At last week’s hush, hush meeting of newspaper execs on how to monetize content and save a dying industry, the American Press Institute presented a white paper that offers a step by step plan of how newspapers should move forward with paid content. Nieman Journalism Lab posted a downloadable copy of the report, which has some interesting recommendations. Poynter also provided a comprehensive review of the report. We’ve embedded the document below.
The report suggests several models to implement paid content, including micropayments, subscriptions and hybrid models. Google is compared to an atom bomb that “blew up the content business into millions of atomized pieces,” leaving news organizations with the mess of putting things back together. Comparing newspapers to “Humpty Dumpty”, the paper paints a “poor-me” tale of how news orgs are scrambling to put all the pieces back together to “restore their integrity.” And of course, news enterprises are also forced to suffer a second related atom bomb: hyper-linking. The report says: “The culture of hyper-linking and hyper-syndication that fuels the interactive Web has become an atom bomb for the old news business model.” So the remedy for putting the pieces back together according to the API: charge for content, stick it to Google, and renegotiate subscription models with Amazon for the Kindle (which it implies is unfairly making more money from content than newspapers). Apparently, nobody at the API has actually read Humpty Dumpty, otherwise they would know that you can never put the pieces back together again.
The API recommends a five pronged business plan, divided by “doctrines,” to charge users for content:
- True Value Doctrine: Newspapers should create value by beginning to charge for it.
- Fair Value Doctrine: In order to maintain the value of content, newspapers should aggressively enforce copyrights and right to profit from published content.
- Fair Share Doctrine: News orgs should start to negotiate with the technology industry for higher prices for content that is aggregated, redistributed, broken up, and linked to.
- Digital Deliverance Doctrine: Newspapers should invest in technology and digital platforms that could “provide content-based e-commerce, data sharing and other revenue-generating solutions” at “premium prices.”
- Consumer Centric Doctrine: Newspaper need to refocus their content from advertisers to readers/consumers.
The section of the paper that addresses Google is part sad, part funny and part delusional. Google, the “atom bomb,” is also a “frenemy” to newspapers, citing Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, and VP of products and user experience, Marissa Mayer, as the top frenemies at Google. The paper concedes that Google provides 25 to 35 percent of the traffic to news web sites but says that Google is taking a disproportionate share of profits from content creators. Reading between the lines, the paper suggests that Google’s profits are being stolen from newspaper’s profits. In order to seek compensation from Google, the API suggests that news organizations should put legal, political, business and technological pressure on Google, and other “powerful players” in the digital space including MSFT, Yahoo, AOL, and Facebook.
That’s right. Part of the plan is for newspapers, which are technologically challenged, to put “technological pressure” on the technology giants. That plan is even less likely to succeed than the Humpty Dumpty one.
It’s understandable that newspaper organizations are trying to figure out the best way to move forward in the industry, and I think that this report does outline their options for monetization (if that is the remedy) fairly well. Although, many don’t necessarily agree with this. But the passive aggressive finger pointing at Amazon, Google and others seems to be a bit off. As author Michael Connelly wisely says in an interview, “Google doesn’t kill newspapers. People kill newspapers.”
(Photo credit: Flickr/Atarkus)
(Photo credit: Flickr/Pink Rocker)
There is no question that newspapers simply don’t grasp what happened to their business model. If they had been on the ball, they would have been the news aggregators and bloggers.
However, the reality is that Google, Amazon, Yahoo, etc. do not create the news. They have to link somewhere. So while the NY Times, Newsweet, WaPo, may not be needed, someone has to report it in order for others to link to it. If the news organizations die, there’s nothing to link to.
Someone has to pay bloggers, reporters, writers, etc. in order for news to be reported and linked. Who will that be?
I disagree. People are everywhere and the idea that everything happening is newsworthy is a little silly. The sooner news organizations realize that their only job is to collect information for the masses, the better things will be for everyone.
Most people can read, and most people if given the chance will make up their own minds when processing news. We don’t need the opinions of reporters/editors injected into our news.
The facts of an event, and only the facts would be just fine.
