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Why I Don’t Miss Being a Reporter

By Mark Evans in Media 1 Comment Tags: , , ,

According to a new CNW study, 52% of bloggers now see themselves as journalists, compared with 33% in 2008.

You can count me among the 52% because in many respects I don’t see much of a difference between what I do now when writing blog posts, and what I did when I was a newspaper technology reporter with the Globe & Mail, National Post and Bloomberg News.

These days, I write stories that interest me and get to talk with all kinds of cool people. For example, I wanted to do a blog post on Prezi.com, the new presentation tool being used by a growing number of people at conferences these days. So, I sent an e-mail the CEO, and within a couple of days, I had done an interview and published a blog post.

The ability to “report” is one of the reasons why I don’t miss newspaper journalism. In many respects, I can eat my cake and have it too. With blogging as a user-friendly and popular writing vehicle, I still get to write and report about what I want, and have a modest audience.

This is a contrast to 2000 when I left journalism to co-found Blanketware, a natural language search start-up. It was really before blogging became popular so I missed writing and reporting. In many respects, it meant I had one foot in the start-up world and another still in journalism. For an entrepreneur, this is not a good place to be.

Today, I see myself as an active and engaged member of Canada’s high-tech journalism landscape. It’s not something that makes me any money directly but it’s definitely something I enjoy.


Apparently, People Will Pay for Online Content

By Mark Evans in Media 2 Comments Tags: , , , ,

There’s a lot of chatter about a Forrester Research report suggesting that 80% of Internet users in North America won’t pay for online newspaper and magazine content. This bolsters the contention that pay-to-play within the online content world is a non-starter.

But what if you flip the Forrester report upside down, and consider the fact 20% of North American Internet users are willing to pay for content. That’s a fairly encouraging number in the wake of the widespread belief that online content should be free.

The obvious question is what kind of content will people pay to read. My sense is that high-profile brands such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Financial Times, Wall St. Journal, the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, et al could attract a significant number of customers because their content is deemed to have value – and not seen as a commodity.

Personally, I’d pay $5 or $10 a month to have full access – Web, mobile – to the New York Times. Heck, I’d probably pay $5/month just to read the New York Times Sunday Magazine.

Maybe my belief in the viability of the pay wall is off the mark but I do believe there is content worth paying to access, and I believe there are many people willing to pay for it.

For more, check out this blog post on ReadWriteWeb by Frederic Lardinois.


Rupert Murdoch: The Digital Don Quixote?

By Mark Evans in Media No Comments Tags: , , , ,

It has been documented to death that the business of journalism is broken but no one has come up with a widely-embraced killer idea to save it.

The exception, however, is News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch who has been leading the charge recently about introducing paywalls – something already done at the Wall St. Journal.

Now, Murdoch has raised the idea of not letting News Corp.’s Web sites be indexed by Google. In an interview with Sky News political editor David Speers, Murdoch suggests that while Google drives a lot of traffic to News Corp. sites, he’d rather have fewer people visiting but have those people pay for content.

“They shouldn’t have had it free all the time. I think we’ve been asleep,” he said after Speers asked him about the fact free online content has been around for years. “It costs us a lot of moeny to put together good newspapers and good content. [Consumers] are very happy to buy a newspaper, and I think when they read it elsewhere, they are going to have to pay.”

There are two schools of thought about Murdoch’s thoughts: He’s either one of the few people bold enough – and powerful enough – in the newspaper business to start charging people for content, or he’s a digital Don Quixote, tilting at windmills – and Google – in a chivalrous but misguided mission to bring fiscal sanity back to the newspaper business.

As someone who increasingly sees paywalls as the only plausible way for newspapers to generate enough revenue to stay relevant and viable, I admire Murdoch for embracing a tactic that many people considered to be undoable.

Like Quixote, Murdoch’s quest may bring him great melancholy and test his faith but he appears to be a man on mission.

Update: Corey Doctorow rips into Murdoch, suggesting Murdoch is lying about his threat to stop Google from indexing News Corp. sites.


