Publishers Wake Up: Online Readers Are Paying You - In Attention 15 comments
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Rupert Murdoch, that sly old rascal, caused a minor Twitter-storm recently, with an interview in which he suggested that News Corp. (NWS) might remove its websites from Google (GOOG), which he has described in the past as a “thief” that takes content without asking (Google, for its part, said that it would be more than happy to oblige Rupert’s whims in this regard). As Mike Masnick at Techdirt also noted, Murdoch even went so far as to argue that “fair use” principles were likely illegal, and would eventually be proven so. You have to give the guy credit for knowing a soundbite when he sees one.
Mark Cuban, another crusty old billionaire (although just a pup compared to Rupe), used these remarks as a jumping-off point for his own flight of rhetorical fancy, in which he argued that social-recommendation networks such as Twitter and Facebook were far more important than Google, and that therefore Rupert was right and all the “information-must-be-free bigots” who criticized him must be wrong. But as Steve Rhodes (@tigerbeat) pointed out on Twitter after I posted a link to Cuban’s rant, all the social-recommendations in the world aren’t going to help Rupert if he insists on putting his content behind pay walls.
David Santori made a similar point in a comment on one of my paywall-related posts at the Nieman Journalism Lab. As he put it:
“overlooked in all this is the social aspect: any web item that interests or amuses or intrigues me, I want to share. And if I can’t share it promptly and easily — in an email link or on my blog or Facebook “wall” or in a tweet — I will be frustrated and irked just in proportion to the degree of interest I felt in the item.”
and
“The NYT registration barrier was in fact a micropayment system, one in which the payment was extracted in the form of the reader’s time and keystrokes to log in whenever they got a link to a useful story.”
I think both David and Steve make an excellent point, one which publishers ignore at their peril. Readers online may not pay you directly with currency, but they pay you with their time and attention (the foundation of the so-called “attention economy”) and it’s in your interest to make things as easy for them as possible — which is just one strike amongst many against pay walls. And if Mark Cuban is right (which I think he is) about social recommendations becoming increasingly important as a way to find valuable content, what happens when someone shares a link to your pay-walled content?
What happens is a potential reader runs headfirst into that wall, or has to jump through all sorts of hoops to read it (i.e., check to see if there is a Google News loophole), and that is a significant disincentive to a) read anything further, or b) share any links themselves. It’s the classic cutting-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face problem: you try to generate incremental revenue through restricted access, but by doing so you deprive your content of even more valuable re-distribution through recommendation networks, which in the long run reduces your traffic and thus your revenue.
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This article has 15 comments:
No need to pay News Corp if you can read the EXACT same tidbit on any other site (CBS, CNN, USATODAY, SeekingAlpha, etc.)
Those that want to read the Wall Street Journal will pay. Whether on-line or in hard copy. Same goes for other content. If you want to watch a movie, you'll pay. You'll probably pay much less than you do today and will be able to take it from the internet onto your big screen TV....but you'll still pay.
I'd rather sell my content to 1,000 people than to give it away to 2,000. Very few businesses are going to be sustainable with a model that gives away the content and charges advertisers. Its kind of like you have to get the same number of people that attend an NFL game only on an ongoing basis....if you can do that - get 70,000 to show up then you can charge advertisers (just like they do in stadiums....but your stadium on the internet is virtual) . There will be a small number of them, but most businesses have to charge for what they create.
Newsday, here on Long Island, is charging for access but the Dolans will soon realize that what the newspaper offers is not worth the subscription price and will lose even more readers than it has.
It is one thing to pay a news gathering agency to maintain a worldwide network of reporters. However, I am unwilling to pay anyone for opinion content, and that is what most "news" is nowadays.
Murdoch to Google: Who Needs You?
World replies (in lieu of Google) to Murdoch: Who Needs You?
But I am with NewsCorp here. Pay Pay Pay. We must pay, or everything will continue to degrade to the random crappola.
The News online is completely ripped from companies who are paying for reporters out in the field. The research , the time the effort, is all lifted, stolen and spread around for free.
It is high time the media companies came to thier senses, banded together and charge Google Bing etc for each click., each and every click.
Do I want to pay? hell no, but that does not mean I should not pay, just that we are all getting away with it, meanwhile one by one the best are letting go , cutting back, and giving up.
I want those deep detailed stories, I want those special reports, where the person really went there , and really talked to CEO, not a reprinted opinion bit.