@vcarter, you’re being a bit silly; facts without context are meaningless, and most people are too uneducated to provide context themselves.
What is the point of reporting about a new Middle East Peace deal without having done the research to know how the past several went? While wikipedia might give the reader (or the blogger) the terms of those deals, they don’t contain perspectives on how the conversation when at that time, so one can really understand what may or may not have changed in terms of perspective and posture.
How can one cover the goings-on on Capitol Hill without really understanding the relationships between the players? Most decent/worthwhile political bloggers are in fact paid by one media organisation or another. It’s too simplistic to say “Democrats want this, Republicans want that”, and if you look at the quality of unpaid blogger commentary about politics and policy, even with the resources of print journalism they mostly consist of people screaming into the rain. Why will things be better when they have even fewer resources?
More broadly, expertise is important, and most people don’t have any. Those who do, have such skills and knowledge in one narrow silo. To imagine that amateurs can really replace professionals is mindless populism.
Half the problem with this model of having the history of a news subject regurgitated by some professional news writer is that it is all subject to bias. The overall goal of the newspaper may slant liberal or conservative, and key facts may be ignored because they don’t push the article in the direction the writer and/or newspaper want you to be pushed.
If the facts are simply posted without opinion, readers will supply a fair amount of further details as well as opinion (assuming the news site has done its job of promoting itself and policing spam, providing a good forum for online discussion).
When all is said and done, professional news sites and professional writers employed thereat will be reduced to the ad revenue they can earn by placing clickable ads next to their content, competing with the tens of thousands of bloggers out there doing the same thing.
#2 and #3 are the wrong ways to go about it. They will only force the hand of bloggers and republishers to utilize other news sources and publications that are more open and fair with the republishing of their works.
Re: vcarter
And so if they just reported the “facts” this would save newspaper’s how? You would suddenly send them money??
What is a “fact” anyhow? You’ve never been on the other side of a story have you where the phrasing of a line or two can produce a completely different meaning.
Context is nearly everything and someone has to know the area enough to put it in context. I also like hearing opinions about things from commentators I like and from those I like to hate.
Hopefully this suffers a backfire like the RIAA and DRM. That way, when all the newspapers fail, I’ll rely on Digg for my news.
I go there for the comments, and the hilarious submissions. Regular news giants like Fox, are just too damned depressing. That’s why there are people out there to do what the Onion does, or Colbert/Stewart. And other people can make fun of it, with their point of views. l can laugh at the obvious “fearmongering” some news companies provide. Commenters sometimes provide a view that I’ve never even thought of!
Is anyone thinking what I’m thinking? It has something vaguely to do with anti-trust…
I’m just kidding by the way, I don’t want the newspapers to fail.
Where would I get news for my blog then?
the meeting was about “how to monetize content and save a dying industry”
this is the biggest stumbling block that newspapers face in their thinking: they are trying to monetize content, when they should be trying to monetize the audience. the content price will tend towards free, just like music. but the audience and experience can be monetised in many ways.
am writing a post on it now…
I didn’t believe that a professional organization would use words like ‘frenemy’, and had to read the report to confirm this.
It is now impossible to take newspapers seriously, they will connote images of Paris Hilton trying to figure out the Humpty Dance.
Agreed. Newspapers would do well to sell their audience in the form of behaviorally targeted ads or ad products that people can’t get anywhere else.
Sounds like a plan of some kind. I mean they obviously need to get together on an action plan and stop dragging their feet. I know that the newspapers and magazines that have the better Brand-able names like The “New York Times” for instance should be getting paid for the content that they now let people read for free. I’d pay per article or let people pay like they do a pre-paid calling card for their cell phones. When you run out of minutes, or in this case (articles) call and put some more cash on your card or account, etc., etc. Are You Listening Newspaper Industry Executives..? I’m not the only one who would be willing to pay.. Just my 2 cents..
Brenda-
Google is strip mining the publishers, maybe not with intent but much like loggers cut down the giant redwoods, Google is leading the charge destroying a valuable ecosystem that underpins Democracy and even Capitalism. Don’t confuse creative destruction with ecological disaster, Google needs to wake up and stob being evil. Google is not replacing news with something better, the are replacing your mom’s cooking with boxes macaroni and cheese.
