Prompt's TechBlog

I understand why professional journalists who provide content to pay the rent require some protection, and can also see that the free-content model is unsustainable for these individuals and small businesses in the long run. But shouldn't large publishing empires be more willing to take a 'free content hit' in exchange for the invaluable goodwill of their global readers and visitors?

Back in April, I commended the forward-thinking attitude of The New York Times' website revamp on this very blog. The changes included a radical new design, different news and features sections, more intelligent navigation, a greater emphasis on multimedia, and a fresh approach to interactivity and community. We praised its radical visitor focused outlook, but now that feel-good factor has been heavily diluted by its paid-archive policy.

Although on the face of it 8c (or 4c) an article doesn't seem unreasonable, a subscription to TimesSelect of $7.95 per month (or $49.95 per year) is a sufficiently high barrier to make me click elsewhere. And the same goes for FT.com.

Am I greedy and unreasonable, or in the majority here?

# posted by  Dave Wilby : Friday, June 23, 2006 5:48:00 PM

Hi...

OK, let's talk about "information sources that insist on barricading their content behind subscription forms and password entry boxes"...

To comment on this post, I have just had to go through three sign-up screens, filling in 12-18 fields. Along the way, I find that I have been forced to set up a blog with Blogger. . . (which I didn't want).

Of course, I made the mistake of not doing this before writing my comment.

So having (finally) signed in, I tried to return to my comment. Guess what? It was gone.

Anyway. . . a few (re-drafted) points:

1) It's a multipolar world -- paid and free content will both play a part. For a long time to come. If you don't want to pay £35 to the NYT, don't do it. But remember: with the world of media simultaneosly collapsing and exploding, ideology is a bad guide (whether it's the ideology of the "free" web, or the crusty prejudices of old-time print editors). A bit of fluid pragmatism is in order...

2) Re: "The prevailing view that 'the only good content is paid-for content' seems to be holding up." Actually, aside from the comedy of Wikipedia and its critics, it's not. Among publishers, the idea of paid content been out of fashion since the revival of online ad revenues in 2003-4. Currently, the notion is about as desirable as a Burberry thong.

3) That said, the blogosphere and free web can't do it on its own. Bloggers need journalists, and vice-versa. (Large numbers in both camps don't understand this, but that's another story...) As Dave points out, staff journalists need to get paid (I suspect that we wouldn't want them running consultancy gigs on the side. . . ). But online ad revenues aren't sufficient. Ergo: a niche market exists online for some kinds of paid content.

4) Here's one such niche: human aggregators. Why? Well, algorithms have their weaknesses, and Digg/Tech Meme -- well, let's just see how their business models stand up to the mass market and/or vertical specialisation. One of the untold stories of media is the proliferation of specialised subscription sites. In fact, I run one -- for tech PRs and marketers here in the UK. Fullrun is 3 years old, has several hundred subscribers and renewal rates of 97%. Why? Because we sweat bullets to make our content as good as it can be, on a full-time basis.

5) Fiona -- "Content that can't be linked to is content that may as well not exist". You know, I don't find this to be the case. The art of precis is alive and well (I can see it at work on your well-written site), and it passes muster under copyright law. On my subscription-based web site, I link to other subscription-based sources continually. About the same number of times as I link to blogs and free sites, come to think of it.

6) Dave -- on the NYT: You're probably not greedy or unreasonable -- just far enough away from NY and Washington DC to make the proposition unattractive. For the record, Times Select has 490,000 subscribers. (Two-thirds get it as part of their print sub, but a healthy 180,000 subscribe to it on its own, for $50 a year. Not bad for a local paper. . . ). The WSJ Online has 760,000 subscribers. . .As for the FT, that's more interesting. I'd say it was still a must-read for anyone on the sector, and I'd be surprised if someone at Prompt *didn't* have a sub. . .

7) The Royal Society's dilemma over peer review is important. "Free" is important, but won't always cut the mustard, especially not in the *absence* of big online ad revenues. . .

That said, I really want to say thanks for the blog: well-written, nicely-turned, you flesh out argument well -- it's definitely straight in on my Bloglines must-read list. (Nice piece on MS AdLab BTW -- made me laugh...).

All in all, great job -- just don't get too ideological on me. Please... ;)

Peter

# posted by  Peter Kirwan : Friday, June 30, 2006 12:57:00 PM

Peter, thanks very much for your comments - very interesting stuff. Very sorry about your having to register with Blogger - if there's one thing I love it's being hoisted by my own petard! We've changed that, and now accept comments from anyone prepared to type a string of letters into a box :-)

I'm probably guilty of getting quite ideological about freedom of information, but I do still stand by the assertion that online content should be freely linkable *if* the owners of that content want it to form part of the symbiotic relationship between bloggers and journalists.

If I had the book I was reading last night to hand, there are some good stats about how many readers are coming into online news sites (e.g WSJ Online, FT.com, BBC Online) from links in blogs. It's an appreciable number and I'll come back with the facts. The way I see it is if lots of people - and people who wouldn't normally read the FT, as well - are coming into FT.com that way, then it would make sense for FT.com to make that content available when they arrive.

