Internet news, that is. From CNN:
Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch expects News Corporation-owned newspaper Web sites to start charging users for access within a year in a move which analysts say could radically shake-up the culture of freely available content.
Speaking on a conference call as News Corporation announced a 47 percent slide in quarterly profits to $755 million, Murdoch said the current free access business model favored by most content providers was flawed.
“We are now in the midst of an epochal debate over the value of content and it is clear to many newspapers that the current model is malfunctioning,” the News Corp. Chairman and CEO said.
“We have been at the forefront of that debate and you can confidently presume that we are leading the way in finding a model that maximizes revenues in return for our shareholders… The current days of the Internet will soon be over.”
Now, all snark about the particular value of News Corp publications aside (as noted in the story, readers of the Wall Street Journal will very likely pay good money for that content), Murdoch does have a point about how the current model for online news distribution is not generating enough income to pay for traditional journalism. The newspaper industry in the US is in a tailspin of falling advertising revenues and drops in circulation that has already led to many titles going out of business. “Everybody knows” that the press is full of hacks, but that’s (a) true of any industry you like to point at; and (b) irrelevant to the public discourse benefits we all derive from traditional journalism, warts and all.
Having people who derive a regular income from questioning people in the public eye (and people behind the scenes of public events) ensures a level of transparency to political and business proceedings that simply would not exist at all without journalists willing to ask the occasional difficult question. If newspapers don’t have the money to pay for traditional journalists then all they will pay for is people who are good at summarising and regurgitating what they are fed in press releases. For many media companies that’s all they are doing already.
More crucially, without the structure of traditional journalism, no journalist will be able to specialise in investigative journalism or rigorous analytic journalism with the full resources of a newspaper behind them, and the effects on public discourse will be dire. The blogosphere has a strong cohort of writers capable of decent analysis, true – but where will they find the information to analyse without traditional journalists ferreting out content beyond the PR spin?
But what subset of a newspaper’s readers are willing to pay for quality journalism rather than just uncritically consume the regurgitated press releases and celebrity gossip?
Joshua Benton, Director of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University, said Murdoch was not the only executive looking to generate new income streams from online content.
“News executives are starting to recognize that online advertising revenues are not enough on their own,” Benton told CNN.
But he said the challenge for media organizations was finding a balance between advertising and subscription revenues and figuring out how to charge for content without alienating existing users — which could lead to Web sites offering tiered levels of free and paid-for material.
“I suspect within any readership there is a small slice — maybe three percent — that is willing to pay. News organizations are going to have to find a way of getting money from that slice without driving away everybody else,” Benton said.
“I don’t think you can afford to put a lock and chain on the front page. It is a matter of figuring out which products you can charge money for.”
Benton said the U.S. newspaper industry was in a “horrible state” which was likely to get worse.
“We’re starting to see holes where newspapers were. The question is, will new Web sites fill the holes, will traditional names come in — or will they just not get filled?”
The other side of this move towards a mixed subscription/advertising model of news publication is what it will mean for the relationship between media corporations and journalists. Will any growth in revenue actually go to fund the traditional journalism I described above? Or will the slide towards ever more superficial and lowest common denominator content accelerate due to our old friend cynical greed in management? Now that the barriers to publication and dissemination of content online are so low, can journalists band together to become a source organisation onselling their content without sheltering under the umbrella of the media magnates? If they do move out from under the magnates’ wing, will they still have access to the movers and shakers in order to ask those persistent and sometimes revealing questions?
There’s loads more questions to be asked about the consequences of moves towards less free online news content. Have at it.
I don’t think anything anyone can do will roll us back to paying for a chunk of deadwood hand delivered daily. Murdoch’s walled garden is not a fundamental change, it’s agreeing to compromise on one detail in an effort to keep the rest of the model intact.
A better question is: where can readers who want quality journalism obtain that? It’s not just a question of payment, it’s a question of access. I suspect you agree that the great majority of what’s available is not quality journalism, but unfortunately the good stuff is diluted to much that’s it’s hard to find. Combine that with the overall large volume and the expectaion of selection – not just personal selection, but the Digg style crowd selection. I don’t want to read deep brown analysis of how to preserve the coal industry regardless of its journalistic worth. Which makes aggregation the only viable strategy. So how can a payment model work with aggregators to produce quality, targeted material?
I think it’s much likely to be through bloggers with bees in their bonnets and semi-independent journalists selling single stories. Between the blogger on the spot who happens to write well and think clearly, and the journalist who seeks out stories I’m inclined to see further incremental development as a more likely way to progress than some top-down revision. The “employed to create quality journalism” theory seems to be based on the idea that well-resourced single individuals can reliably produce good journalism, despite that theory having failed regularly in the past. We’ve definitely seen one-off cases where it’s worked, but I don’t recall seeing an organisation succeed in reliably repeating the process.
There seems to be an unconscious belief that journalism = newspapers. As moz suggests, newspapers are dead. They’ve ceased to be. Murdoch can nail them to the perch as often as he likes but they’ve still shuffled off this mortal coil.
The amusing thing is the lack of faith that tycoons like Murdoch have in entrepreneurship. All over the world, Rupe, people are developing new business models for delivering news that will destroy your leviathan. It’s called capitalism. Suck it up.
As for the social role that the media have sometimes played in holding governments to account: it’s greatly overhyped (mainly by journalists) and its value is far outweighed by the role that the conventional media play by selective reporting and deliberate distortion of the facts to constantly re-validate the existing power relations in society. Moreover political action has largely degenerated into endless attempts to influence what gets published in the media, so the whole mutually interdependent politicians/journalists jerking circle conspires to present a smoke and mirrors soap opera to keep the masses entertained.
