I will now rant... at great length...
Apparently, they want to change the business model for news entirely, in the same manner that other greedy, big media control freaks have, and probably will continue to do for the foreseeable future. This is a basic change to their decades old business model, a very fundamental change that expects to do something that I consider the epitome of greed...
But let's first describe the business model, so that we're all on the same page with this whole thing.
There are three elements in this business model: the Medium, the Advertising, and the Content.
The Medium:
Daily newspapers have always been called "the press". They're called "the press" because they own expensive printing operations, and they sell the product of those printing operations in the form of the daily printout. Newspapers are printouts. The sale of printouts is the selling of a medium.
Readers, listeners, and viewers have always paid for the medium, one way or another. We bought the daily printouts, we bought the radios, we bought the TV sets. Now we pay monthly subscriptions for cable TV, and we pay monthly subscriptions for the internet.
We've always paid for the medium, even before the telephone was invented... which is a medium we have also... always paid for.
The Advertising:
Newspapers have a lot of advertising in their daily printouts. They also have a lot of advertising online. They sell their number of readers to their advertisers, and they sell their online traffic volume to their advertisers. Most everyone is fully aware of the huge difference in the rates, but the advertising business model is exactly the same.
This sale of readers to advertisers, the fundamental business model, never changed. It's been the same model for both the medium of print and the medium of the internet. This has been the business model newspapers have followed for decades, wherein they sell printouts to readers, and they sell readers to advertisers. Now they also sell online traffic volume to their advertisers, as well. No slightest change has been made in the business model at all.
For as long as there was no other medium for the advertising, both businesses (printing and advertising) provided the income for increasingly expensive news-gathering operations.... the product of which is this "content" they want to sell now.
Radio and TV hardly put a dent into that business model, as the medium of printing remained the only way daily newspaper content, per se, ever got delivered. But the internet changed this whole game by simply subtracting the newspapers' ownership of the medium right out of the equation.
Since they no longer own the exclusive medium for local print advertising, their income has been falling ever since the internet went commercial.
As far as the business model is concerned, though, ...with the internet, the daily newspaper could still sell readers to advertisers online, in addition to selling the daily printout. With falling revenues, however, newspapers have continued to operate as if the expensive news-gathering operations can continue to be supported. This paradigm of "professional journalism" is the one that I am constantly assailing here on this blog, because the medium has changed so drastically. Yet, much of the newspaper industry, and the T&G in particular, just never seems to wake up to this change. And with today's announcement, it's clear that they are still very deeply immersed in denial...
My view is that nobody's really carrying their own water over there at 20 Franklin Street anymore. For instance, when the T&G's star columnist can buy a $383,000 house on the west side in the middle of this economic recession, but never have to produce any more copy than a single column of a couple thousand words, just six to twelve times a month... well, I'd say that that columnist isn't carrying her own water... because if that "content" was offered for sale on its own, it wouldn't bring in enough to pay for that house. It wouldn't even pay for a used car, fer chrissakes!
What's really changed for the newspaper business is that they can no longer support the traditional paradigm of such expensive news-gathering operations for a business model that no longer has the printing operation's exclusivity.
Unfortunately, exclusivity of the medium, and the revenue from selling that exclusive medium at very high rates to their advertisers... this is something they can never recoup, now that the internet is here.
The Content:
We already pay for the medium online. We pay for it in the form of our monthly bills from our Internet Service Providers. It's a monthly subscription. And we're already paying that subscription.
We're just not forking over our "media dollars" to the newspapers anymore. Someone else gets that money, now.
The business model for subscriptions to exclusive content has already been established, as well, but the newspaper business people who want to charge for their content seem to have missed the basic element of this development entirely...
Where we already pay a monthly subscription fee for another medium (cable TV) and also pay an additional monthly subscription fee for content, ...well, this is something that's been established and working for many years with channels like HBO, Showtime, The Movie Channel, Cinemax, and so on.
We pay extra for this content because it's delivered without advertising.
But the newspaper geniuses want to sell their "content" with advertising.
If the T&G were to offer an exclusive subscription website with all their local "content" but with no advertising, then I would certainly laud their effort to sell what they believe is so valuable. But everyone who works there knows, as well as I do, that this won't work.
Why won't it work? It won't work because the product of the expensive news-gathering operation, the news, was never worth that kind of money to anyone! It was never worth even one cent more than the income made off the price of the daily printout (medium) and the income made by adding up the readers, who were then sold off to the advertisers! When they owned the medium and they had exclusivity of their readers which were sold to advertisers, they could afford those expensive news-gathering operations.
But now they can't afford 'em, so we have to pay extra now?...
We pay an extra subscription rate for HBO, etc, for content that is completely free of advertising on cable because that content is worth it. That "content" costs a lot more to produce than the "content" newspaper reporters generate. But in their infinite delusion and greed, the newspaper business really believes that they can soak readers for as much, or even more per month than what anyone now pays for a month of a single HBO or Showtime channel on cable TV!
