If the Journalism Business Fails, Who Pays for Journalism?
You can't open a newspaper—or read a newsmagazine website—these days without seeing a report wondering if X, Y or Z "can save journalism." Maybe that's the wrong question.
Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that nothing saves journalism. "Journalism," that is, as a profession and as currently constructed: a full-time job paid for by newsgathering entities through a combination of subscriptions and advertising.
[Update: Some commenters at Romenesko argue this is a narrow definition of journalism. Agreed. That's the point. It is the narrow definition implicit in all those articles about "Will _____ save journalism?" But. However you do define journalism—a term I generally hate anyway but have no substitute coinage for—it will still be practiced by human beings who need to pay rent and purchase food. Where will they get that money? And thus, how will the activity of journalism be enabled, if not by the presently-constituated profession of "journalism"? Especially if "unnamed model that someone else will invent later" is not an allowable answer? That's the question of this post.]
Let's assume—with maybe a rare few exceptions—that just goes away. Let's assume that you can improve journalism as much as you want, take advantage of the possibilities of new media as much as you want, but in general, people still simply do not want to pay for it, and it still remains worth far less to advertisers than it used to be. Let's assume newspapers fold en masse, and going online-only does not save enough money to pay people to do journalism as their chief source of income. That's gone.
What replaces it? And by that, I mean, who pays for what replaces it?
Here are a few thoughts. This is entirely thinking out loud. I'm not endorsing or decrying any of the below options. I'm not saying they would be as good as, better than, or worse than, what we have now. But anybody who cares about journalism should at least be taking a cold-eyed, honest look at them, and thinking about what they would mean:
* Day jobs. Think of this as the literary-fiction / poetry model. A lucky few, best-selling creative writers right now are able to support themselves through their work. The rest work in other fields, teach in MFA programs (basically support programs for authors) or rely on other external sources of support. (William Carlos Williams was a doctor; Wallace Stevens sold insurance.) Those who stick with it do it because they're passionate, but they don't expect ever to make a living at it. If journalism is not a revenue producer, much of it could become like freelancing—but freelancing you can't live off of.
* Crowdsourcing. This is a variation on the "day job" possibility, except that rather than a single person producing journalism "on spec," some kinds of news are drawn from amateur reports—Twitter, Flickr, etc., etc.—and gathered/moderated/curated/encouraged by editors, "community managers" or what have you. (The upshot of both this and the "day job" model might be that you may make a living at filtering or managing content, but not so much by creating it—at least, not directly, not in the old-fashioned sense.)
* Interested parties. If for-profit companies can't make a business out of reporting on issues, non-for-profits may hire more people to write and blog on their particular areas of policy interest. Matt Yglesias—who himself blogs politics for the Center for American Progress thinktank Center for American Progress Action Fund—wrote about this possibility last week. Tim Cavanaugh of Reason magazine argues that public-relations professionals could start doing more of the work of investigative reporters.
* Nonprofit foundations. There's increasing talk about trying to run news institutions funded, NPR-style, by donations or deep-pocketed sugar daddies. In practice, of course, this could be just another variation on "interested parties," above, depending how many people are willing to spend a lot of money on journalism with no agenda. (Insert discussion about whether there is such a thing here.)
* Product placements and sponsorships. Last week we saw Starbucks paying eight figures to "brew" MSNBC's Morning Joe. Former CNN reporter Miles O'Brien is seeking aerospace companies to sponsor his online reporting about aviation, according to the Washington Post. Meanwhile, the Daily Beast and other websites are using branded content or "sponsored stories."
* The business is the news outlet. But why bother contracting the work out by "sponsoring" other people's news organizations? If journalism increasingly does not work as a standalone business entity, could it be a loss leader for a business that makes money by selling stuff? Business, of course, already produce a lot of what could be called "service journalism" online. If the market can't support, say, standalone parenting magazines or websites, might Proctor & Gamble—which sells a lot of stuff to parents—want to produce its own?
* The news outlet is the business. One of my favorite local-news outlets in Brooklyn is Brownstoner, which covers the borough's events, news and real-estate market with a granularity the New York Times can't. As a business, it doesn't just rely on standard advertising; its founder is a principal in Brooklyn Flea, a popular and growing antiques, crafts, etc. market in Fort Greene. If journalism itself doesn't pay for journalism, will it become a branding tool to establish businesses that sell things people will pay for?