The quicker the Fairfaxes and News Limiteds crash and burn and take their preening celebrity pundits down with them, the better for our governance. Then we might go back to the days when journalists were dedicated to publishing the news without feeling obliged to lecture us on its implications. They might publish factual information and not summarise gossip from officials-who-spoke-on-condition-of-anonymity. They might actually try to find out what happened instead of taking one nodding donkey’s pronouncements to a braying ass and asking for their response, then summarising the argument as a backdown, back-flip, blow or some other hackneyed meaningless story.
I’d happily pay for that.
Guess I’ll have to get my information from blogs then, won’t I?
Ken Lovell @ 2,
You’re spot on.
Yes Ken, spot on. Problem is you’ll still have the ABC, whose news and current affairs content is increasingly becoming a caricature of the worst elements you describe.
http://techdirt.com/articles/20090507/0355164778.shtml has an interesting take on the problems faced by newspapers… debt servicing. Also addresses some of the above points.
Some of the ebook blogs are speculating that Murdoch is aiming for the Kindle walled garden and is going to try for an electronic subscription tied to a dongle to stop people reading his news without paying. Of course, that presumes that the price will reflect not just the reduced subscriber base but also the loss of advertising (unless he has big, expensive ads from day one). Which suggests you’re looking at a $US500 device with a $20/mo subscription at best.
I suspect a fair bit of journalism may end up philanthropically supported.
The quicker that the monopoly of the so-called newspaper disappears and removes the vehicles for propaganda used by the industry giants, the better.
Yes there are genuine news reporters still writing investigative articles but the proprietors who control the news they wish to be disseminated censor these.
Maybe we will see a new form of small local newspaper make it’s appearance with out one mans control.
Maybe people would pay for the actual news and good journalism. The thing is, Ruppy provides neither.
The web itself is my ‘newspaper’ I read a single article from source A then another (follow up’s etc) from source B.
I don’t see any one site/service as a destination, the web itself is my destination; relying on a variety of RSS, social networks and heritage nmedia to deliver the content to me.
I already pay the telcos/ISP’s to access that news why should I pay again?
And Robert, yes probably, or in the case of News’ The Punch, aligned with educational institutions journalism departments.
One model for serious web-based journalism, as opposed to opinionating, can be found in the career of I. F. Stone.
Stone mined the plethora of public documents for his enormously influential investigative pieces.
Such an operation is easier to do today than it was in the 1960s, and cheaper too.
Rupe and the nodding donkeys have every reason to be very fearful.
I’m not sure that quality newspapers ever made as much money as newspaper owners now demand they do. People who used to own newspapers were satisfied with a very low return on their investment because they wanted to own a newspaper, and it was a fairly safe investment.
Now newspaper owners are largely conglomerates that include businesses that return 10% or 15% on the investment, and they demand their newspapers produce the same return. To do that editors got rid of ‘traditional journalism’ and give us the rubbish we now get – it’s cheaper. It’s the greed of newspaper owners that destroyed traditional journalism, not the internet.
I would like to see the journalism schools – I guess every state has at least one – produce a good online news source for their state.
Ha ha ha ha, these guys are so hilariously behind the times. If they were t-shirt makers it’s like they’d be debating on whether to ditch hand-turned looms as a method of making cloth.
Someone (it may have even been Ken, can’t remember), recently said of newspapers: They jumped out of the plane along time ago, they’re just hitting the ground now. So true.
Murdoch can talk all he likes about people paying for content, but Christ, look at the movies you produce that people so gleefully download, Rupes. If they can get the same thing, easily, for free, it ain’t gonna happen – and I fail to see how most newspapers are offering anything that people can’t get from a blog, or better yet the ABC/BBC/France 24 etc.
Interesting to note the only AU site behind a pay-wall is the Fin Review, which also happens to be the best paper in the country by about sixty quatrillion miles. Coincidence? I think not.
This “demise” of journalism doesn’t bother me at all. Frankly the sooner we lose dinosaurs like the Oz, gossip rags like the SMH, and i-don’t-know-what’s like The West Australian, the better.
Quality will out.
And there are all sorts of models for news delivery that could be developed for the web. News on the web does not require big organisations. How much would it cost to run ruppy’s orgamisation if they did not print things? My quess is that the cost would be so low that it would easily be supported by advertising if the quality was there.
My news comes off the net. I don’t want to contributed to cutting down trees and pulping them when the internet can give me the information I need.
There is also the advantage that I do not have to pay for some ones political views and spin.
On the net I can see several differnt versions for free.
If he starts charging for news on the net it will goodnight ruppy. I for one won’t miss him one little bit. Maybe then jurnalists won’t have to toe the party line and start reporting openly.
I agree that media organisations need to have a model that pays. But I don’t think that large media will merely add a paywall. They will also destroy network neutrality to starve competition.
It will certainly bring an end to blog folks linking to Ruppy rubbish. Trouble is, all that comedy gold will be lost on insiders who miss how funny it all is.
No loss. People will pay what something is worth.
Newspapers aren’t declining because free content is available, but because they’ve become crap. Anyone interested in the topic can see that over the years they’ve cut back on investigative journalism and increased the recycled and gossip content.
Provide good content, and people will pay for it, in print or online. Provide crap, and people will pay nothing for it.
Rudd has a wonderful opportunity to transform the ABC into an excellent, independent news organisation that would wipe the floor with Murdoch and company. A new charter, new board of directors and mandatory self-funding of entertainment shows by way of advertising could create a revitalised organisation.
It won’t happen of course. The last thing any bunch of pollies wants is a well-resourced, fearless, independent media.
And so we will continue to get nightly news broadcasts that shamelessly cross-promote ABC shows as ‘news’, such as the breathlessly important scoop that a woman who reckoned she was the victim of sexual assault by rugby league players six years ago still says it. Such is the level of tabloid trivia to which ‘Four Corners’ has been reduced … that’s when it’s not undermining confidence in the justice system with beatups suggesting convicted political assassins are innocent.