And they'll continue to insist that they need to "sell" you that content with advertising on every single page!
Well, there's a ripoff if I ever saw one! Heh... and it's not like any of this "news" will never be available anywhere else. The only thing unique about any of it will be their opinion-molding spin!
The basic formula to make more money is being totally ignored in this, as well. If they want to make more money online, then they have to produce more online content. And if they want to continue paying their expensive news-gathering people what they're already being paid, then those guys are going to have start producing more content... a lot more content! More online content provides more advertising space, and will generate more online advertising revenue.
It's very simple, really. For the money the T&G's top people are getting paid, they should be producing ten times the content they now produce... probably a lot more than that. But, apparently, they're still stuck in some mid-20th century, pre-internet paradigm of living high off the hog with exclusive control of the medium their "content" is delivered through. That paradigm, while it lasted, generated so much income that they could afford to pay their "professional journalists" more and more money. And that river of cash flowed so heavily that the unions got involved, too. It was a very lucrative run!
But everything has changed.
I've been blogging for almost three years, now. I get paid nothing. My output here matches the output of the T&G's two top columnists, combined. Are they really that bereft of material? No, they're just spoiled, overpaid, under-worked and living in a paradigm of value given for value received that lives nowhere in the present day, except in that ivory tower at 20 Franklin Street.
We had a small demonstration of where the T&G's talent should be aggressively directed just last week, and I was very impressed. But today's bleggie announcement truly shatters any ideas I might have entertained that the management of the T&G was beginning to see the light shining down on them here in the twenty-first century.
The "content" they now want to charge for is only that produced by the local reporters, only the local news! Can you believe this delusion! Their local news coverage is so incredibly thin now that it's difficult to believe that they've even had a paid staff for any local news all this time!
What's truly beyond belief, however, is that the T&G is still hopelessly stuck to the old paradigm of their online activity merely "mirroring" the daily printout. It's probably the most basic "tell" to their total denial of what's been happening with media over the past two decades.
They just don't get it!
What is "it"?
IT is the fact that all the T&G's "professional journalists" should've been blogging long before I even started. That website should've had an ever-growing river a content flowing from the keyboards of their top paid "professional journalists" for the past decade! Instead, it's been a dead tree reflector with the same deadlines and the same tired, ever shrinking content that shows up in their daily printouts of yesterday's news!
Any professional journalist worth their salt should be able to out-produce me with an online journal any day of the week. And they should've been doing this for years, now.
Heh. If Pinch wants to eat up the money "saved" by soaking the employees of his subsidiaries, then it's clear that the employees of those subsidiaries are going to have to produce more (not less) content to generate the kind of ad revenue that media mogul demands.
The writing on that wall has been written in huge letters for many years, now.
You don't generate more revenue by going in the direction of making believe that your shrinking "content" is worth more, and that now your readers have to pay extra for it. You generate more revenue by producing more content. Lots more content.
Making readers pay more for less content is a ripoff, especially when that shrinking content will still be surrounded by advertising. Not paying extra but getting more content, on the other hand, is how readers can be made happy, how more readers will be acquired, and how the future can be met head-on with any slightest sense of what the future really holds for professional jounalism.
The future, however, is already here. It arrived well over a decade ago. Many professional journalists around the world saw what was happening, and have been keeping online journals for years, now.
Heh... But not here in Worcester, not within that dead tree box at 20 Franklin Street!. They apparently think they're so much "better" than that, and "above" this whole thing.
I never would've started blogging if there hadn't been such a gaping abyss of local online content here in this town. If a taxi driver in the city of Worcester can out-produce any local professional journalist here in the virtual universe of unlimited space, then all I can say to any them is that if you don't start producing a lot more content on a regular basis while you're still getting paid, then it'll be a whole heck of lot more difficult for you when you're not getting paid at all.
And the simple fact is that if you're a writer, if what you really love is this dance with the muse, then having no bounds of column space, having no editor's reins pulling you back, and having nothing stopping you from pouring forth from your keyboard with the things that really interest you, then your muse comes alive!
All that enormous talent on the payroll at the T&G could be unleashed with the mere decision to simply go for it.
But if you have arrived at this time and in this place with the belief that your writing is work... such an ugly four letter word... then I truly feel sorry for you... because your paycheck has killed off your muse.
And I will not pay extra to continue killing it.
10 comments:
Fantastic post.
I would only add that this means that those of us who liveblog meetings and such will need to ramp up our content to make sure that the coverage is there.
The vast majority of the local new they do cover is city hall related material. So in that instance it's like double dip payments. As tax payers pay to keep city hallers fat, those same tax payers will get to read about it on line with their paid T&G subscription. Wow what a deal! Jeff start adding obituaries to your site and that'll pretty much give them a run for their money. Especially if you didn't charge the family suffering from their loss as the T&G does.