Are Newspaper Paywalls Possible? Maybe.

By Mark Evans in Media 4 Comments Tags: , , , ,

I finally got around to reading David Simon’s essay in the Columbia Journalism Review about how newspapers, particularly the New York Times and Washington Post, need to erect paywalls to ensure their financial viability. (Note: It’s somewhat ironic that the essay available for free online.)

Simon’s argument isn’t new but it does put the spotlight on whether newspapers can survive if they can’t figure out a way to generate significant revenue from the Web.

As important is the whether newspapers can continue to offer content that people will pay to read – be online or off-line – if industry conditions continue to shrink newsrooms and the quality of the people working in them.

While I love the idea of reading the NYT, The Guardian, The New Yorker and BusinessWeek for free, I also recognize it’s a take-and-no-give proposition. I read great content but don’t pay for it because it’s not required.

But – and I’m probably in the minority – I would be willing to pay if it meant getting access to high-quality content that was behind a paywall. For example, I would pay $5 to $10/month for the NYT, $5 for an online Globe & Mail subscription and $5 for BusinessWeek. That’s $15 to $20 that I’m not paying today – not a lot of money but hardly insignificant in the scheme of things.

Perhaps the most interesting angle to Simon’s essay is how TV has evolved from free to fee with the rise of speciality channels. In the process, consumers are paying $50 to $150/month for cable or satellite service.

How did that happen? How did TV manage to drag consumers to a paid product when a free product was available. Simon suggests initially it was content not available from broadcasters such as all-day sports and weather. In time, he said speciality channels have thrived because the content got better.

The question is whether are parallels to the newspaper business? Can newspapers convince people to pay for high-quality content that’s not available elsewhere? For newspapers such as the NYT and the Guardian, the answer is probably “yes”. For local newspapers such as the Toronto Star, it’s possible, although they need to get a lot more local to enhance their “value”.

Earlier this week at TEDxTO, Mathew Ingram argued Old Media (aka newspapers) needs to evolve, rather than be saved. and that newspapers need to engage with readers rather than just filter and broadcast.

These are certainly valid arguments but the challenge – and problem – is people such as Mathew need to be running newspapers because they “get” the Web and its opportunities. Of course, it would have better if people such as Mathew had been running newspapers five years ago.

As for whether paywalls can happen, ]Simons is right that everyone has to jump on the bandwagon at the same time if the concept can succeed. Someone has to make the first move because no one is going to leap out of the trenches to fight the good fight if it means doing it alone.

My take is the person to lead the charge is Rupert Murdoch, rather than the NYT or Washington Post. Murdoch is enough of a rebel with enough of a global media empire to make it happen, and open the floodgates for others to follow.

One final thought: While newspapers have embraced “free”, it’s been puzzling why magazines have followed suit given the kind of content they produce. If any media should be leveraging paywalls, it is magazines.

More: The San Jose Mercury’s Mike Cassidy has a column talking about the newspaper’s role – as well as the fact the number reporters working for it has dropped to 125 from 400.


Pay-Per-Play Newspapers Coming Soon

By Mark Evans in Media No Comments Tags: , , , , ,

Maybe I’m alone in the woods but it seems like it’s only a matter of time before newspapers – at least world-class newspapers – start charging for more of their content.

Case in point is the Financial Times, which plans to introduce a pay-per-view system for online content next summer, while exploring whether FT.com content should stay free. (The Guardian has more details on how the FT’s subscription model could evolve.)

It’s becoming obvious – at least to me – the online pendulum is swinging away from free. It may not swing all the way back to paid, but the free buffet is going to over soon because newspaper owners such as Rupert Murdoch have realized their investments aren’t viable under the current free system.

That said, not all newspapers are going to be able to charge for content, and newspapers will only be able to charge for certain content.

The newspapers that could implement pay-per-play would the FT, Wall St. Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, the Guardian and Telegraph.

And the chances of fee rather than free being successful would be enhanced if they climbed on the bandwagon at the same time.

Would you pay for online newspaper content, particularly if it was columns, features and in-depth stories?


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