Strikes me that there is a striking parallel between the “newspaper problem” and the CD industry, in fact most of the communications stuff.
The dinosaurs in the CD industry failed entirely to see the download express coming down the internodes. It is the role of incumbents and owners to entirely fail to see what is coming. Ask IBM about personal computers, ask the music companies about downloads. There are hundreds of examples.
Closer to home we see the owner of a website opposing FTTH.
Huggy
The Advertiser is worth just as much as I am willing to pay for it. Nowt.
Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch expects News Corporation-owned newspaper Web sites to start charging users for access within a year in a move which analysts say could radically shake-up the culture of freely available content.
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Well it was going to happen eventually. And surprise surprise Emperor Rupert was the one to do it. Question is does he own enough of it to use his typically anti-competitive practices to force the rest of the Internet to follow suit? It will only work if he can make everyone do it I reckon.
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There are, of course, paid sites but they usually supply something other than agit-prop.
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If he succeeds there will pass what will become known as a golden age.
Hell will freeze over before I pay that bastard for anything
The death of the newspaper has been touted frequently and regularly pretty much since it’s inception, so I’m sceptical. While the WSJ keeps a fair bit of its content behind a paid subscription model, the NY Times’ attempt to establish premium content was abandoned very quickly, which I expect would be the result of any other free journal attempting to restrict their internet offerings similarly. One model that appears to work is allowing subscribers increased access online than for nonsubscribers.
Meanwhile, bloggers are taking up the journalism mantle in increased numbers and with increasing success, as more and more businesses and pollies recognise the access they achieve to their desired audiences by extending the privilege.
I won’t say “information wants to be free”, but too many people want too much information for it to remain restricted. More organs of information dissemination, rather than fewer, is how I reckon it’ll play out – Murdoch will never own the internet, and nobody else will, either.
Rupert sounds like the record label heads of the late 90s who having been unable to get that damn digital genie back into the bottle decided to:
a) strong arm consumers, quickly followed by
b) adapting distribution to a model consumers were pleased with
And they are consuming, and paying for music they could get for free – if they could really be arsed going through the hoops to do so. It’s been an amazing process, clearly assisted by the most user-friendly platform imaginable in the i-pod/i-tunes package.
As discussed above, and on Media Watch last night, “journalism” is a swamp that’s drying up fast. But I believe it will return triumphant in a user-pays form. Not crazy money, just some money. I already pay for premium FT access that I value greatly.
To use the word journalism to describe what appears in much of the MX papers, or the tragic Fairfax celebrity cut & pastes is to foul a dignified noun.
Murdoch will never own the internet, and nobody else will, either.
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Don’t underestimate him. He’s very good at control.
Applaud most of what’s said above.
Pay Rupert for his on-line rags? Not even after hell freezes over & pigs fly.
Internet’s original developers provided the WWW as a free service to humanity. If newspapers start charging, I suggest survivors & heirs mount a massive challenge, in every possible court, to extract royalties from every site which makes people pay for reading/downloading anything on it, and direct the profits to good NFP research/charitable causes. Obama’s fund-raising would fade to nothing in comparison to the support!
If Indians, esp women, could roll him over satellite TV; think what the on-line community could do! International black bans on Rupe’s advertisers, for starters!
I think that the likes of Talking Points Memo shows one of the ways ahead: what started out as a single professional journalist providing both commentary and original reporting from his own sources has since grown into an online news/commentary/beat reporting site. While most of its early interns have gone on to the more traditional news organisations, I see that as being we’re still in a transitional phase.
I’d expect two main sorts of development:
1) groups or collectives of existing journalists to combine and produce very low overhead reporting blogs (actually a bit more than blogs: TPM/Crikey, even something like The Clarion – the AJA paper published in Melbourne in the 1980s journo’s strike). Not much overhead needed (a few redundancy payments would cover) but using and exploiting professional training
2) Fairfax etc to morph into something more like MSNBC. The ABC is already moving into that sort of territory. Ditch the printed output, carry the ads, and provide the content – news, specialist commentary, etc – in a trimmed down online structure.
Essentially this was, I think, what they were prevented from when the Broadcasting Act was jiggered by Keating in favour of the TV networks. But the NBN could be the real game changer there.
In online terms, I think that The Age and SMH are effectively turning into that type of org: they are putting up more and more video nowadays. They have their own reporting networks already, as does the ABC, and most “news” anyway is either from Reuters/AAP/AP/AFP etc or from PR firms.
“…ensures a level of transparency to political and business proceedings that simply would not exist at all without journalists willing to ask the occasional difficult question…”
Well that was a bit of mixed bag in the Howard decade.
Rupe needs some laws that give him the power to rule news on the net. But bad luck for him, the wrong Government is in power. The Howard Govt would have bent over backwards to give him his every wish. Maybe the Aussie papers could do a deal with the Liberal Party in exchange for a promise on extra media laws. Maybe they have already.
I’m not a huge supporter of euthanasia generally but I think the Rudd govt could make a few changes to hurry up these deaths. Publishing all their ‘advertising’ on a dedicated website and direct (e)mail outs for other things.
News has been bad in the U.S. for a while. It’s not so much the Internet that’s to blame, although it has made things worse. American journalism has been declining since corporate ownership and media consolidation began to take off in the 70s. There’s a fine article in the April 6th issue of The Nation describing this downfall. Charging for website access is going to be one popular model for future newspapers, and Mr Murdoch was certainly wise to purchase a paper with affluent readers who could afford such charges before the crisis became so clear, but government sponsorship also might be required. Media in many nations do well and retain their freedom with government support. If such models were more widely implemented it could even loosen the stranglehold corporate interests have on our discourse.