* Experts become journalists, instead of vice versa. We already have examples in mainstream journalism of doctors, lawyers and other professionals developing second careers as reporters and analysts on their own fields. (Sanjay Gupta and Jeffrey Toobin, for instance.) If beat reporting dwindles as a way to make a living, this could become the norm. Already, the Huffington Post relies heavily on free blogs by people—authors and other authorities—using them as a calling card to build their brands in other fields.
[Update: Via Twitter, Josh Young offers his idea—and Mitch Ratcliffe's—of paying for someone's work in exchange for greater access to and interaction with the journalist. See also Firedoglake's effort to raise contributions to fund Marcy Wheeler's investigative reporting.]
I guess all these ideas boil down to one principle: if journalism—reporting, analysis, communicating, whatever you want to call it—takes time, then someone will have to either pay for or donate that time. Any other thoughts? What do we gain from these possibilities? What do we lose?
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1
What if those organizations that absolutely cannot do without newspapers were to get together to help pay for their reporting and editing?
That is, broadcasters: television and radio, local and national, commercial and public, broadcast and cable. Also web sites.
Imagine the amount of dead air (and spectrum) each day without reporting based on newspapers -- in particular the New York Times. We are talking about a major crisis here.
It would be like Wal-Mart without cheap Chinese imports (or Huffington Post, the ego/informational equivalent).
Book-flogging features cannot be a total substitute for in-depth reporting.
Mark I. Pinsky -
2
Why would broadcasters not just skeeve from blogs the way they skeeve from the paper? Or just broadcast directly from the press release? There are plenty of interested parties who want access to the bully pulpit of broadcast.
You say they can't be a substitute...but why not, exactly? Because the "important" news would not be being reported? If it's easier to make the book flogging look important than to spend money on having professionals engage in the uncertain endeavor of digging up important information, why not do that? Punditry is cheap, and that's why the cable news is filled with pundits. Further, in a world where the smallest of blogs can fly round the world with a story if it gets picked up by a big source, maybe you can let the amateurs ferret away at their pet obsessions and only tap them for commentary on the big networks when one of them roots around and pops up a general interest truffle --- after all, if there's tens of thousands of obsessives out there, and I think we can posit that there are, then you ought to be able to ensure a steady supply. It would be just as easy now to dig up a pilot-blogger to opine on something like Sully's landing than to find an aviation reporter...and there may be room for a scaled down trade press.
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3
I think that its interesting in that this "thinking out loud" you ignored the possibility of greater government funding. Even given the current state of the news industry -- in a world seemingly open to any and all possibilities-- I find it interesting that you completely ignored the funding model embraced by large chunks of the rest of the world, including most Western democracies.
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4
@all: For the purposes of this post I wanted to avoid the question of what SHOULD happen--which there is no shortage of opinion on--and think about what is likely to happen, extrapolating current trends. I think assessing that situation, in cold blood, is a prerequisite to talking about what SHOULD happen. Which is another blog post entirely, or posts, or an entire book.
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To that end, I wanted to follow a couple rules: (1) Just because I think something should happen does not mean it is likely to; (2) just because I think something should not happen does not mean it will not. (Corollary: better journalism does not automatically in itself equal more revenue. You need to show how it will, referencing rules #1 and #2.)
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chanders is right that I believe that, extrapolating present conditions, government funding of the press at large by the government of the United States of America is unlikely in the extreme. Far less likely, I would say, than the possibilities I describe above. But I don't know it for a certainty. If someone wants to make the case for why it is, in fact, likely, go ahead--I'd love to hear the argument. If you want to say it is unlikely but that people should attempt to make it more likely by arguing for it--go for it.
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And if someone wants to argue that the very premise of this post is irresponsible--that by describing these conditions rather than arguing them, I am reifying and perpetuating them, etc.--fine. Obviously by having written this post I disagree with you. I think that looking at scenarios and assessing how likely they are is one kind of conversation, among many, we need to be having. -
5
As I suggested above in passing, blogs -- like broadcasters -- would produce very little worth skeeving without the raw material of daily journalism, the base of the information food chain. MP
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5.1
Journalists are the experts that have access to areas and people few have the privilege or honor of achieving. Professional journalist will always be needed and hopefully paid through newspapers and other sources because they studied and applied themselves colloquially. I don't read anything, but professional works, because of the accuracy. However, that goes to say about publishers only publishing what they want us to hear, which is the wherefore of a new “breed” of reporting. Transparency is the catch phrase of the current economic conversation which has a great deal to do with publishers, so if they want people to buy their papers and such they better start working for the greater good in these aspects by calling out the bad legislation louder and clearer. The infamous gag order should be abolished, an inherent wall detaining the illusive stream of vital information on important topics that will create greater transparency.
