At last night’s tech talk, there was some discussion about the impact that social networks are having on, of all things, newspapers. The main thrust of the (rather brief) conversation had to do with how people are relying more on their friends and peers for news and information, and less on mainstream media. This inspired me to dust off a draft blog post I’ve been tinkering with for a while and actually post it. So here ya go …
It’s not hard to find news about newspapers in distress these days. What’s interesting is the changing tenor of the discussion. For example, Clay Shirky‘s recent article about the newspaper industry, is garnering a lot of attention, and has a distinctly “The Emperor Has No Clothes” feel to it:
Round and round this goes, with the people committed to saving newspapers demanding to know “If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?” To which the answer is: Nothing. Nothing will work. There is no general model for newspapers to replace the one the internet just broke.
So far the downturn appears to have hit hardest at larger papers in communities like Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Seattle, Denver, and San Francisco, in which the major publications have either shut down, filed for chapter 11, or are “in distress”. Smaller publications like our own Bend Bulletin appear to be a bit more immune to the Internet smackdown. But one can’t help but wonder what the buzz is like over in the Bulletin’s offices these days because, frankly, Shirky seems to have it about right.
My wife and I are both avid readers of the Bulletin. We pay our $11/month and read the paper over breakfast each morning. But more and more I find myself taking an imaginary pair of scissors to it, where I clip out all the stuff that I’ve already read online or where I know there are comparable online alternatives.
It’s a sobering exercise, that. In fact, having just taken a couple minutes to do this for real with a weekday copy of the Bulletin I find that, by weight, 75% of the paper is gone; what started as 8 ounces of newsprint is reduced to a rather swiss-cheesy 2 ounces. Anything to do with world or national news is gone, as is a good fraction of the state-level stuff – all available as part of any decent web portals default content. All the advertising and classifieds go away (bend.craigslist.com, anyone?). And a surprising amount of sections like, “Home”, “Community” and “Local” also get clipped. The comics go away all together (and good riddance to drivel like Mary Worth and Family Circus, say I!) as do the more notable obituary items.
One thing that is quickly apparent with this exercise is that the role of a newspaper has changed dramatically. In the days of our parents, papers were vital in connecting people to the affairs of the rest of the world. But there are literally hundreds of online sources for world and national news now, that are searchable and social in ways that newsprint never will be. Instead, the emphasis is now on the local, topical value a paper adds. I.e. “How well does your paper connect you to your own community, rather than to the outside world?”
But even that role is threatened by the emergence of various online alternatives. For example, here in Central Oregon, we have BendBlogs.com, an aggregation of local blogs. Is it a word-for-word replacement for the journalism of the Bulletin’s reporters? No, but it’s no less interesting. Local bloggers are not professional journalists, but what they lack in training and grammar is often more than made up for in enthusiasm and insight.
For local events and activities, many pubs, theaters, and venues host their own calendars, but there’s also hackbend.com which aggregates much of this content as part of covering the Bend “scene”. Hackbend.com is not a complete replacement for the activities and events section of the paper, but if you look at how open and social it is (Jon Abernathy, the site’s owner, will publish any announcements people submit, and the site has both RSS and Twitter feeds, making it easy to add to your favorite web portal or mobile device) it’s not hard to imagine this becoming a must-have resource for Bend residents.
Finally, if you’re feeling spunky and want to drink from the firehouse of local news and gossip, there’s always a Twitter search like this one [tweets from people within 50 miles of Bend]. Again, not an apples-to-apples replacement for anything the paper offers, but that’s because it’s from a content source unlike anything that’s ever existed. As a news stream, it is frenetic and chaotic in a way that traditionalists scoff at. But look beyond that, scan the grist and chaff of our local residents’ daily lives, and you’ll discover a community zeitgeist that is fascinating.
Thus, our local newspaper has stiff competition from the online world. Nor is this unique to Bend; Local papers everywhere are treading water, staying afloat, but in danger of going under as their relevance wanes as the waves of online innovation erode their audience and more importantly their revenue. This situation isn’t helped by the coming generation of network-enabled devices. Connect a Kindle or the recently rumored Apple netbook to the online content I mention above and the whole ink on dead tree thing, starts to look a bit dilapidated.
So just what does the future hold for local papers? For the Bulletin? ‘Hard to say. But if they are to survive, it’s clear their online presence will be a vital part of that survival. Which brings us to the Bulletin’s online site. The online edition of the Bulletin is polished and professional looking, but click around a bit and you’ll soon realize that there’s something missing. For example, a quick look at the 12 “Feature” articles that appeared on a day in March shows a total of ~650 page views. Is that good or bad for a potential local audience of ~120,000 people? That depends, I suppose, but given that those page views are probably only generating $10-$20 in total ad revenue (assuming an RPM of $20), I doubt the Bulletin execs are satisfied.
But what is most disconcerting, one might even say, “eerie”, to a modern web user, is the number of comments on those articles: a giant goose egg. Zero comments. None. It feels like a sci-fi movie where you walk out your front door and notice all your neighbors have disappeared. There is an astonishing lack of community in what should be a thriving community forum.