Rupert is a much smarter bastard than anyone posting on this forum, myself included, so I’d be looking at the subtext and his motives.
J?ack
Indeed Ken L, along with the moral panics but Rupert will still be saying, for a while perhaps: “beautiful plumage.”
I think someone should register a new domain for when certain media personalities hit skid row, eg http://www.deadparrotsquawking.la.bolta.rwdb.com.au
And as a final possibility, those regional rags of the SmageOz might end up back in local hands? Now there’s a thought.
Katz @ 10.
Good point about Izzy Stone’s method, but it depended on several factors. The enormous quantity of public reports (Govt reports, etc). Izzy’s nose for likely best places to look. Izzy’s knowledge and sheer hard work. You might need a team of 3 or 4 equally talented guys these days to replicate that.
But one obstacle may be this: the reduction of the volume or scope of Govt reports, whether deliberately to stifle the flow of information, or through sheer laziness.
BTW, I suspect that Australia has never had the huge output of Govt info that the US has. (The range of low-cost Govt publications produced there is amazing. Is it a work program for the printing trade??)
OTOH, is the internet likely to assist?
Murdoch is right. Quality newspapers will die. Then, when consumers decide they want more than Metro, they will realise to will have to pay for quality.
michael2 @ 30 – “Murdoch is right. Quality newspapers will die. Then, when consumers decide they want more than Metro, they will realise to will have to pay for quality.”
Those people willing to pay will be a smaller part of a small minority that value quality. The most analogous demographic are the audiophiles that reject the ‘loudness wars’ and value sound quality enough to have created a renewed demand in vinyl pressings of new albums. The recording industry obliges that demographic not because they want to promote quality, but because it’s a more obvious and tangible [albeit boutique] market. The same will happen with journalism, I think, and the corporates will hate it. Poor Rupert. mwahaha!
What quality newspapers?
“I agree that media organisations need to have a model that pays. But I don’t think that large media will merely add a paywall. They will also destroy network neutrality to starve competition.”
That’s what I’m afraid of.
And the politicians, who won’t realise that Rupe’s power has waned until it’s completely gone, will give him what he wants.
They will also destroy network neutrality to starve competition.
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Yeah that’s the plan.
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The way Murdoch and others operate is essentially to marginalize any views that dissent from the line portraying them as biased and extremist. Which is kinda funny. Thing is there’s only two ways you can get professional content – direct payment and advertising. Advertisers have their own modes of control. Eventually, Murdoch or no, there will be some attempt to control the internet the way television and radio are controlled.
Murdoch wants to charge people to read what the PR industry spews out. That’s a Crooked Timber thread about Nick Davies’s new book Flat Earth News, that claims:
I wonder what the proportions would be for the Oz, the Age and the SMH.
Look: if Murdoch (or successors) lift their game, eliminate some of the most egregious columnists, and produce quality journalism, then I’m ready to throw a few bob their way. But I’m not going to pay money for “churnalism”.
I think that Murdoch is right if he means the demise of the newspaper model of the business he is in, but wrong, as are the rest of you who agree with him on that score, when it comes to newspapers per se. Technological changes will come to the rescue. Indeed, Murdoch himself took advantage of technology with his Wapping revolution: all newspapers are now produced by journalists (specifically, production journalists) rather than typesetters and/or linotype operators. Necessity is the mother of invention and I am convinced that technology will vastly reduce the cost of producing a newspaper even further, as technology has done in the past.
Previously, costs were progressively reduced by moving from hot metal to paste up (and reprographic camera/film) and the photo offset technology. Four generations of electronic typesetting: ATEC I & II to Cybergraphic I & II, and now IIa with its interface to the web, at News and Fairfax in less than 20 years is one good indicator. The coming technology will liberate newspaper production from its umbilical to the printing press, just as before the physical nexus of having to be on successive floors of production to the press could be abandoned with the availability of hi-res electronic screens and broadband landline and database computing power.
Simultaneous publishing online and on hard copy (and perhaps on some sort of electronic reader device) plus plateless printing on myriad of distributed printing units will ensure the newspaper’s survival, indeed its flourishing. As long as there are readers who want to read a newspaper, with serious analyses, and tit and bum, there will be those among us who will fill that need.
I am convinced that the news of the newspaper’s death has been greatly exaggerated.
A bit of context re Newscorp.
The most recent figures on the relative earnings, in this case for 3Q, are in descending order in millions:
Cable Network programming 375.7
Film 300
Sky Italia 116.4
Newspapers and information systems 115.1
Magazines and inserts 83.7
Television 20.1
Books 10.2
Other -200
The whole was down 43% on the previous year. Television was worst hit, being down from 419. Film was actually up from 261. They’ve had seven or more films which grossed more than $200m this financial year with Wolverine to come.
So newspapers form only 14% of earnings (15% in 3Q last year).
I think that was EBITA, ie. not taking into account write-downs. Overall the December quarter with write-downs was a shocker:
As indicated in that article Peter Chernin, Murdoch’s long-time (1996) Chief Operating Officer, and Chairman and CEO of Fox, has resigned.
The last issue of AFR Magazine, which unfortunately we’ve thrown out, says Chernin was given the arse. His mortal sin was that he outsmarted Murdoch a few years ago by easing Lachlan out. He was said to be openly scathing about the Murdoch progeny.
Murdoch is now 78 and succession must surely be on his mind. Murdoch knows newspapers, but he doesn’t know the media that make up the majority of his empire. The AFR article suggests that he can’t run Newscorp, so we may be in for interesting times.
Quality newspapers in the Murdoch stable?
When it comes to political news reporting and opinion there is little quality within the Australia branch unless you happen to be an opponent of the Government.
Murdoch cannot control the on-line world unless he intends to buy up every ISP, put in his own filters and charge people additional to access sites that are anything to do with News and heavily preferencing the availability of his own sites.