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6
I think the model will largely move to a combination of Interested Parties/Nonprofit foundations, with specific market-focused former-TV big names (like your Miles O'Brien example) having their blogs sponsored by their market leader (someone like a Lockheed-Martin).
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What we lose are the obvious:
1) Any sense of neutrality and impartiality. The blogiverse will quickly bifucrate into left & right expert opinions, and all reporting will be tinged with those views.
Since you brought up the aerospace mention, I'll point out a past example: "reporting" on the various pain-inducement rays the military is developing. Your HuffPost military expert would exclaim how our taxpayer dollars are being spent to develop new ways to hurt people, while your Townhall expert would exclaim that hurting people is an art mankind learned millennia ago, and grumble about the dollars we are wasting on "PR" weapons.
2) The Scoop. With drastically less traditional reporters out there, hunting for a scoop isn't time or cost-effective. Instead it will be journalism by PR release, stock report, and fishing for leads from other bloggers. If anything, a reporter's closest fan will be his left/right archenemy... who is watching 24/7 to see what the other guy is publishing, and then making the lightning-fast counter-article attacking any (viewed or real) fallacies in the original article.
3) Broadcast news. Since all reporting is now done with someone else's dime, reporters (and their patrons) will demand significant concessions before allowing their information to be rebroadcast on the air - the biggest blog reporters will demand air time, website mentions, etc. And since every reporter will be partisan (see point one), in the interest of balance, that means that their archenemy will also be scheduled on the show (further diminishing the value of a scoop)... -
7
Tom Jefferson or not, who needs newspapers or the creatures who barely make a living writing for newspapers? This blog suggests things to replace newspapers & those who write for papers. The suggestions are valid for newspapers & those who write for papers have always engaged in these practices.
It's obvious that the news business is changing rapidly. Somebody may even find a way of making money selling news.
Writing for newspapers isn't a skilled occupation. You can learn it on the job in a week or less. Call your self a journalist or reporter if you want to put on airs. The pay is still low.
If you get paid well & have a steady gig writing for a blute, resist calling yourself a professional. If your paper folds or you get down-sized out of your gig; reality bites you in an ankle to tell you that you are in a low skilled, quickly learned, poorly paid, unskilled occupation.
If you get offerd a job doing PR, take it. PR pays much better than working for a paper. Often you also associate with more affluent & skilled people who read & write at at least a 10th grade level. Many of your new associates will have been graduated from a 4 year college or university. If you can get into PR, do it. -
8
"As I suggested above in passing, blogs -- like broadcasters -- would produce very little worth skeeving without the raw material of daily journalism, the base of the information food chain."
I don't necessarily see that that's the case. Journalists are middlemen; they collect information from primary sources and broadcast it to the general public. If the primary sources can broadcast themselves, how is the middleman necessary? A lot of people think of blogs purely as political punditry, but there's a lot more out there than that --- I do not think there was a business journalist that was as expert on the mortgage industry as Tanta of calculated risk. Lots of the people journalists would formally seek out to provide expert analysis now blog themselves; personally, I can't seem to escape Simon Johnson. I can think of those two off the top of my head, there's plenty others.
"If you get offerd a job doing PR, take it. PR pays much better than working for a paper. Often you also associate with more affluent & skilled people who read & write at at least a 10th grade level. Many of your new associates will have been graduated from a 4 year college or university. If you can get into PR, do it."
You charm me, sir.
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9
Hmmm, I must be missing something here. If your question is, What will happen to journalism if no one is paid to do it, I guess you've laid out some possible scenarios. But it seems like a red herring, right? Why would that happen?
There are a number of blogs and web-only sites that pay journalists pretty well right now. In fact, I know a couple of people who make more money writing f/t for blogs than they would at, well, some of the most respected print publications in the world. This will only be more common, not less as those respected print publications go away.
So... Say print dies out completely. Twitter or something like it will provide the "reflex news," answering breaking news questions like, "Why am I sitting in a traffic jam on the LIE?" No money for the writer there, but so what? Vertical sites, such as TechCrunch and Talking Points, will address the more analytical stuff, picking up more of the reportorial, lift-a-phone-and-call-someone stuff. And they will continue to make money $$$ fast. Already there are verticals that have begun specializing on some of newspapers' bread-and-butter beats, such as local crime reporting.
At the same time, CPMs will increase, Web advertising will get smarter and new e-reading devices--divorced from the web, aimed at deep, back-brain reading--will restore subscription revenue, and layer on better advertising revenue.