No that’s not true. If it wasn’t for Google, I wouldn’t ever visit 90% of the newspaper sites I do.
Google is the only reason why I bother with newspapers at all. Most of the crap in there is so unimportant that I’d rather shoot myself in the foot than read it. I use Google to aggregate, skim, and occasionally read the articles. Other than that, I stick to my trusty RSS feeds for all the news THAT I GIVE A SHIT ABOUT.
You know there’s this really cool thing called robots.txt that the newspapers could use if they actually wanted to stop Google from indexing their content.
Newspapers need to make all their content available online, with pro features available to those interested. eg. NYT.com has all their regular articles available for anyone, with Pro features such as favoring, tagging, data mining and similar advanced features.
Imagine you could create a Pro account at nyt.com, and then setup your account to ping your email, twitter or mobile when a new article is added that has to do with a specific tag, author, or mentioning of a certain company/person. I would pay for that.
Everything that is in the physical copy should be online at no charge. The caveat would be that with this technology comes a greater possibility for monetizing advanced features that logistically don’t work on a paper version. Add in the pro features and you’ll have a very strong market.
If they really think users are going to pay for the content, they are in for quite a shock.
The internet has made people cheap, very cheap … people won’t spend money for crap they can find free somewhere else.
If they really think they can squash all the offenders of sharing the content, they are in for an even bigger shock. Its a losing game.
We have way too many news agencies, just like the auto industry … its time that some of them go. They couldn’t adapt to consumers real needs so they will crumble.
Haha. What nonsense! You, myself and all the other little ants in this world do as were guided and told, not as we wish. There are not other sites to go to for content unless its made up stories about unicorns on rainbows and 50 horrible ways to make a logo. I believe them when they say paid content will rise yet. It should! How that will look should be in a subscription model where you can access other sites in the network (or company).
You’re right in expecting that people expect stuff for free, but thats because the expectation was never set for you to pay (well maybe the newspapers should take tips from the porn industry). When the expectation does come down for paying for content, you’re either in or your out reading LOLcats all day.
I admit that we may have just a bit too many newspapers for every podunk town out there, but they do serve a purpose. Most likely they need to be transformed into web-based versions and have mobile interfaces as well.
Yes, reading about a child’s pony ride at the fair is not amazing, but the collecting and dissemination of knowledge however mundane needs to continue. Nationally, we probably need less people, but locally we should maintain.
The demise of newspapers is a serious challenge to democracy if experienced and trained journalists do not find a way to publish and make a living elsewhere. And they are what this is all about. Newspapers have a professional core of journalists who have been the gatekeepers of news. Bloggers may or most likely may not have the expertise, sources, training, etc. of newspaper journalists. That being said, I don’t see how humpty dumpty will be put back together again.
Google is the reason that newspapers are in trouble??? Just shows they still don’t understand the Internet. craigslist and drudgereport are what led the way. Google?
Starting to charge for content with micropayments is going to be the last nail on the newspapers coffin, and specialist online newssources like The Huffington Post will take over, piece by piece, even faster than what they’ve already done so far.
Are they trying to commit suicide? Look, it’s a good idea that they brainstorm various options to adapt to a world with the internet. We, the public, need journalism. We don’t need newspapers.
It isn’t rocket science. There are ways in which journalists/bloggers are already making money on the web through creating good content. Why in the world aren’t the newspapers emulating that? Why are they trying to reinvent the wheel? Duh!
So newspapers are going to start charging blogs for linking to and quoting their content?
This is really concerning if they do.
People often miss the entire point of the problem. It’s not just how to make more but equally spend less. Even a 10x increase in online revenue for these guys from won’t allow them to remain in the same structure as before. It’s not their fault, it’s just things becoming highly efficient and cheap; compared to inefficient (large staffs, printing facilities, massive headquarters, sucky ad model) and expensive. The smartest thing any of these guys ever tried to do was invest in facebook early on(wapo). If they don’t change peole will move on. So in meantime they simply need to spend less at least.