The Government better get moving to work out what dastardly plans the media barons might have and develop legislation to protect the internet from them in advance. ie making it illegal for an ISP to filter out or interfere with access to anything except that which would be a crime.
This was Crikey’s take on the Chernin exit, which links to this article.
Both talk about the tensions in the upper echelons of Newscorp, which the AFR Magazine article also detailed.
I don’t see the newspaper dying, basically!
I suspect that if Rupert decides to put up a pay wall, then the blogosphere will begin to openly compete for news.
After all, bloggers can and do pick up the phone….
When it comes to news, the future is in aggregators!
…see what I did there? Naah, probably not…
Hey, look! A rhinoceros!
That usually gets at least a faint twitch of recognition. Hell, by now I guess I’ll settle for that.
Hey Rupert you’re dead. You should be in the ground. But you just keep getting longer and bigger and wider…
My boss worked out a flexible workplace arrangement whereby he runs the company into the ground, pockets a performance bonus (after all, he is only being paid 10,000 times what the average worker at the company is being paid, well, 20 million if you include offshore operations), and we get a 15% wage cut.
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Hey I could do that. Anyone got a bank for me to run into the ground? Sounds like a sweet deal to me.
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I’m efficient. I reckon I could do it in 1/10 of the time.
Whatsamatter with Rupert. Look at all the people my age group and over who don’t read his scummy papers on-line.
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/24911/53/
ffs, put the old media models out of their misery.
How about a micro news production/consumption model? Something like subscribers pay $10 per year. But the twist is for every newsworthy story, lead or image they provide they get $10, with bonuses for the number of views (ie tabloid crap about a celebrity or staid economic insight may rank highly).
Content aggregation systems should be able to provide taggable short text, image, and maps so that raw content can be group according to familiar news themes, event coverage and geography.
Actually pay staff to sort through the content according to newsworthy patterns after initial sorting by algorithms and write up some form of analysis. I know this is bordering on imitating intelligence gathering practices, but it would be good for newspapers to gather some intelligence. How about the for a name? ‘Gathered Intelligence’, set up a spy aesthetic for contributers, etc. Enable anon contributions, etc. Launch party sponsored by Red Bull…
Advertising will be similarly determined by a niche market according to content, geography and views ranking.
pfffft
oh, btw, old media survived on the limited flow of information, now there is a reltive excess of information, that is what needs to be harnessed.
I know I am thinking like a capitalist, but I with these whinging assholes should just stfu and realise they are earning 11ty billion more monies than normal people.
Adrien is right.
The most obvious solution to the problem that current business models are not generating income is ignored. That solution is simply that we all collectively fund the internet and the provision of internt content including journalism through the tax system.
Some years ago now, I heard that all of the BBC’s online content cost UK taxpayer’s on average 50p per year.
That demonstrates the fantastic economies of scale that are possible with the Internet. However, because decision makers refuse to look outside of the private profit business model, this obvious solution is not even considered.
So, instead we persevere with the current idiotic arrangement where almost nobody, least of all, the really good critical independent online journalists, can make a living from the Internet.
If Rudd had used a small amount of the money he has thrown away in order to supposedly stimulate Australia’s moribund, ecologically ruinous economy, we could set up a fund that would provide many thousands of online journalists a decent income.
The following is off-topic, but only slightly, given the way the tentacles of the Murdoch Empire now extend into the ABC. I have written of my own experiences as an independent candidate in the Queensland elections in my article “Brisbane ABC suppresses alternative candidates in state elections despite listener dismay with major parties”:
Dagget – Adrien is right.
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Well cheers and sorry, but with respect, I think you’re wrong:
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If Rudd had used a small amount of the money he has thrown away in order to supposedly stimulate Australia’s moribund, ecologically ruinous economy, we could set up a fund that would provide many thousands of online journalists a decent income.
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In my opinion this would be both politically unworkable and economically and culturally undesirable.
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Politically it wouldn’t work because, even if the Keynsian frenzy doesn’t work and thus far it appears to be, there is economic trouble generally and the govt is expected to do something about it. Funding journalists would be way down on everyone’s list. Journalists are not well-liked in this country and there would be a universal howl of disdain if Rudd considered it. But he won’t. Politicians have reason to ‘specially dislike journalists. I wish they had more reasons.
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It’s undesirable economically for reasons that market fundamentalists assert. One thing they get dead right is that the govt in general is not good at picking winners. Industry policy works only in cases of a specific and obviously desiarble goal like the cultivation of textiles manufacture in England. Or solar power in Australia?
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It’s undesirable culturally because anyone funded by the govt it potentially beholden to that govt. Just look at the Howard Effect on the ABC; he kicks up a fuss about bias and the WWII documentaries roll into every spare slot. I grant you that the ABC and SBS are the most independant of the powers that be but I’d wager if the bulk of journalists were on the public payroll this could change very quickly.
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At the ABC people always have the option of a better paid job in the private sector so the politicans can’t get too stroppy. They don’t want to lose the ABC. It’s the only place they get to yack on more’n 5 seconds. The internet’s advantage is that no-one controls it. And there’s no capital outlay to get started. Eventually people who supply content will be able to make a very good living by a new marketing apparatus that will inevitably develop to replace ineffective mass-media advertising.
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For now the key is to follow the free.. Only a little while ago Murdoch and his son Lachlan were poo-pooing the death of the papers because everyone wants to read the paper in bed. Well now’s there’s wireless net and laptops and people are too fucking busy to read the paper in bed.
Murdoch HATES news aggregator sites that he doesn’t own because they are competing directly with him online, in a free market in which he maintains no monopoly at all.
Anyone can establish an online news site (using aggregation) for next to nothing, like the Drudge Report did, like Raw Story did. What pisses Murdoch off so much is that news aggregation sites link to his content without him getting a cut of the action, or more annoyingly, link to a site that recycles stories and news clips from his media, just as his media has always recycled stories from other media for a good slice of the content they provide.
