Send $0.35 For This Story
Posted: December 27th, 2008 | Author: James Glave | Filed under: Media, top | Tags: media newmedia web2.0, media web2.0 |Over recent months, I have watched the slow and painful implosion of my profession. The media industry was in steep decline before the bottom fell out of the market; and with recession-era marketing budgets now in full retreat, the happy marriage of advertising and editorial has entered its death spiral. Many magazines have folded; whole newspaper chains shut down. There is less money available for freelance writers–there are fewer pages for to fill, and fewer assignments to go around.
Readers are abandoning print newspapers in droves, preferring to pluck their bulletins and analysis via any manner of friend feeds, and preferring not to pay for it. Audiences have become immune to advertising–in a saturated atmosphere of 24/7 persuasive messages, we have by practical necessity turned ourselves into human TiVos. We dislike the old "one-way model" of media serving audience, opting instead for dynamic conversation in specialized forums a mile wide and an inch deep.
Big Media, it seems, is toast, and though the replacement model has yet to emerge, everyone has a theory about what it might look like. Including me.
I believe citizen journalists have a role to play in the new world. But they will not likely spend two months working a complex piece, filing Freedom of Information Act requests, tracking down sources who don’t want to talk right away, or aren’t easy to find. These are the stories that just don’t happen with a Google search, a Wiki graft, and a couple phone calls. This kind of work is now and will remain the domain of the professional journalist.
But is the term becoming an oxymoron? It’s good work, but who is footing the bill.
I believe people are reluctant to pay for this so-called "premium content" on the Web today because the infrastructure does not yet exist for them to do so without the tedium of passwords, memberships, cookies, popups, and endless logins to remember and forget. At present, online newspapers ask me to pay a blanket fee for access to a whole paper, when 98.9 percent of the content (picture advertiser-driven dreck like "Homes" or "Wheels") does not interest me. I believe people will pay a modest amount — a micropayment of perhaps .
$0.25 or so — what we used to pay for newspapers when we still bought them — for a single original story so long as it delivers strong value, and so long as it can be done securely with one button, one click, and so long as it goes straight into the hands of the writer.
I suspect pro-journalists will become free agents who carry with them a verifiable credibility ranking, much like sellers on eBay. They might work for umbrella brands that vet their credibility and deliver a broad audience base in exchange for a modest fee of some kind. And they will collect payments directly from their individual readers, a few quarters at a time, nothing much in small amounts, but depending on the impact and spread of the piece, it could be significant enough to sustain the writer. Consumers will pay for a great story or column if if means they only have to fork over $0.35 or $0.50 cents or so, and provided there is a seamless, hassle-free, transparent instant mechanism that allows them to do it, while the impulse is there. That mechanism might be as simple as a button on a browser or embedded in a web page: "Send .50 to this Writer."
There are snags with this, of course. Writers might be vulnerable to corruption, receiving micropayments from corporations angling for a more favorable follow-up piece. That happens today with press junkets, swag, and similar thinly veiled bribes. But that’s where the credibility ranking and transparency comes in. For the micropayment to work, you’d need to show browsers all the contributions to date, the amounts and the sources. If anything looks unusually large or out of place, the collective would quickly sniff it out. You know how much a writer has made on a story, and where the money came from. Total transparency.
Someone out there has probably already floated this scheme. If so, let me know below. It can’t work right now, but it might be within reach within a few years. Maybe…?
01.01.09 Update : Spot.us is in the ballpark, an "open-source project to pioneer community funded reporting" in the San Francisco Bay Area. Worth a look to see how they are doing it.
Typewriter key image by Emdot .
Bang on James.
They are already doing this in South Korea:
http://english.ohmynews.com/
Contributors are payed via small donations from individual readers.
Interesting stuff..
http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?article_class=8&no=347268&rel_no=1
Like the record companies, ‘big media’ (for whom I worked for over 30 years) has completely missed the technology reality.
