There’s been an excellent discussion on a previous thread here by Phil about News Limited’s new online venture The Punch.
To add to the reflections on that thread, it’s worth discussing what The Punch says about the future of big media and the business models that support major corporates. Brisbane journo and editor Jason Whittaker has written a nifty piece on The Punch in this context at Importance of ideas.
Whittaker’s conclusion:
News Limited is now betting the house on charging for online subscriptions to its mastheads, putting a price on the parochial, populist tabloid content it currently gives away for free. If The Punch is its only Plan B, god help us all.
The whole article is well worth reading. I’m in broad agreement with Whittaker that “incompetence, not [the] net, has killed media”.
I don’t necessarily agree that there isn’t a place for a site focused mainly on opinion online. Blogs aren’t the only comparator here. The success of On Line Opinion over quite a few years demonstrates that. But it is true to say that an opportunity to invest in the future of journalism has been missed by News.
Incidentally, as one might expect, I’m sure competition is uppermost in News’ mind. I think The Punch is probably meant to be a Crikey killer, particularly when one has a look at the redesign of the Crikey website to incorporate news aggregation and a wider variety of topics (and bloggers – most recently the welcome return Tim Dunlop on music). I doubt – if I’m right that that’s their ambition – it will put much of a dent in Crikey.
Elsewhere: Jacques Chester at Troppo.
Update: Lyn Calcutt at Public Opinion.
Update: Terry Flew.
C’mon Mark. Lets talk about real news. Like Anna Bligh going against traditional Labor values by selling Assets to prop up the state budget.
Great to see Tim Dunlop back, particularly on music. It was Tim that put me on to one of my favourite bands, Hem, about 3 or 4 years ago.
Judging from a (limited) look at the comments on The Punch, they seem to be playing to a decidedly different audience than Crikey. No doubt the audience will broaden in time, but they’ll need to offer something other than the re-badged standard News Ltd offerings that are the current standard.
Blog irritant #326.
Posters who ignore the topic of the post by decrying the fact that it wasn’t about something else.
Solution: Get your own blog!
Indeed, adrian. And coincidentally, the next post is on Anna Bligh’s privatisation plan:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2009/06/02/anna-blighs-privatisation-train-will-run-off-the-rails/
It would be nice if we could keep this one on topic.
Two things about Punch 1. Anything that serial boofhead Penberthy has anything to do with I won’t. And 2. I find it distasteful in the extreme to have one of the world’s richest men running a site where people are expected to work for nothing.
It reminds me of the old saying you pay peanuts you get monkeys. Anyone reading SA Premier Rann’s extraordinary rant about people who think bikie legislation is over the top will see what I mean. Until they start paying people I recommend people avoid the whole charade.
Well, I made my first comment on Punch today, about the Liberal Party Punch-up. Looking at other comments on that thread, it should be published, I would imagine. Which would be a good agury in terms of diversity of views.
I can understand the theory that News Ltd would want to knock crikey of its perch given how often crikey shows News Ltd to be full of it (not that that’s all they do, and not that they’re the only ones who do it.) But if News are trying to attack crikey with a ‘punch’ i think it would qualify as a FAIL. I can’t help but think, for the AB demographic readers of crikey/non-News journalism, anything from News Ltd will be considered crap. Reputations are hard to build and hard to shake.
I spend about $550/yr on newspapers knowing that most of the emissions and a fair slab of these costs come from printing, delivery and the editing required to fit the articles into a restrained space. The attraction is that I am familiar with the bias of the paper and their various commentators and have been conditioned to enjoy reading the daily newspaper with my wife. In addition, I hope that the reporting and editing process has sorted out most of the blatant misinformation However, a printed paper does have some limitations that the web can avoid. For example, the amount printed is limited. At times this must mean that good articles have been excluded or truncated. Web articles also offer links so that if I am really interested in something I can go further. It is tempting to save the money and depend on the free web despite the limitations of the free web.
We got broadband after I retired. At first I spent hours leaping from paper to paper and blog to blog. However, it was a recipe for wasting a lot of time. So I see value in a web/paper that allows a quick skim of the main headlines plus more detailed discussion of things I am really interested in. It would help if I had the option of using a profile so that I could be alerted to things (such as local news) that are of particular interest to a limited number of people.
Some journals appear to have a successful subscriber model. For example, quality technical journals that I link to often offer an abstract or summary for free and the full paper to subscribers plus those willing to pay for the single paper. I can see no reason why newspapers can’t use a variation of this approach. For example, they might:
1. Have a free page that has breaking news with brief summaries plus a very limited number of commentries etc. to indicate what lies behind the subscriber wall. They need the free page to sell adverising and to help convince people that subscription is worthwhile. An index of what is behind the wall would be helpful.
2. Offer pay per thread (or day) to casual visitors so that someone interested in the budget, for example, could read all the in depth articles on this topic.
3. For subscribers offer:
a. Detailed information, analysis, giveaways etc.
b. Access to back copies.
c. Search facilities.
d. Links to other papers in the stable plus allied papers.
e. Personal profile to help us keep in touch with particular things of interest.
f. PLUS FREEDOM FROM FLASHING ADDS AND OTHER IRRITATIONS
It would not be surprising if the new media becomes dominated by new starters who have better feel for what the web has to offer.
I commenced by writing a comment, which was definitely one for the ages, before Safari crashed on me. I decided to write up my thinking at Troppo instead.
Thanks, Jacques. I’ve put a link in the post.
So Alan, if they paid Rann $200 for his views on bikies, would that have made everything magically better for you? $300? Too much perhaps? He probably gets paid too much already doesn’t he. Let’s call it an even $150 and call it a draw.
I don’t see why avoidance is the answer here. I read the article on The Punch. Rann was quite clearly and quite intelligently shot down by the majority of readers in that post, and it’s a good bet that he probably read every comment. I think that’s a much better result, having the public’s voice heard directly to the people in power, rather than just having a good old fashioned whinge to your ever agreeable mates. Who cares if the debate is on Crikey, or on The Punch, or wherever. As long as it’s being had and heard, seriously, what does it really matter?
Came across this on Crikey today in a review of Punch
“But let’s just focus a little on what The Punch is not. It’s not, Penberthy proudly states in his welcome, a “fancy, la-di-dah site aimed at people with three university degrees”.
No, because you wouldn’t want expert, educated people participating in the debate. It’s also, most importantly, not a place for reporting the news. Certainly not for investigating reporting. That’s fine; News has plenty of newsrooms (with dwindling numbers of journalists, mind you) to do that. But as an “investment in journalism” it is a dismal failure. As a clue as to how big media — and the thousands of journalists they employ — will operate in a new media world it is futile.”
Why does this bloke celebrate stupidity and mediocrity? And why would anyone who doesn’t move their lips when they read want to go to a site which celebrates such dumbness. Penberthy by the way is a son of an academic and the I’m a working class man persona is as phony as a two bob watch. If he has problems with his father perhaps he could sort them out somewhere else.
That’s actually a quote from the post I’ve linked to!
Update: Lyn Calcutt at Public Opinion.
The Punch is already revealing its ugly News Ltd origins by breaching the copyright of a citizen journalist.
Update: Terry Flew.
Meanwhile, over at Australian Literary Review Louis Nowra has done unto Bob Ellis what Bob Ellis has done to so many others. But Louis was more pleasant about it.