How to Save Your Newspaper
The article's basic precept is that we need to save America's newspapers from going under. This new news craze has caught a lot of the old-fashioned media's attention, and for good reason; it's their hide on the line. Walter Isaacson from the Aspen Institute, who happened to write the Time article I just linked to, was just recently interviewed on the Daily Show concerning his views on how newspapers could be ruined by online competitors, and what they could do to stop such a problem. More importantly, Mr. Isaacson goes on to tell readers and viewers why newspapers are worth saving. I'll address a few of his points, and counter with my own.
The first of these claims is that “Newspapers have more readers than ever...the problem is that fewer of these consumers are paying.” Let's shoot straight here, Mr. Isaacson: you and I both know there's no such thing as a free lunch. The amount of time I am forced to allocate to closing popups and listening to talking banner ads is not only considerable, it is so much so that I would gladly subscribe to a newspaper were it not for several disadvantages that I will be describing shortly.
Based around this argument, Mr. Isaacson moves on to state that “...free [not directly-paid-for] felt like the future of journalism only in the sense that a steep cliff is the future for a herd of lemmings.” You know, I'd really wish that American journalism would stop accusing the market of complete incompetence. It's one thing to blame an economic crisis on businesses, but to actually say that the market will not fill such a vital role as news is so full of ignorance it's scary. News is in high demand. I would be willing to argue that it's one of the most demanded things out there besides food, fuel, shelter, and entertainment. What's more, news will always be profitable because
1. supply cannot equal demand; that is, no matter how many people want to be informed, there cannot be as many informers as informees.
and
2. Barriers to entry are low; it's fairly easy to make a list of the most important things that happened today in a given area, write something about it, and put it up somewhere for people to read.
So no, Mr. Isaacson. The notion that people will stop writing news because they can't get any direct money from it is ridiculous.
Mr. Isaacson has it in his head that advertising revenue is not enough to support a staff of writers. I'd like to know what a writer expects for his work. Advertising revenue is typically linked to the number of visitors per page, which is linked to the quality of the work and how many readers the site has. I'd also like to know why a staff of writers is necessary. Surely Mr. Isaacson doesn't expect us to believe that large quantities of people on a given project guarantees quality. Inversely, I hope none of us believe that a single writer cannot produce quality work. If you did, I imagine you wouldn't be here. Neither of these assertions make logical sense; in fact, if Mr. Isaacson played by his own rules, wouldn't the article itself have a co-writer or two?
The last of Mr. Isaacson's claims that I'd like to address is the idea that relying on advertising revenue means that information distributors will be governed by the ad revenues rather than the readers. I've heard this claim so many times that it's getting on my nerves. Let me ask you this: How many commercials you saw during your favorite tv show directly affected the program? Likewise, how many of those programs were ran into the ground because they catered too exclusively to ads? My point is that any intelligent blogger writes for his or her readers and counts on the ads to do their own advertising.
Now, one of the downsides of newspapers: impersonality syndrome. Everyone can imagine the mom-and-pop retail store slowly growing into a chain and then going public. Suddenly, no one gets to see Mr. Walton because he's too busy running so many stores and managing so many employees. This is exactly what has happened to newspapers and magazines; rather than getting to talk to the person in charge and really feel like you, the customer, have made a positive difference when you bring in a legitimate concern to the company, you get to talk to a base-level $8.00/hr employee that calmly types what you say into a computer to be reviewed by their manager's manager later that month. Compare this to Steve Pavlina over at StevePavlina.com, whose self-help blog is visited by hundreds of thousands of people and he still takes time out to respond on the forums and reply to comments on his entries.
Waste. I'm not one to jump on the environmentalist bandwagon, but logic says that the more stuff we throw away that takes up space, the less space we are going to have. Furthermore, why pay for ink and paper when you could pay for cheaper (or free, that is, not-directly-paid-for) bandwidth? With portable devices like blackberries, iPhones, and laptops that let you take the internet with you, the need for a physical copy of the news is getting less and less necessary.
The information tax. I'm of the opinion that humanity has just taken a great leap forward in guaranteeing an equal opportunity for everyone with the advent of free information. No longer are children inhibited by whether or not the library carry the news or a certain book; a quick trip to their computer or the local library and they have the whole world's knowledge at their fingertips. We can communicate with people across the world at a whim. We can know what is happening on the other side of the country literally as it is happening without having to plan a day around a television screen. But Mr. Isaacson is against this; if he had his way, we would all have to pay for the information we receive, with no regard to whether or not it is correct or quality content. It seems that Mr. Isaacson is making his best attempt to bias quality information toward people with expendable incomes. And his motivation? He just doesn't want an antiquated, incompetent industry to go under.
Where have we heard that before?
Let's stop this before it gets out of hand. Write an email to your local newspaper telling them what a horrible idea this is.
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