on-for-months variety if they’re doing it outside or around another job? Hence it seems to me that some kind of professional journalism is still very much needed – but maybe on a different scale, catering to a smaller paid-for audience. Can’t see any reason why small scale, high quality nonprofessional journalism and small scale, high quality paid-for professional journalism couldn’t coexist happily and benefit one another, though.
As for adverts – not sure I’d pay for good ones, but I’d certainly pay a service that could limit my exposure to bad ones. Is that the same thing?