http://www.observer.com/2010/media/after-three-months-only-35-subscriptions-newsdays-web-site
UH OH!!!! 3 months and tons of money invested into Newsday, and only 35 subscribers??? Why is that?
To run a legitimate news outlet, it takes a lot of talent, a lot of people, and a pretty big investment. No one denies this. To run a mostly legitimate website it takes a person in their home office, or even their bedroom. Their expenses are almost nothing!
My question is: What value do traditional news outlets add, when compared to the amateurs? Obviously they have time to spend researching, verifying sources, etc. They may even have a better quality of source (though this may not always be the case.) Is this enough? Typically, the amateurs can deliver the majority of what people are looking for, there are a lot of people willing to give their time for free and deliver a pretty polished product, only to collect on ad revenue. How can traditional media demand further compensation for their efforts without delivering more value? I’d love to see a list of the things that news outlets think they have over the amateurs. I bet the majority of the list is of no interest to the average consumer.
I think, personally, I need to see more value before I’d ever consider paying for news. This is especially true in the case of average news like Reuters or your local paper. I might be eager to pay for something like Stratfor, but Newsday? Come on!
News outlets need to focus on figuring out exactly what they bring to the table. I can’t really figure it out. They’ve done a pretty poor job of convincing me that they’re doing anything differently than your average blogger. Even if they add something they think is quite valuable, I have to want it as a consumer of their information. If they can’t convince me, they’re not going to get paid. I fear that instead of worrying about the value that they’re going to deliver to me, that matters to me, they’re busy thinking about what a jerk I am for not being willing to pay for what they deliver.
Traditional journalists and their employers need to find a way to differentiate themselves from the bloggers, but no matter what they do, they’re going to have a VERY hard time convincing people to pay at the rates that will support their current expense structure. I’ve thought quite a bit about this, and I can’t think of anything they could offer that would convince me to pay.
Investigative journalism is a great idea, but can be easily crowdsourced and engineered via social networking, again at little to no cost to the publisher provided that they have an interested and connected group to help them, which many do, especially on a subject that effects the readership. Inevitably, some reader will work in public records and give people the tools to find the information, someone (like me!) will have some pretty gnarly database chops and enable the group to employ business intelligence on their collected data, etc. These are things that people will provide for free, if they like the cause, and they like the organizers. Got a great reputation and want some help in figuring something out? I’d bet that you can get the work done for free.
Reputation is quickly becoming very, very important for everyone, and I am pretty sure that if we can manage to make it a few hundred years without blowing ourselves up that reputation will eventually be codified and replace money in a post scarcity society.
You’re seeing some of the effects of post scarcity with information today in the destruction of the content distribution industry, the news industry, etc. Take a note that many of these struggling industries are in the information brokerage business, which is fast becoming so inexpensive and ubiquitous that it is basically up for grabs for anyone that wants to do it. It costs virtually nothing to move information around, so why should we pay aggregators to do it for us? The majority of the news industry isn’t a whole lot better at delivering the news than a well informed and cautious blogger.
Of course those in the news industry will cry to the heavens that they DO add value and there are huge gaps in how bloggers do things. The real question is, are those differences valuable to the consumers or not? I, personally, don’t think so, not enough to justify the price tag they’ll be asking to keep their aging institutions afloat.