Its easy to laugh at the Newspaper Industry (and they don’t help themselves) but they do have a point about not extracting sufficient value from their content to be long term sustainable.
As others have noted, there are larger impacts to the press collapsing, and Google, despite its many good points, cannot step into the breach.
As with many other industries before it, the News industry will need to consolidate, reduce cost structures and change its operating models.
And as with many other industries before it, it will probably need some help to transitio through the “destruction” bit of creative destruction.
And yes, I do think the words, Google, anti and trust will be voiced in the same sentence before long, and policymakers will listen because the alternative – no press – is deeply undesirable to them.
I’ve gone through the Doctrines of newspaper survival in the plan and summarised my thoughts at http://bit.ly/4105h (some positive, but boy-o-boy there are some flaws in there…)
News needs to be as free as it could be. The U.S. Bill of rights says “Freedom of the press”. Newspapers are also in business to make money. Advertisements and the cost of each newspaper is enough.
In this post their is a line in the article:
“The API recommends a five pronged business plan, divided by “doctrines,” to charge users for content:
1. True Value Doctrine: Newspapers should create value by beginning to charge for it.”
The API is wrong in this “doctrine”. When news is influenced with money, news becomes potentially influenced by money. Potentially corrupting news based on money supporting news.
Here is some more information about newspapers and their decline:
http://whatisgo...-media-species/
What you just said makes no sense. Freedom of the press doesn’t mean the the news has to be free in price, but that it has to be free to report on whatever it wishes.
Also, I don’t agree that the media empires should be the gatekeepers of the news, but let’s say they are. Right now they’re bought and paid for by people trying to sell the reader crap they don’t need. If the reader were directly supporting the news, there’d be less corruption than there is now in the corporate controlled media.
I’m not clicking the link to your shitty site because you have no idea about “what is going on”.
Here’s what they need to do:
1.) Create an online, easy access website.
2.) Charge for daily email delivery with the top stories in a nicely formatted page.
3.) ???
4.) PROFIT!!
2.) Charge for daily email delivery with the top stories in a nicely formatted page.
hahaha…that’s comical who’s going to pay for an RSS Feed. If these newspaper companies do not adapt to the changing environment they are doomed just like the crappy US car industry. Where these people sleeping during any 101 business class. The one thing is all business is….ITS ALWAYS CHANGING!!! If you can’t get that concept sorry but you need to be working at McDonald flipping burgers and not wondering why your business is failing
ha I can’t type with this phone… *the one thing in all business is…
Keep making fun of those old dinosaur print media types. The likes of TechCrunch are not far behind on the failing to profit scale.
By far the biggest mistake newspapers and commenters are making is in the assumption that journalists can report the “news” better than a smart person on their lunch hour.
On one’s lunch hour and after work, one can make the phone calls and emails, etc, that can produce great “investigative reporting”. The inefficiencies of not being able to work full-time are more than made up by the lack of editors telling the reporter how to slant the story or, worse, rewriting the final product while the reporter looks on horrified but stays silent in order to keep the paycheck coming.
Google and the aggregators will have plenty of hard news to point to when the last newspaper bites the dust. We just have to accept the fact that journalism is now something that people will donate for free…and, yes, often following an agenda but newspapers did that anyway (and newspapers were no more honest about fact-checking and corrections than your average citizen).
Your ignorance of investigative reporting is showing. It took Dana Priest of the Washington Post a YEAR to put together the story of the CIA black prisons in Europe. Sources with deep information don’t hand it over to dudes blogging on their lunch hour – it takes time to build trust relationships. Who is going to pay for stories like that when newspapers are gone? Or would you prefer not to know about illegal government activity?
As a journalist, I have a special interest in this area. A couple of comments:
@Phil Owens: Investigative journalism is not something that can be done in a couple of hours by Joe Sixpack.,A decent investigative story, including fact-checking, developing background and getting info from several sources, can take a week or more of full-time work. Most people would be unable to do a basic 300 word story in a lunch hour without copying out a press release.