The primary reason for this is the Bulletin’s subscription model. Much of the content is inaccessible unless you have an online subscription with them ($8/month). Their rational for charging for access is simple (from the Bulletin’s FAQ):
News and information is valuable and expensive to produce. Publishing local news to our Web site involves considerable additional investment in staff, licensing, software and hardware.
But this reasoning is critically flawed. The “valuable and expensive” part of this equation is the overhead the Bulletin has in producing news and information - the staff journalists, printing presses, and delivery network they employ – not the news and information itself. As we’ve seen, there are free alternatives to nearly everything the Bulletin is trying to sell.
But where the Bulletin is really stumbling is in failing to realize that the main value online content has is not as something to read, but as something to share or discuss. Many of their readers only turn to the online edition after they’ve read the paper over breakfast and coffee, and found something noteworthy. These readers, as modern web users, expect to be able to discuss content with other people, and they expect to be able to link to it in an email, or on Twitter, or in a blog post. But these activities don’t make any sense with content that’s behind a subscription wall. “Why bother sending a link to a non-subscriber? Why bother commenting when there aren’t enough readers to generate a discussion?”
The Bulletin’s subscription model has been tried numerous times by other papers, nearly all of whom have since realized there is more value in having content that is freely available. That “more value” usually takes the form of advertising revenue that comes from having a larger audience, but would this work for the Bulletin? It’s hard to say. Based on the meager data at hand, and taking a complete swag at the numbers, they would probably have to increase their traffic by 50-100x to generate significant advertising revenue. That’s a daunting task, considering how small the local audience for this content is.
What is abundantly clear is that much of the Bulletin’s current site is syndicated content from Reuters, Associated Press, ESPN, Weather Central, Inc, etc.; content that is readily available from 100′s of other sources. If the Bulletin is to survive, it will have to establish itself as an online resource for our community, and appeal to the emerging generation of web-savvy readers. Doing this will not be easy, in spite of how prominent a role the print version of the paper plays in our community. There is already compelling competition in this space, being produced by people who “get it”, and don’t need to make money off their readers.
I imagine that’s a pretty sobering thought for the Bend Bulletin journalists and staff and the people in charge of their payroll.
Very well stated, Robert. As someone who has done some freelance writing for the Bulletin in the past, I have to agree with you about the need for the Bulletin to become an active community forum. So many of us who are active online want to support our local paper and their advertisers, but become quite frustrated when we can’t share any of the content that would drive targeted viewers back to website. The Bulletin seems to miss the whole point. I pay my $11 a month too, but want to share content with people from all over the world who may be interested in Bend and local businesses for various reasons. But, I can’t!
it’s Emperor, not Emporer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor
Great post Robert. It’s very clear that, at least currently, the big problems for newspapers have been in major cities but have heard through the grapevine that even our Bulletin is struggling a touch in these times.
Of course, with the AP now taking shots at Google News, it’s becoming, more and more, a ‘blame the Internet’ scenario and less to do with finding a legitimate way to embrace the web.
As far as the subscriber model – there is much talk of enacting that across the web. Content may still be king, but there is no going back at this point – you can’t charge for something people have been getting for free for, literally, years. It won’t work for the Bulletin or for the NY Times. To survive, newspapers need to find a way to monetize that free content (hint: advertising) and streamline their staffing.
And the reality is, as much as I love the feel of that newspaper in my hand, we’re probably reaching the end of the actual paper era. It’s practicality is flagging, and flagging quickly.
TIP: If there’s an article behind the Bulletin’s “paywall” that sounds interesting, just Google the first sentence. Usually it’s syndicated content that is available for free elsewhere.
They need to stop asking how to fix their problem and create the new model. First news agency to do it will be very successful. Look at the debacle that AP is getting itself into by policing all media for copyright infringement. http://tiny.cc/31yl5
This is even funnier… http://www.businessinsider.com/not-beating-google-news-an-ap-news-aggregator-with-no-blogs-on-it-2009-4
@Bob: Duly noted (and corrected, thx!)
@Jen: Unfortunately much of the content I’ve wanted to share is written by Bulletin journalists or, even more frustrating, by me. I can’t tell you how annoying it is to see the Bulletin charging for access to Opinion pieces I’ve sent in and that they’ve published. Nowadays, the whole op-ed section of the paper just feels like a really sh*tty comment wall that takes forever for comments to appear.
@Devin/Tim: I wish I had an answer for the Bulletin, but it sure looks like local papers are in a no-win situation. Ad-revenue would appear to be the best bet for staying profitable, but with a limited community size like Central Oregon… I dunno. 100-200K people just isn’t that many eyeballs when you’re trying to generating ad clicks. Worse, it’s expensive for the Bulletin to generate content. Even if they eliminate their other overhead (printing, distribution, etc.) they still have to pay staff journalists to generate content that other sources are creating for free and, in many cases, doing a better job of it. I’ll humbly point to this very blog as an example of that when it comes to “local technology”.
Robert,
Clay Shirkey seems to have summed things up as neatly as he always does:
http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking-the-unthinkable/
News is fungible. Journalism will be inevitably be separated from publishing and distribution. The current business model of newspapers is dead.