Seriously, the critical mass is not there yet to sustain the company on line. It is not there at all, and that is why you do not see more paid subscriptions for print, or TV. The published or broadcast medium hits a broad population at once, where as, someone needs to be looking for a specific blog or online entity. This has never been an easy pill for advertisers to swallow in regards to on line advertising. It is risky to say the least. It is getting better, but it is far from being there yet. I think the Telegram, like other media types ( TV or radio or etc) will simply use the internet to point to their paper or media events. At least until they believe the critical mass is there. The internet is slowly becoming another cable like operation. We will all be paying either to access higher speeds, premium services, or particular content. Even Youtube is looking at new models to increase revenus. In either case the companies who control the internet will be profiting from ads as well as user generated content. That is where the biggest shift is. An those people are not local and they are not any better than those at Franklin Street.
That Post should win an award of some sort !!! Great Job, Jeff !!!
Jeff,
I think I disagree with you on many levels- most are not related to the business model, but about the writers themselves.
1) "something they've always given away for free: local content" - the T&G website went Free to non-subscribers in 1996 (according to the tho the article). I remember having to log in. Before that, you had to pay.
2) While you may be right about you being able to outproduce the columnists, saying that "a taxi driver in the city of Worcester can out-produce any local professional journalist", I disagree. I love your blog, but it is a blog. A column. Not news. You are not reporting, you are commentating. You are not attending the meetings, interviewing people, gathering quotes, fact checking. You may be out-producing the columnists, but you are not out-producing the reporters. You are not reporting on the news.
3) News gathering "never worth that kind of money to anyone": It has to be worth something. How much of Tracy's time does she spend at meetings, on a volunteer basis? She's blogging about it because she has passion for education. But she isn't reporting. Her meeting notes are not news stories- they don't always provide accurate quotes. They don't always provide concise summaries of what was discussed. They aren't news stories. And just because she's doing what she does- does that make a news story irrelevant? There's often additional information in the news stories that doesn't make it into the blogs.
3) Following the muse- If everyone at the T&G only wrote about what they wanted to, what kind of coverage would that be? Who would over the town meetings? (Does anyone outside a town really love the democratic process so much that they derive joy from listening to everyone argue about local politics?)
You seem to know exactly what every mind in the T&G office is thinking:
"They apparently think they're so much "better" than that".
Maybe that is true in some cases. But my guess is that you are probably doing a great number of hard working writers there a disservice.
Joe
Jeff:
This post was heavy and deep , BROTHA !!!!!!!
Harry T
Worcester,MA
Joe --
I remember reading one Dianne Williamson column about my street (someone wanted to move their mailbox closer to their house, but the postal carrier didn't want to deliver because the resident had an insufficient fence for her dogs) that was so inaccurate it made me wonder whether she's actually seen the piddly fence or was just relying on the dog owner's word. And I suppose that's ok -- I expect her to take something and spin it in her own particular way. But I don't rely on her for excellent reporting. And I look at this blog as more of a "column" than as reporting. And I believe Jeff wouldn't even go that far.
As for whether meeting notes are the same as an article, they aren't. But is an "article" the only form of news there is? Can't a liveblog or meeting notes be a different kind of news?
I sometimes summarize my liveblogs or notes into a more summarized take. And I think that there are things that I write that you would NOT get from an article (because of contraints on length, because the reporter needed to get somewhere else & I didn't, etc.) just as there are things that you would get from an article that you wouldn't get from me.
I personally feel, and have felt for some time, that the Telegram could be much more creative in the ways that they use their "blogs." Why not have an assignment desk for bloggers? Why not post the meeting minutes or the small reports from those bloggers on the Local section of the website?
The Telegram has a clear advantage over bloggers: people send them press releases, and call them with tips. There's no way I can report in the way that they do because people aren't (obviously) going to call me or write a letter to my editor. But I think that bloggers can and will do a better job of reporting the minor things (like library board meetings) that may matter to some people.
The Telegram might want to take a look at when Long Island based "Newsday" started charging for their content. It backfired completely. Under 50 yes 50 people agreed to pay, they lost tons of traffic and advertising and had eggs on their face. Great post Jeff !!
WOW !!!! I find it very funny that you made one single comment that SOMEONE at the T & G , not mentioning Who, was overpaid for doing absolutly nothing and getting Paid a HUGE amount of money, that your readers would respond like this," I remember reading one Dianne Williamson column about my street " ,,,, Hmmm, why would anyone say something like THAT !!!! LMAO
cargod --
I was talking about Dianne Williamson in the context of reporting. At least a quarter of the columns in the T&G are commentary, without any quotes from others, and some of the other columns I read are grossly inaccurate. So, if we're talking about how a blogger isn't getting quotes right, I would hope that the T&G would be getting things better. Much of the time they're spot on, but sometimes they're not. That was one case I could think of where it was obvious she was phoning things in. A blogger would have been castigated for it...but she gets a paycheck for it.
Hope that clears things up.
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