Instead of investing their substantial resources in helping to carve the new business models, their strategy has been a mixed bag of:
- hoping it will go away
- investing too little, too late
- hoping it will go away
15 years ago, I sat in a board room with two VP’s of a national broadcast organization in Canada, pitching ‘audio on demand’ , only to have them both tell me that ‘this audio thing on the internet is going nowhere’. They were both dragged kicking and screaming into ‘new media’ ventures, only to bail on them over and over during the ensuing years, while returning over and over again to their old media comfort zone.
In my experience, traditional media has thought nothing of investing millions for the best ‘personalities’ and overpriced identify packages, but balking at best-of-breed web/internet solutions. This lack of investment simply perpetuated the notion that ‘new media’ couldn’t work, Their lack of vision is coming back to bite them. Having watched the record companies implode, they have no real excuse. But then again, record companies have only just decided to stop suing their customers over music downloads. It’s taken them more than 5 years to realize that strategy doesn’t really work.
As always, I think the real leadership will come from those folks who are insanely dedicated to their craft, and smart enough to partner with people insanely dedicated to running a business and making money.
The first dot.bomb and the current dot.calm have shown us pretty clearly that pouring money into technology without a business model makes no sense. It has shown us that technology is secondary to experience - craigslist.org works not because it’s cutting edge technology but because it serves a simple human need, simply.
I think the biggest hurdle to the new business model is the evolution of the content that will fuel the new business model. I’m all for crowd sourcing as a tool, but as a primary source of information it leaves a lot to be desired. And please don’t make me watch another tripod-challenged-video-blogger’s live coverage of a non-event.
I find it ironic and frustrating that most of the new models of journalism are mostly variations on the old models - they’ve changed the entry point for creating content (anyone can contribute) but the end products look an awful lot like newspapers and magazines to me.
Right now, we continue to lead with the wrong foot - technology. The technology has to be secondary to the experience, stuff needs to be integrated, and it just needs to work. For instance, I think RSS is a killer tool for publishing, but regular folks don’t use it, and content creators haven’t really used it creatively. It isn’t really well integrated in other applications, and, well, its name is a three letter acronym.
Me - I stopped buying magazines ages ago - adding another nail to the coffin of great writers like James. The old model isn’t working for me, but I would buy selective mags on demand, if I could view them first for free as say, awesome flash mag. Then I’d pay for an on-demand version of the ones I really really like. Printers like MOO or Blurb have great just-in-time printing solutions that are high quality and super customer friendly.
I’d like to see a kind of media coop that gives me killer copy, images,video, audio, and delivered through a variety of platforms. A product created by people who are tops in their field, crossing media lines. I also want a content package that is responsive to its audience (me), that engages in a conversation, and that is invested in the stories it covers. One of the wonders of modern technology is that instead of ‘putting the story to bed’, we can actually START the story when we first publish it, as opposed to forgetting about it and moving on to the next thing.
Since I doubt ‘big media’ is going to create the kind of media coop I’d like to see, wouldn’t it better if the people who create the stuff also control distribution and marketing ?
Robert Ouimet
blog.bigsnit.com
Fasincating insights from the trenches, Robert. Thanks for taking the time to share these ideas. Thanks also for the $0.35 paypal payment.
To accept your contribution, I had to hit an email link, click again, then log in to my PayPal account (I had to go digging for the password), then click ANOTHER link to accept the $0.35 payment. Then click again to log out of paypal.
Excuse me, what year is this? Almost 2009? Really? And I have to go through all of that? We have to do better, people. Much better.
Love the media co-op idea. All good stuff, but have to ask: Where’s the revenue?
The key point you noted is the ability for a journalist to be able to track their following/ranking. While many factors will drive this ultimately it will be a reflection of the quality of their work.
In the advertising world we are seeing a big shift where the best quality (most creative, insightful, interesting, well produced) work is getting a great response/results, regardless of how it’s delivered to the consumer. A crappy banner ad is an ineffective as a crappy TV ad. A great TV ad becomes a viral success as much as a YouTube only piece of brand film. What matters is the quality of the content.