He may try and establish an online monopoly, but it’s not going to happen.
Perhaps he is praying that there will be millions who will want to pay to read, watch and comment at ‘personality’ sites for his hawkers of fear, division, pro-war industry propaganda and hyperbole, like Bill O’Reilly, or Sean Hannity or Andrew Bolt. No doubt there will be some who will pay for their version of reality, but they are a rapidly aging slice of the population.
The point that everyone seems to be missing is that Murdoch is not so much interested in charging for good journalism, but charging for access to his websites where most of the content will be provided for free by bloggers who will see a free run on a news site with an audience as a good way to get their own blogs some bounceback traffic.
Rupert Murdoch LOVES that there are so many willing to write for free now, he had trouble getting his head around the idea that there are millions of bloggers who do what they do for next to no financial recompense.
The journalists he employs who still think they’re jobs are safe are going to have to compete for an audience share with those willing to give Murdoch their stuff for free.
Very interesting times.
Murdoch is not so much interested in charging for good journalism, but charging for access to his websites where most of the content will be provided for free by bloggers who will see a free run on a news site with an audience as a good way to get their own blogs some bounceback traffic.
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Yeah a pure commission base. And heaps of people competing for attention. And of course the best way to get it is to be controversial. And the best way to do that is be a shameless, hateful liar.
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Fab.
Adrien,
I probably put my case a little too simplistically. Firstly, I meant ‘journalist’ in the broader sense.
you wrote:
Why need it be the government? Why not let Internet users pick the ‘winners’?
Why couldn’t the worth of an article be judged by how often it is downloaded and that people who have their material downloaded more frequently be paid more.
It should be possible to pay a certain amount per hit when the number of hits are relatively low and decrease that figure as the number goes up. Perhaps a function based on the log (or ln) function could be applied to achieve this outcome. (Of course the both the precise formula and the means of metering downloads would have to be thought about very carefully, but that should not present an insurmountable problem.)
So people who are very popular would get considerably more remuneration than those who are less popular, but few, if any, could be paid obscenely high amounts.
It seems to me that there is unlikely to ever be any other business model that would fix up the current situation where a vast number of very creative and hardworking people out there are unable to make any kind of living form what they do, let alone be adequately remunerated for the valuable work they do.
Every now and then (about twice a week) I trawl through the culture pages of various major international papers to keep up on the news (and, specifically developments and new books in history and the Yartz.) Today I decided to have my fortnightly look at the New York Times. And, guess what, Murdoch has a survey on it about whether people would pay for the NYT on-line. So, being a somewhat naive little bunny when it comes to Rupert’s machinations and out of curiosity I decided to do the survey. But there’s a catch! When you get to the section where it asks several questions about how much you’d be prepared to pay for NYT on-line, if you put a nought in all the little boxes, you can’t finish the survey. Which means the survey, published in The Australian today, about which I inadvertently posted a comment on another thread, is just plain junk, because if you won’t pay you can’t complete it. Just sayin’.
I meant referred to in The Australian today.
Can you provide any links to the actual survey or stories referring to the survey?
This would be a good story for stopmurdoch.blogspot.com.
daggett @ 57.
This is the Fairfax Version:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/web/readers-reluctant-to-pay-for-online-news/2009/05/11/1241893890728.html
Will have to do a separate comment for the Murdoch version.
Re the survey. Go to Google News and click on anything by the NYT. Its a field so its temporary.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25457961-7582,00.html
The above is the Murdoch version.
Dagget – Why need it be the government? Why not let Internet users pick the ‘winners’?
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Well you said something about govt funding journalists. Now you’re sugesting that the market pick them.
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Why couldn’t the worth of an article be judged by how often it is downloaded and that people who have their material downloaded more frequently be paid more. It should be possible to pay a certain amount per hit
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It already happens. No government funding necessary.
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There’s basically three kind of ways to fund cultural activity. One is private, one is a command system where the entire apparatus of a cultural industry is run like the department of works and the third is a semi-independent publicly funded body.
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The private system’s drawback is that advertisers and big business will call the shots according to their policy. But the internet’s really good at supporting niche voices. It’s still quite far from full development. The command system sucks puss backwards thru a straw. Just do a little reading about the troubles that brillant film-makers from Poland and Czecho had in the 60s. Every foot of film needed a requisition, a stamp or four, a committee review – aaarrrgghhh! And even after all that, the brilliant film made, it’d get locked away for twenty years.
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Public patronage in a democratic country is okay but it does harbour some of the flaws of bureaucratic systems everywhere. I’d include in these mainstream media and command systems. That is: someone in a position of authority must approve it before it gets to an audience. Hollywood might be a market orientated industry but its Byzantine labyrinth of bureaucratic ego-tripping multi-meeting bollocks is like Soviet Union in Armani at times.
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The problem with all of the standard mass-based media we associate with the 20th century, regardless, the system, is the same: it requires a large bureaucratic apparatus to make it happen. The internet makes it possible for individuals and small groups of weirdos to prosper.
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Which is why I reckon Rupert hates it. But Rupert’s done. He’s old. His kids don’t wanna know. And anyway thanks to Wendy Deng he’s becoming more pinko these days, serving cocktails for starving babies with Bono and such shit.
And, trying again, this, I hope, is the Murdoch version:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25457961-7582,00.html
Thanks, Paul. I have written a little more here.
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Adrien wrote,
Nonsense!
If it is working, then why are so many truly independent websites – globalresearch.ca, http://www.culturechange.org – constantly crying out for money, whilst those ostensibly alternative independent websites, who accept corporate funding, have become obviously compromised (for example, by refusing to discuss the 9/11 controversy)?