I agree with SW Richmonds' comment, I to am unwilling to pay for "advocacy journalism" (editorial, op-ed)- but that's almost all that is available now. Neutral journalism was killed by sensationalism. Will people pay for quality journalism, that offered neutral analysis and peripheral knowledge of a topic? Sure. Profit will come with quality content that people want to pay for. BS will always be free.
Personally, since I like information to be referenced to reliable sources, my current favorite, is Miller-McCune.
www.miller-mccune.com/...
I pay for hardcopy subscription, but I just realized they are non-profit.
There are likely others I do not know about, but this publication has the most researched articles I have seen. And when they do stray into opinion, they make corrections and/or print opposing pieces.
On a related note, a good piece about the television broadcast industry by Henry Blodget.
www.businessinsider.co...
>Very few businesses are going to be sustainable with a model
> that gives away the content and charges advertisers.
NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox-Entertainment, PBS and others are not sustainable?
Some of these have been in business for 30 to 50 years.
I wish I had a McClatchy newspaper in my town.
Another implication in the process of gather / pay (and perhaps most important imo) is intellectual independence of content. This has quickly become a parrot world of news. Any and every web operator can easily slant a point of view by sheer preponderance of bias. 50 stories containing the basic goodness of printing cash tend to trivialize contrary opinion despite evidence. ERGO Google (et al) as a political arm.
This is a dangerous thing, independent thought has long suffered in our universities, we cannot afford to relinquish it in the media as well.
On Nov 10 12:39 PM jack dee wrote:
> I am way long on GOOG.
>
>
> But I am with NewsCorp here. Pay Pay Pay. We must pay, or everything
> will continue to degrade to the random crappola.
>
> The News online is completely ripped from companies who are paying
> for reporters out in the field. The research , the time the effort,
> is all lifted, stolen and spread around for free.
>
> It is high time the media companies came to thier senses, banded
> together and charge Google Bing etc for each click., each and every
> click.
>
> Do I want to pay? hell no, but that does not mean I should not pay,
> just that we are all getting away with it, meanwhile one by one the
> best are letting go , cutting back, and giving up.
> I want those deep detailed stories, I want those special reports,
> where the person really went there , and really talked to CEO, not
> a reprinted opinion bit.
BUT A fair question would be:
Have we lost our will or desire to get the page 5 article with the real depth?
Our entire economic situation can be put down to our yielding to offers of "an easier way to get there", cool home, cool cars, cool clothes, cool vacations, easy news, ALL AVAILABLE NOW FOLKS, just check your integrity at the door and sign here. We'll worry about making the money later.
Both are symptoms of a much more insidious malaise in our society. Hell we dont even need to be offered the Kool-Aid anymore, we're begging for it!
On Nov 10 03:51 PM BioGuy wrote:
> Headlines always have been and will be free. For decades people have
> been reading the cover of the New York Times at News stands for free.
>
> I agree with SW Richmonds' comment, I to am unwilling to pay for
> "advocacy journalism" (editorial, op-ed)- but that's almost all that
> is available now. Neutral journalism was killed by sensationalism.
> Will people pay for quality journalism, that offered neutral analysis
> and peripheral knowledge of a topic? Sure. Profit will come with
> quality content that people want to pay for. BS will always be free.
>
>
> Personally, since I like information to be referenced to reliable
> sources, my current favorite, is Miller-McCune.
> www.miller-mccune.com/...
> I pay for hardcopy subscription, but I just realized they are non-profit.
>
>
> There are likely others I do not know about, but this publication
> has the most researched articles I have seen. And when they do stray
> into opinion, they make corrections and/or print opposing pieces.
>
>
> On a related note, a good piece about the television broadcast industry
> by Henry Blodget.
> www.businessinsider.co...
WOULD YOU PLEASE STOP TRYING TO CONFUSE ME WITH FACTS?!
Hermes had more class than that, look it up.
On Nov 10 04:17 PM Alan Young wrote:
> Great! I hope to god (Hermes, that is) that Murdoch goes ahead and
> gets his Faux-News off of Google. Then I won't have to see his propaganda
> headlines when I'm looking for actual information.... (that I aree with)
Can you take this one step further, though, and explain to me how he pays salaries to employees when he receives the time and attention of readers, not money? How does time and attention pay the bills? (You might be able to discern from my question that I am an employer, not an employee.)