@Jospeh Engo: True, people won;t pay for crap they can find free elsewhere, That’s why I think we’ll see more of a focus on local news. The paper I work for has a strong focus on news within our region, and as a result our paid circulation is actually rising – against the national trend.
Finally, newspapers are going through a tough time, and they will be forced to change; but there will always be a market for news from a credible source with the resources and access to newsmakers that 99.9% of bloggers will never have,
Newswhatters?
What is this “paper” medium I keep hearing so little about?
My frustration with Newspapers is that they had the meeting described in the article above in June of 2009. I have made a very good living for the last decade by selling against print advertising. It has been an easy sell. The fact of the matter is that the war is over, they have lost and they just now are trying to start to fight. Had they started to fight this war even 5 or 6 years ago, they still had the clout to win. I know the war is over because this year is the first time that I have had to sell against other online forms of advertising. Until 2009 all I had to do was show how my online product was a much better option than print and get the advertiser to pull money from print and spend it with us. That has been my angle for a decade. Now when I try that approach with companies, most tell me that they no longer do any advertising in print, thus I am forced to sell against non-traditional competitors. It is not as easy of a sell.
We need a way for good journalist to make a living, but I have yet to hear a business model that makes any sense/cents. Had they not had their heads in the sand for the past decade, I would really feel sorry for them.
Who could not see this coming?
The Google issue is absurd, newspapers can choose to not be indexed by Google any time they are ready to give up the traffic.
Perhaps reporting will keep them alive. Here’s an interesting take:
http://www.vani...7/graydon200907
Just like the music industry, the newspapers thought they could get away with charging consumers for fluff. Now they are going to blame the people who took risks to help pioneer the net for their inability to look forward & progress?? HA!!
newspaper = new + paper.
who wants to pay for paper , they are free to do so. and get the news with 24 hous delay.
the rest goes for real time content, including news. what is the problem?
google? no
twitter? no
people? yes, they’ve changed.
Most of the content of a newspaper is not locally generated, but pulled off the wire services. In essence, newspapers were invented to solve the problem of distributing content cheaply in an era where there were no computers, no fax machines, no telephones.
The invention of the internet doomed newspapers just as surely as the invention of the automobile doomed horse buggy manufacturers: there will always be a fringe market for those who like the old ways, but by and large the internet solves the problem of cheap content distribution better than newspapers do.
I believe everyone has it wrong. For decades, the NEWS business has been nothing but propaganda. After Newscorp and others cut reporter numbers this became worse with reporters becoming handlers of press releases instead of writers.
So why not charge the Propagandists who want the News sources to push their agenda?
I will be damned if I ever pay for propaganda. I will however pay for the truth, and for investigative reporting. That does not mean sending in a reporter to the White House who then spends 10 years repeating what politicians want them to say. Nor is it “Embedding” reporters with troops so they get to give detailed reports from only one side after their stories have been checked by the brass.
I repeat. The messages that politicians, companies and movers & shakers want to push on the world makes them money. Charge them for it, not the poor saps who you try to con.
Its quite Obvious to everybody but Americans
That dirty word Tabloid yes Tabloid, Football and Baseball on the “back” and the days relative news on the “front” and Tv in the middle.– Its that simple you pick up a newspaper in the morning in the UK to read about the Soccer Matches the night before on the Back, and some Interesting story on the Front Hey the Times is tabloid now
People dont want to buy an arm fitness exercise and a ream of paper that ends up going everywhere but where you want it,, dont you think.
Or would you Americans rather see all Papers dissapear rather than go Tabloid??
Its obvious really isnt it !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The problem with newspapers is not google or any other search engine or hyperlinking, People have changed. At one time almost every household had a newspaper delivered daily. Starting in the 1980’s that began to change, and it changed BEFORE the Internet revolution. People did not subscribe any more because they did not have time to read the paper. That reduced circulation which reduced advertising dollars. That trend has continued ever since.
I don’t know what the solution is to keep newspapers alive but I suspect it will require a complete overhaul of their business model from the ground up. Printed news is a dying business. Buying a paper to read on Kindle is a joke. NOBODY will buy them (not the kindle, but the news).