It is well established that one reason (but not the only) why our media fails us so badly is that so few proper investigative journalists are employed these days.
If things worked as well as you claimed, then all those journalists who previously worked for the large media organisations would all have found ways to be properly remunerated through the Internet and they would all now be holding our governments, bureaucrats, NGOs and corporations to account just as well as they did before, but they’re clearly not.
How else could you explain Howard holding onto power until 2007 or Bush holding onto power until 2008?
The reality is that very few, who are not either propagandists for the status quo, or else, badly compromised, make a decent living by writing for the Internet these days.
Nearly all of those who tell things like they really are make no money or a pittance at most.
Adrien, when you cite the example of the treatment of the arts in the former Communist bloc, you are attacking a straw man. You are arguing that if Government funding served the public so poorly at that time in those countries that it must always be thus.
There is no reason why a Government in a democratic society should not be able to provide the necessary funds without attaching strings.
If open transparent mechanisms were put in place, then it why need we fear that funds would only be provided to those who are are not critical of the govenment of the day?
If the public in a democratic society want people who provide useful helpful information to them through the Internet to be paid properly for their work, then it should be their right to be able to fund them throuh the taxation system in a way that would be far more equitable, efficient and effective than could be possible through any for-profit system.
Of course, I am not arguing that it will happen, but I certainly think we should not be shy about saying that it can happen and should happen.
daggett,
Didn’t know 9/11 was taboo on LP. I’ve always believed Al-Quaeda did it, though I have friend (not one of my socialist mates) who was convinced from Day One it was Mossad.
I think daggett believes it was the US govt, Paul.
While I think Bush and Cheney are certainly evil enough to have done it, I don’t think they’re bright enough to have covered their tracks so well that most of us believe it was Al Qaeda.
David Irving,
I believed for many years that Lindy Chamberlain killed baby Azaria.
I also believed for many years that what I considered to be ruthless dangerous Islamic extremists in Afghanistan and Pakistan had largely got what they deserved after 2001. I now know better (even though I still have concerns about political Islam and high immigration) because I have taken the trouble to study the evidence.
You should do the same.
It would greatly help if the LP moderators were to heed the words of JFK when he cited the views of Solon in support of the open, democratic and accountable society he was trying to bring about:
… and accordingly approve this, as well as my previous post.
Daggett – why are so many truly independent websites… constantly crying out for money, whilst those ostensibly alternative independent websites, who accept corporate funding, have become obviously compromised
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First I didn’t say that everyone’s getting rich doing it. I merely asserted that on the Internet you can write what you want and get it out globally sans interference or sponsorship. The rub with the Internet of course is that people have to know you’re there. One way of promoting your site is corporate sponsorship. And yes corporate sponsorship will curtail what you can say. I didn’t say it wouldn’t.
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when you cite the example of the treatment of the arts in the former Communist bloc, you are attacking a straw man. You are arguing that if Government funding served the public so poorly at that time in those countries that it must always be thus.
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No I’m not. I made a distinction between command system cultural industries and public patronage under a democratic system. However even under a democratic system govt patronage can lead to State interference. Somewhere way above I cited the effect of the Howard govt’s criticisms of the ABC’s bias on its programming.
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It is well established that one reason (but not the only) why our media fails us so badly is that so few proper investigative journalists are employed these days.
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This is partially due to the fact that the media may not want investigative journalists but mostly due to the fact that most people want to read about Jennifer Aniston’s butt. Sorry, Britney Spears sells a million and almost no-one’s heard of Ligeti. Most people feed their brains shite. What can you do?
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Things is the internet already supplies a mode of expression on any number of topics unencumbered by censorship. That one can’t get rich producing a blog that applies scenarios from The Naked Lunch to geopolitical backroom deals does not change this. But trying to organize some system where the govt pays a shitload of journalists to write has all sorts of problems. The problems with public patronage do obtain even in a democratic society. Please see Herbert read’s essay on the subject.
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How ’bout this? A bunch of journos put together a truly investigative online mag. It’s been done? Yes and sometimes they’re successful and sometimes they’re not.
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Like everything else.
Didn’t know 9/11 was taboo on LP. I’ve always believed Al-Quaeda did it, though I have friend (not one of my socialist mates) who was convinced from Day One it was Mossad.
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I’ve never seen any evidence that it was anyone but AQ. On the other hand buildings with steel frames don’t freefall into their own footprints. Dog. Does. Not Hunt.
Back in the day, I used to believe a lot of conspiracy theories (too much dope and acid, what can I say?). These days, my favourite tool is Occam’s Razor.
I mean, “bunch of loony extremists fly plane into building” versus “massive US govt conspiracy involving thousands successfully makes it look like a bunch of loony extremists flew a plane into a building”. It’s a no-brainer, especially as a lot of the people who would have had to have colluded (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice, … ) are none too bright, and a conspiracy that size would leak like the Titanic.
DI (NR) @ 68,
Just wait a moment until I have picked myself off the carpet where I’ve fallen from laughing. Just love that bit about Bush and cronies being so dumb they couldn’t have planned 9/11.
Quite agree with you. I go on stuff up over conspiracy every time.
It’s a no-brainer
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But buildings don’t fall straight down. Doesn’t mean the conspiracy theorists are right of course. Any one of ‘em, even the official one. It does mean maybe that political control of investigations is bad because liable to be both sloppy and productive of a million conspiracy theories.
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But hey, if I was a nasty shadow man technocrat who wanted to orqanize a black op to provoke my country to into invading another country so my private interests could reap a shitload in raw resources I’d probably want to do just that.
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But only crazy people consider conspiracy theories. Sane people won’t consider one at all. They refuse to consider one. That’s what being rationale means.
Briefly,
It may be that any discussion of 9/11 may be one-sided at best.