Industries are not failing, it is particular business models in an industry that are suffering. Maybe the smart journalists will go the way of the leading edge of musicians who’s music is considered a loss leader and the revenue is earned at concerts, extended content and merch. For a journalist are the articles your version of a loss leader, that generate your fan base whom then is willing to pay for extended content like books, speaker fees and expertise for hire in a consulting roll.
The only near certainty is there won’t be a single model. But I sure hope the best quality content gets rewarded more frequently than just publishers best friend’s son/daughter fresh out of j-school.
If a business model that supports an industry fails without a viable replacement model in place, then the industry, in fact, fails. Maybe I’m short sighted, but it seems to me that’s what we’re seeing here.
I’ve tried to find a parallel with the evolution you cite underway in the music industry but I can’t see it — yet.It makes sense there that when the content is free and universally available, that the “live” experience of performance becomes rare and valued.
There isn’t an alt revenue stream for what investigate journalists do. Books? Sure if you’re one of a very few. Nothing short of brilliance is required to make that a viable career; it’s a very select club. Speakers fees? Maybe. Except, the most interesting events by design don’t pay ‘em.
I’m not seeking pity, but trying to imagine a new model that might one day replace what will soon be gone. And I’m scratching my head.
See also: Kevin Kelly’s 1,000 True Fans essay, http://tinyurl.com/32zzlp
I agree a new model hasn’t reared its head. But what is fascinating to us, from the advertiser perspective, is that consumption of magazines, newspapers, news online, tv, web video, music, etc… has never been higher. People are consuming more across the board. And ciculation/viewership/listenership could take a big jump with better & more accurate digital tracking & reporting methodologies. However, like all industries costs are getting pushed downwards, which your are right, bears down on the journalists. But what gets misconstrued is that these industries are dying - and that nobody will ever read a magazine again. They are still perfectly viable and profitable, just not profitable at a growing annual rate that meets investors demands. And the model of some media companies is way beyond realistic. What does the NYT know about managing a professional baseball team?
The music example comes from Terry McBride and Nettwerk records. I brought him into the agency a couple months ago and they are finding viable new financial models along those lines. Now, they probably aren’t likely to be viable to publically traded mega music label. But Nettwerk has never been more successful.
As someone who professionally needs good quality content to buy ad space beside (until a better model arises that is) and as a reader of good quality writing it is concerning if the business model of the journalist isn’t viable. Boy is it interesting thinking about it from your perspective. And man could I ramble on. Maybe you need to come into the agency to pitch your book and chat about the other stuff.
Something you might find interesting is a couple posts Russell Davies on post-digital media. Here’s the first:
http://russelldavies.typepad.com/planning/2009/01/meet-the-new-schtick.html
I agree with you: people will eventually pay for content, one way or another. They already do, in some places (WSJ, Cooks Illustrated, etc.)
I disagree that the new models aren’t here yet. I know individuals who are building entire (nascent) media brands on little more than sweat equity - without anyone noticing, some bloggers have begun, as their revenue streams have expanded, to turn into actual reporters - ecogeek.org is a good example.
And while I have enormous respect for Dave Cohn, I have to disagree with you about Spot.Us - charity is not a solution. For-profit businesses, by definition, are capable of expanding, even thriving; charities are inherently self-limiting (or limited by the availability of those kinds of funds).
Another note: things seem bad now, but remember, advertisers still want to reach audiences, and they’ll do it one way or another. This terrible advertising market will bottom out — and whoever is left standing will reap the benefits when it finally recovers.
I love Chris Mims (my old editor) - but I don’t think of Spot.Us as a charity.
It is a nonprofit - but that doesn’t mean that people give to the stories on it out of a sense of pity. Many give because they …. want the content.
Right now we ask for a donation of $25 - but I hope as we grow we can lower the average ask to $20, $10 and then $5.
But for now - we are still proving the concept.