Back in the real world, yes, I do have a sub to FT.com (and have the FT delivered to my doorstep at 4am every day) and WSJ.com. But I do still think the papers should try and make it on ad revenues alone. If a newspaper is going to sell me, the reader, as an audience to advertisers, it's a bit cheeky to charge me to read the content as well. But possibly that's just me getting all ideological again :-)

Thanks for the compliments, too, by the way. Glad you like it.

# posted by  Fiona Blamey : Friday, June 30, 2006 2:11:00 PM

Point taken about the power of incoming links from blogs. This is why the Telegraph, for example, has set up an an array of tagging links (Digg, Delicious etc) attached to its stories. Quite rightly, they want that Google juice.

As for the idea that newspapers should "try and make it on ad revenues alone". . . in historical terms, that's a big shout. Cf., for example, the Guardian's huge online audience -- accompanied by the real problem of monetizing this audience. (This is code for: "Yes, we've got a huge audience, but we're not making anywhere near enough money out of it to sustain our editorial operation".) At the other end of the spectrum, Rupert Murdoch himself acknowledges exactly the same problem in his setpiece interview with Wired this month.

As newspapers shift the balance of their operations online, two things happen. 1) They progressively lose newsstand revenues, and 2) The amount of money advertisers pay to compile their ad schedules reduces (what McKinsey consultants like to call "value destruction"). And that's before factoring in the effect of free, or near-free classified ad services, which will destroy newspapers' single most lucrative print-based revenue stream. In the UK, we already have too many loss-making nationals. In the future, their losses will become unsustainable, even for vanity press barons.

The end result? Fewer national newspapers . . .

(Take a look at ITV1's current woes: precisely the same dynamic is at work here, too. ITV1 is disintegrating as advertisers switch their budgets online -- so much so that media buyers at places like Carat and Starcom fear that the UK won't a single big-reach channel in five years' time. . .)

Of course, you might view this as a good thing :) To some extent, I do. The new order will assert itself and find its own balance -- eventually. It would be good to see the best of the nationals strengthening their operations as weaker rivals exit an over-serviced market. More journalists, perhaps, and certainly more *free* user-generated content (can only be a good thing.)

But I'm worried about how this shake-out will occur, and whether even the strongest will be able to strenghten their editorial operations much at all. In the background, there are -- I think -- some very big problems in terms of web economics and journalistic standards.

Recently I asked a well-known tech publisher who was going to fill his story quotas when he'd finished laying off most of his journalists. His reply: "I don't know, I really don't know. . . There's a big sucking sound abroad in the land."

For sure, he was being a bit melodramatic. But ask yourself: are there going to be big costs in this revolution (as well as benefits)? The answer is yes -- and not all of those costs are going to be palatable.

Peter

# posted by  Peter : Monday, July 03, 2006 5:06:00 PM

Hi Peter, this is interesting stuff indeed. The online media owners definitely need to find ways to make advertising on their sites more valuable to advertisers. I've no idea how they'll go about that; I don't work in advertising - but we all know that banners and pop-ups aren't the way forward.

You're right about the media fragmenting; TV channels and audiences have fragmented so much that the British television industry now needs a marketing body(www.thinkbox.tv) to market it to advertisers. TV's no longer the obvious choice for advertisers with pots of money. The question is, what is? I read an article not long ago in the Economist that predicted firms would start putting more money into PR as advertising continues to lose its effectiveness. That might be great news for people like us in the PR business, but if there are fewer publications to go round, where's all that PR going to go?

Perhaps everything - editorial, advertising, PR - is going to end in the blogosphere, fragmented across a gigantic long tail of millions of blogs, each with a tiny micro-readership. How the revenue and business models would work I have no idea - and I bet that in reality, not even Rupert Murdoch or Nick Denton or Jason Calacanis *really* know. But it's quite an exciting thought.

# posted by  Fiona Blamey : Tuesday, July 04, 2006 6:38:00 PM

Learned Journals are now in a quandry. It takes months (soemtimes years) for a paper to get through peer review and then published. By then the research has moved on. Paid-for really means that the reseracher has published online and just needs the brownie points available from the rubber stamp.

This process held up a PhD for a year!

Ouch!

# posted by  LeverWealth : Tuesday, July 11, 2006 1:37:00 PM

Sorry, LeverWealth -- I didn't quite get that.

From your point of view, is paid-for good or bad? Is it causing the problem, or a symptom of the problem?

Cheers

Peter

PS: Fiona -- For sure, neither Calcanis nor Murdoch *really* know. The difference is that Murdoch has sufficient assets to profit from ignorance in the long run -- always assuming that his McKinsey consultants don't do anything too crass.

PR as the new advertising? I think it's an idea that's got legs -- so long as PR agencies are bold enough to grasp the opportunities.

At the moment, even in tech, I'm not sure how many are. . .

Best

Peter

# posted by  Anonymous : Thursday, July 13, 2006 12:34:00 AM