The post, prior to my previous post was not approved and now seems to have vanished.
However, it can be found here in my cobbled-together article “Why do Larvartus Prodeo, WebDiary and other alternative news sources impede discussion of 9/11?”.
Adrien, if you think that the three towers were likely to have been demolished on 11 September as part of an insurance fraud, how do you think they knew when the highjacked planes were going to hit the Twins Towers, or do you think it was all a coincidence?
David Irving, that was not Occam’s Razor principle. A theory has to explain all observations. The official 9/11 explanation, even though superficially simpler, clearly does not.
Clearly, Newtonian physics are simpler than Einsteinian physics,but who would consider designing a satellite navigation system based upon Newtonian physics?
Crooks and Liars has an interesting item that pertains to the ownership of the internet, or at the very least the ownership of the bandwidth:
<a href=”Linked text“>the end of the world as we know it
PS: it’s also a reminder of when REM wrote dumb pop songs that worked, as opposed to intelligent pop songs that don’t work, as evidenced by their last couple of albums. *sigh*
okay, that’s what you get for copying and pasting the code and not paying attention…sorry…here’s where you’ll find it, I can’t figure out the code here, again, my apologies.
http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/bandwith-metering-its-end-world-we-kn
Daggett – Adrien, if you think that the three towers were likely to have been demolished on 11 September as part of an insurance fraud, how do you think they knew when the highjacked planes were going to hit the Twins Towers, or do you think it was all a coincidence?
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I don’t think any of that?
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Various hypotheses obtain including the official one. I have seen evidence that it was the work of terrorists. I have seen no evidence that the govt or some shadow operation connected with the White House or whatever was involved. But then I wouldn’t would I. I did see a politically charged investigation which cannot be trusted to investigate with the thorough dispassion one would expect from a street detective. I don’t support any conspiracy theory including the official one.
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I have yet to hear anyone be able to explain how two steel towers collapsed in freefall because airplanes without the energy to melt steel flew into them around two-thirds up. The WTC 7 thing may or may not make sense I’m not sure. It didn’t entirely collpase.
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There are other phenomena. They appear to be explainable. But the freefall is not.
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I harbour no illusions that the facts will ever be known. What I find interesting personally is that, despite this glaring anomaly, most ‘sane’ people categorically reject even considering the possibility that the 9/11 Commission was mistaken or even an outright cover-up. That there’s a collective will not to go outside the boundaries of acceptable speculation.
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This is central to the phenomena of thought control that Noam Chomsky describes in his polemics on the media. I think his view over-simplistic but he’s dead right about that. There’s a field of acceptable information and you don’t go too far towards the border if you want to climb high in the Media Complex. Fascinating that people here, who rail at Murdoch, willingly acquiesce to this border. Fascinating also that folks at Catallaxy who pride themselves on empiricism persist in thinking me batshit on this despite the fact that none of them can explain the freefall.
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Slaves
But they did. So why say they don’t?
WBB – That’s pedantic. You know what mean. Please read the third para at #74. If you can explain the freefall in your own words, and if you understand it you should be able to, then please…
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But buildings don’t fall straight down unless they’re rigged to do so. Better?
Adrien’s got a point, particularly about the limits of what is acceptable and not accemptable thought. You could argue that these limits are growing narrower all the time.
“Buildings don’t fall straight down unless they’re rigged to do so.”
If they can be rigged to do so – then they can be built to do so. The planes didn’t bring the energy to melt the steel – the planes were the matches that lit the inferno which released the energy reqd to soften the metal. Once a couple of floors were detached from the perimeter columns gravity did the rest. Gravity does its best work in a straight line. Usually downwards.
The planes didn’t bring the energy to melt the steel
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The entire building didn’t contain enough energy to melt steel. Another anomaly: the molten metal at ground zero was not steel said the report. It wasn’t hot enough to melt steel says the report. No. It was the aluminium from the planes.
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But aluminium doesn’t glow orange-hot when molten, steel does. And what colour was that molten metal?
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But anyway: Do an experiment. Put a wire in a vice so it stands straight up. Apply a torch to that wire about 2/3 up. It will buckle. What it won’t do is stand up until the whole thing’s melted and then fall straight down. The section above the heat will twist away and fall first.
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Thing is the report might be right. I’m quite skeptical but to really understand the issues you have to be a physicist. My point is that very few understand it, there’s a legitimate objection which can’t be explained by anyone who doesn’t disappear into Jargon Country.
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And yet we’ve all swallowed it like castor oil.
We’ve swallowed it because there aren’t any engineers and physicists writing letters to Tall Bldgs Monthly expressing their incredulity.
The only US govt conspiracy started after the bldgs collapsed. And the ppl of Iraq suffered for it.
I thought it had something to do with the peculiar construction of the WTC. Not long after the event I saw an interesting doco on I think, SBS that went into incredible detail as to how and why it happened the way it did.To suppose it was anything other than the planes crashing into the Twin Towers would need one to supose the place was wired with explosives/detonators inside and outside and timed to go off after the p[lanes flown by God knows who, hit. IMHO, that couldn’t have been done without somebody noticing.
“The entire building didn’t contain enough energy to melt steel.”
The US govt FEMA study said the steel didn’t melt – it just softened enuff for the structure to weaken and for the floors to fall.
Wbb – The US govt FEMA study said the steel didn’t melt – it just softened enuff for the structure to weaken and for the floors to fall.
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Please read comment #79.
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We’ve swallowed it because there aren’t any engineers and physicists writing letters to Tall Bldgs Monthly expressing their incredulity.
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No ? None whatsoever?.
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Okay. I didn’t know that.
Thanks, Adrien. Sorry I went AWOL.
It seems that either one accepts the laws of Physics or one accepts the explanations provided by NIST for the three unprecedented engineering disasters which occurred on 11 September 2001.