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How to Save Newspapers
So here, in the briefest of summaries, are avenues for innovation:
1. Reestablish the principle that news has to be paid for by someone: the consumer, the advertiser, or the distributor. (See the Platform for November 3, 2008: “Make Google Pay.”)
2. Private equity investment in new brands or renewed confidence in such stalwarts as the New York Times and the Washington Post, which are hurting badly but would revive if they can make money from others (for example, search engines) through fees for their content.
3. Accept the role of news as a public service to be supported by the community through public funds, membership, and sponsorship of various kinds. This is, of course, the model that has been in place for decades at public radio and PBS.
Thomas C. Rubin, chief counsel for intellectual property strategy at Microsoft, recently gave a thoughtful speech to the U.K. Association of Online Publishers, making many of the points reflected above. As precedents for the news business to consider, he cites the challenges to Napster’s effort to make music free, which fell apart when it was found liable for copyright infringement. Music again became a saleable commodity with the advent of iTunes. Next came YouTube, which was helping itself to content—until it was sued for a billion dollars by Viacom. Now Hulu is gaining traction by selling the same sort of material. Why can’t the news business challenge free use of copyrighted material? It can, and almost certainly should.
The financial model for gathering news can definitely be revived. No one disputes how bad things have gotten. So the only way forward is to focus on solutions. Innovation, please.
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Peter Osnos is a senior fellow for media at The Century Foundation, where he writes the weekly Platform column. Osnos is the Founder and Editor-at-Large of PublicAffairs Books. He is Vice-Chair of the Columbia Journalism Review, a former publisher at Random House Inc. and was a correspondent and editor at The Washington Post. Visit TCF.org for a full archive of Platform columns.
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Peter Osnos is a senior fellow for media at The Century Foundation. Osnos is the founder and editor at large of PublicAffairs Books. He is vice chairman of the Columbia Journalism Review, a former publisher at Random House, and was a correspondent and editor at the Washington Post.
I just read a truly bad Blog on Daily Beast and was about shut down. Thankfully, I tried this one and it revived hope. It's what it should be: informative, concise, and, geez, I think I even "saw" critical thinking skills. More please.
I agree that the newspapers need to find new sources of revenue in order to continue making our fingertips black every morning. We are in danger of losing major sources of (hopefully) unbiased and challenging news in lieu of publishers-with-attitude and bloggers generating news on the web. It can take a long time to smell out the reliable from the unreliable news on any given "google search".
However, I believe that the news must be freely available lest it not be available to the unable and unwilling to pay--too large a percentage of the population to leave in the ignorant bliss of uninformed.
This leaves Mr. Osnos' suggestion #3 that the news should be a public service. An idea worth serious consideration. The "free market" of selling video or audio footage would continue, and as the number of news providers (NYT, WP, CNN, Fox etc.) decreases while the number of news distributors (other newspapers in this case, or local TV news) increase, the revenues from selling original video or audio footage should increase substantially even with minimal amounts charged to the users.
But on the net, the news must remain free. Keep selling advertising on the news sites by all mean, but don't block or charge for my search for knowledge about what is really going on out there.
As an alum from a very prestigious journalism school in the Midwest, we would all love for the very unrealistic solutions you've suggested to work out. You were considered asinine at my school to even go into News Ed for your sequence and that was 5 years ago.
The problem with America is that we like free things. No matter how nice it would be for everyone to dig deep and appreciate the intense amount of work it takes to run a newspaper, journalists are seen as scum of society: either biased or dull, running with ulterior motives or not worth reading. Journalism will never be seen as a valid charity to give to. Beyond that, who wants to be seen as anti-green when you can read everything, more conveniently and updated quicker on the web. Yes, I would love the nostalgia of newspapers to remain. How sad to grow up in a world without them.
And yet, while radio may have survived despite television, tape cassettes sure did get booted out the door when CDs came along. Convenience wins, always.
As an alum from a very prestigious journalism school in the Midwest, we would all love for the very unrealistic solutions you've suggested to work out. You were considered asinine at my school to even go into News Ed for your sequence and that was 5 years ago. %u2028%u2028
The problem with America is that we like free things. No matter how nice it would be for everyone to dig deep and appreciate the intense amount of work it takes to run a newspaper, journalists are seen as scum of society: either biased or dull, running with ulterior motives or not worth reading. Journalism will never be seen as a valid charity to give to. Beyond that, who wants to be seen as anti-green when you can read everything, more conveniently and updated quicker on the web. Yes, I would love the nostalgia of newspapers to remain. How sad to grow up in a world without them.%u2028%u2028
And yet, while radio may have survived despite television, tape cassettes sure did get booted out the door when CDs came along. Convenience wins, always.
Thank you.
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