Maybe it’s just time for the newspaper industry to die a natural death. They long ago stopped reporting the news and got into the business of manipulating public opinion one way or the other. Spoon feeding subscribers selective “facts” and leaving others out.
I think what people really want is accurate journalism without all the spin, and to be able to read it for free in digital format.
Does anyone really think a bunch of bloggers would have been able to uncover Watergate? Bloggers are like infants, attracted to the next moving, shiny object. Few have either the means, skills or discipline to stay with a story that some very bright people with lots of power and money don’t want told. Investigative journalism is the only thing between us and politicians acting with complete impunity. Look what the Bushies did, despite the NYT, WaPo and others nosing around all the time. Remove an adversarial, organized, well-financed (with big-time legal help) Third Estate and the government will run roughshod over us.
Professional news-gathering organizations (forget whether or not they distribute via print or electrons) will rightfully cede the role of simple reporting, i.e., “We observed this happening today.” As many have pointed out, such requires immediacy not available in print. No, even the dimmest blogger can probably get that right, or at least enough of the 5000 who write about that factual event will get it right enough that we’ll pretty much get what happened.
We need the pros for the hard work of digging up well-hidden corruption and waste, artfully prying admissions out of people who do so against their interests.
Many of these comments betray folks complete lack of understanding about how the web… and online content actually function.
Without indexed Universal Search (aka Google, Bing, etc…) no one would even know the newspapers sites are EVEN THERE.
The other problem newspapers have is they have NO IDEA what their readers want, and their editorial models are completely incongruent with the internet.
The reason no one wants to read newspapers anymore is because MOST of what is printed is IRRELEVANT from a real news standpoint.
This is an issue for so called Main Stream Media (MSM). The happenings that REALLY matter to the lives of Jane and John Doe don’t even make the main page or the leading story in the news cycle… because they may upset folks with political or financial clout.
I hope newspapers DO charge for content… then, in a very short time they’ll just go away, once they realize that the MAJORITY of their readers will NOT direct visit their sites.
Print Media is going away, because they violated the trust of their readership with pablum non-content garbage, and refused to act like a Forth Estate anymore.
Good riddance. So available content will disappear for awhile… BFD… The spirit of journalism hasn’t died and gone away. The willingness of readers to read BS and non-news about Britney and Paris, while “Rome” burns and regular folks are hurting… THAT’S what has gone away.
People who WANT to act in the spirit of REAL journalism, will spring forth and those of them that figure out how to create newsworthy content will rise up to the top.
There is a rapidly dwindling market for newspaper media. I don’t care what you do, say or believe… if you try to sell ANYTHING in business, that there is no market for, you will fail. It’s as simple as that.
Great comments here…
“Bunny” is spot on…
Mike OHoro… I agree with you completely about the purpose of the media and good journalism, but how is Watergate even relevant to this discussion? Use one of the more recent Investigative Journalistic major stories to make your point… alas… not much there so far as the media goes.
There are scandals and outrageous breaches of public trust, just no media outlet with the doo-dads to report the WHOLE story. We get the “safe” version in our news. (Safe for the folks plundering the treasure and trust of the public.)
Your point is well taken though… and I think that IS the point. There is VERY LITTLE investigative journalism going on today that makes it past the managing editors.
There are good journalists out there, but unless they are backed by a media outlet that is willing to back them up when the heat is on, there is no cover for them, to protect them from professional and even physical harm.
Good journalists are out there… but they have almost no vehicle to channel their passion for truth and fact, and they have no cover when the s**t starts flying.
Most folks know that the internet has a ton of garbage plastered all over it, so far as reliable information… and there is a LOT of quality original content out there too.
This discussion started about newspapers, NOT journalism. Good journalism hasn’t gone away… it’s evolving with the internet.
Print media gets away with their little ruse because much of the time they do print “factual” truth. Unfortunately, it is often packaged as the whole truth, and frequently spins the story to the point of propaganda.
From the comments here it seems the folks who are desirous of maintaining print media haven’t learned to separate the fact from fiction with print media OR the internet.