The Bulletin doesn’t know it yet, but it has contracted the same fatal disease as every other newspaper. If the NY Times can’t escape, surely the Bulletin isn’t immune, despite John Costa’s repeated assertions that our local paper is healthier than others. I’ll subscribe until it goes out of print, but I don’t really get much of my daily news fix from the Bulletin any more.
The Source also weighed in on this topic. Not terribly groundbreaking observations but the comments made it more interesting
http://www.tsweekly.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4044
And that opening has left your truly to run (some times babysit, other times with a whip and chair) one of, if not the most active online communities in Central Oregon.
I’m not naive enough to think The Bulletin (where I worked 9 years, before 5 years doing a fun, unique job at Bend.com) won’t try to move into the social space.
Tech issues have, to this point, kept us from doing that onerous thing of requiring real names, e-mail addresses etc. But much of our best (and, yes, worst) comments come from what I call ‘the open mic in a room without lights.’ It can be fascinating (and aggravating, etc.;)
@Ric: thx for the link – the comments definitely make that article worth the read.
FWIW, I find myself siding with you on the argument of whether or not newspapers provide unique value when it comes to investigative journalism. The power of the mob (bloggers) reaches much farther, is much harder to suppress, and more likely to bring interesting stories to light than any single corporation (newspaper).
Actually blogging is to journalism what opensource is to software. And opensource software is having a very similar effect on traditional software companies that blogging is having on newspapers. And I don’t see anyone bemoaning the decline of companies like MSFT, Oracle, or Sun Microsystems… well, other than those companies themselves.
Ric,
I wonder what the Source will do when the Bulletin folds. It seems they complain weekly about the poor job the Bulletin does reporting objective news. What will happen when the Source is the only print media left in town? It could happen.
All,
I have not subscribed to a newspaper for 8 years. The twenty years prior; one, usually two newspapers arrived daily. Now, I read the websites of 4 newspapers to keep up on the local events of where I have lived before. No way would I pay money for the print version.
I have whined for many years about the pay feature of the Bulletin. The only other paper I know of that still charges money for access is the Wall Street Journal. (I’m sure there are others). Is the on-line Bulletin equal to the price of the on-line Journal, not bloody likely.
One of the papers I read daily is the Eugene Register Guard. Everything you can read in the print version, you can read on-line; exception being coupons and print advertisements. This is a good deal for me, but I’m not sure how long the Register Guard can hang on. They recently reported losses up to $5,000,000 last year. I’m pretty sure no mid size daily paper can survive an extended period with that type of financial loss. Is the Bulletin in similar shape?
Blogs have there place, but the annonymity of the posters still leaves a big hole in credibility. I often hear people repeat things they saw on the web as fact, without any corroboration or critical thought to the message. “I saw it on the computer, it must be true”
I notice that our very own Mark Turner is also weighing in on this topic at the Open Source Bridge,
http://opensourcebridge.org/proposals/79
If folks are interested, I heard Jen may be organizing a carpool
@Barney Lerten: Forgive my ignorance, but which community are you referring to when you say, “most active online communities”?
@Robert Kieffer
Gee, I thought the link to my name would be clear I was talking about the article comment system at KTVZ.COM. Sorry about that. We plan to launch a more open-ended (but perhaps a BIT less insanely free-wheeling) High Desert Forum, for folks who already are site regulars to talk about things beyond a news article, and to post photos, videos etc., using KickApps. (I’m no tech, but I work with some pretty good Web folk;-)
@Barney Lerten
Thanks for clarifying. I have to confess that today is the first time I’ve visited the ktvz.com site. I’m sorry to say that local television plays even less of a role in my life than the paper does, thus your website never really showed up on my radar. (As a long-time TiVo fan-boy, I’ve lost my tolerance for news programs’ chronic, “stay tuned for details after the commercial break” ploy.)
That said, it does appear that ktvz.com is doing a much better job of providing a social venue for Central Oregonians than the Bulletin. It’s also glaringly obvious that the two sites are competing for exactly the same audience… something I completely and inexcusably failed to address in my post. Talk about an oversight!
One does wonder about the similarities between television and newspapers and the threat new media poses. Both are high-overhead, high-cost undertakings, with a lot of content that is redundant with what’s now online. Thoughts?
@Robert Kieffer
After ALL those promos we’ve done over the years, our Website didn’t appear on your radar? Scary! (FYI, we also now have Twitter feed and Facebook page for the station.)
I think we benefit from the paper’s pay wall in terms of online comments.
As for the threat from new media to TV, it is similar but different from newspapers – after all, broadcasters have depended solely on advertisers, not subscribers, since they started.
That said, the financial models are in a state of flux (you could say chaos, crisis) for us as well – in large part because, of course, broadcasters now can provide programming direct to the public, not just through their network affiliates. Tricky situation, and not one I’m about to claim to have the answer for.
Our ‘delivery trucks’ are our transmitters, and the whole switch to both digital and high-definition is pricey indeed. The trick for everyone is to find an acceptable way to make adequate revenue on the Web to still provide good journalism. No one claims to have that answer, but that doesn’t mean we’re not looking, and trying new things along the way.