Do newspapers really ‘get it’ online? No, say these two writers.
.
Yet another reason why I wonder if all the money and effort our industry is pouring online will actually pay off for us…
Taylor Owen and David Eaves write this morning in The Tyee about The New York Times‘ recent decision to end its Times Select paid online content service:
The failed paywall experiment of the New York Times is emblematic of the newspaper industry’s two-decade-old struggle to survive online. So long as the Internet is perceived as nothing more than a new tool for distributing the news to a passive audience — readers, citizen and the community more generally, will continue to tune out. For newspapers to survive, a more nuanced understanding of the online world is needed.
The key is grasping that the relationship between communities and their news has fundamentally changed.
You and I are in charge now
Prior to the Internet, people determined what was important by reading what newspaper editors thought was important. Today, people have a host of ways to determine what is important and to connect quickly with stories on those issues. Newspapers can shift their content, and advertising, online, but as long as they believe they are the arbiters of a community’s agenda, they will continue to struggle.
Owens and Eaves write that the “algorithm-based aggregator” and the blogger — are the modern online reader’s gatekeepers of choice.
Online, bloggers are the new editors.
Take, for example, the relationship many Canadians have with the prominent blogger Andrew Potter. While most people have never met him in person, his readers know his perspectives and biases, and this personal connection creates a loyal following.
That, and newspapers are fighting the online current, write Owens and Eaves:
To most newspapers, the idea of directing traffic away from their news site remains an anathema. Newspaper websites contain virtually no external links. Ironically, this follows the design parameters of a Las Vegas casino — the goal is to get you in, and not let you leave.
…In this manner, newspapers are fighting the very thing that makes the Internet community compelling: its interconnectedness. Like Potter’s blog, the Internet’s best sites are attractive, not simply because their content is good, but rather because they link to content around the web.
Compelling. And troubling. Read it in The Tyee.
Read my previous musings along these lines.
October 10th, 2007 at 11:00 am
In the N.Y. Times’ defense, it was making money, but they decided that the value of users finding stories on Google News was more lucrative.
Other than that, they’re exactly right. I “get” how the Web works, and still find it a challenge to get people to buy into the we’re-not-the-gatekeepers-it’s-the-community-stupid approach.
October 10th, 2007 at 11:14 am
I agree with their point about newspaper sites needing to link more to useful outside resources, but I don’t agree that that’s the main mistake that’s keeping newspapers from thriving online. For me, what’s scary about the future of newspapers online isn’t that they don’t have enough links to grab readers, it’s that the revenue they generate online may never be enough to support a staff anywhere close to the size necessary to continue serving the role that newspapers play now — as major content producers. It’s an issue that bloggers don’t have to deal with, and one which the authors of the article ignores. A blogger writes a couple posts a day, deals with one or two topics a day. A newspaper produces many many times more stories each day and covers a much wider spectrum of topics. The resources and manpower needed to do that are not even close to being on the same level as the expense it takes to run a blog (virtually zero). If a blog requires a similar amount of money to maintain as a newspaper does, you can bet there would be no blogosphere to speak of, no matter how interconnected the online community may be.
Another thought: The tone of this story smacks of the same “thumb your nose at the mainstream media to show that you’re hip” attitude that’s found in so many “new media” articles about newspapers, the attitude that newspapers are struggling to do well online simply because they “don’t get it”. For all the talk about newspapers’ poor online presence, a lot of these blogs sure don’t hesitate to link to content produced by newspapers, or to other blog entries that link to or stem from newspaper content. They talk a lot of trash about old media, yet can’t/won’t recognize that much of the content that helps fuel the blogosphere originates from old media. It’s a symbiotic relationship. IMHO, getting people to use and digest their online content isn’t the problem for newspapers (people are already doing that en mass), it’s figuring out how to make enough money from that consumption to keep the operation going.
The NYT paywall model, or any pay-for-information model, is bound to fail when you have so many other sources giving away essentially the same info for free. But if all the major outlets of information decided to charge for content, you think people won’t pay for it? See how long they can rely exclusively on blogs to provide in-depth local and international news.