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10
My sense is that the number of journalists on the web making decent salaries and benefits probably number in the dozens, compared to the thousands put out of print work, or soon to be put out of print work. The numbers will never catch up; at best, the web will provide such slots in the hundreds, and I'm doubtful.
My advice to those interested in starting a career in journalism? Choose rich, indulgent parents, or marry a legal or medical professional.
The karaoke journalists, especially the knowledgeable ones who do it as a hobby, can of course be helpful.
I now write books, where there is at least an equity participation -- the more books I sell, the more money I make. At least until the web's sense of entitlement takes over, and people expect them to be free as well.
We'll see how well broadcasters do as newspaper copy evaporates; many have long ago outsourced their cerebral cortexes (and news agendas) to the Times.
As for that other guy, the anonymous one with spelling and grammer issues, dancing on our graves, I am reminded of Jon Lovitz in that SNL sketch from 1988: "I can't believe I'm losing to this guy!" MP -
11
I think you have to look at information like a commodity being traded in a market. Before the internet the cost of publishing and distributing information was high, competition was relatively low, and a high premium could be placed on information. Now, anyone with a cellphone can disseminate information instantly to millions, competition is high and the average person is no longer willing to pay the old premiums put on information. We're in a transitional time, no doubt made worse by economic conditions, where the old payment models are being tested and failing.
As to what payment models will end up taking over in the future, I don't think any single group of people will get to decide that (assuming the internet remains data neutral). Instead, capitalism will kick in and which ever models prove to be profitable will flourish. If I had to guess I would say we will end up with a system where the average person won't pay anything but an internet access fee to get their information, desiring nothing more than a custom aggregator of freely available information sources (a mix of most of the sources you have listed above would be my guess), contrasted with subscription/pay-per-issue specialized coverage for those willing to pay a premium for detailed, "objective" information on specific topics. Basically, I can't imagine a world without the Financial Times, but I can imagine one where it costs $19.99 an issue.
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12
Perhaps journalists can become private-eyes, snooping as they might have otherwise done for a paper or local TV station, but -- instead of reporting their findings to the public -- blackmail the miscreants for cash or prizes. Americans can barely be convinced to vote, let alone read or even pay for in-depth reporting. On the other hand, industrial polluters, politicians on the take, or shady developers probably would be only too happy to pay a little hush money to be the only readers of the report. And no editors need make the writer feel stupid for spelling and grammar errors.
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13
Another thought. Because the majority of Americans (1) can't be bothered to vote in local elections; (2) avoid "deep, back-brain reading" like broccoli; (3) couldn't pick Jeff Skilling out of a lineup; and (4) have little interest in tightening their belts figuratively or literally, we might assume that journalists will only return when the unchecked avarice and proliferate spending (a) tank the economy for good; (b) force international lenders to call in their chits; and (c) the Chinese press pliant wordsmiths into service of "The People's Daily: US Edition" to explain, simply, the party line. Time to brush up on our Mandarin.
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14
Last thought: Google buys the AP. Microsoft buy Reuters in a rear-guard action. A movie mogul or celebrity picks up The New York Times for a vanity press. And, for a last-ditch attempt at synergism, creates a single print publication called "PeopleTimeMoneyFortuneSI — powered by CNN."
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15
I have to repeat, and re-emphasize this point:
The dissemination of information is easy, fast and cheap and that has destroyed the busy model for old media. However, news gathering is not cheap and it's not easy. The market for news gathering is still there because, frankly, people don't have the time to do it themselves, whether or not they want to call themselves a blogger.
However, we are at an awkward time when the old model still exists even though it is probably broken beyond repair and whatever new model emerges for paying for news gatering -- and I strongly assert that there is a big market for it -- won't happen until the old model COMPLETELY fails. The existence of the old model, in my opinion, retards the creation of new ones.
Ask a consumer how he'll get his information in the future and he doesn't know. He's probably too busy reading his local paper's free website to think about it. And until the consumer is concerned about where he can go to get information he needs, then there is little motive for bold new business models.
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16
Unfortunately, whether one likes it or not, newspapers are subject to market forces, so other questions to ask is how much does journalism cost, and how much of it do we need? We'll always need field reporters but a problem I find with news providers is redundancy. I only need so many sources of the same news. It is primarily a zero sum industry to begin with. Journalism could help itself out by raising the barrier to entry and reducing incentives to enter the field. You might even get more pay out of it if you could convince journalists to stop regarding byline credits as a form of substitute compensation.
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17
[...] If the Journalism Business Fails, Who Pays for Journalism? [Time] [...]
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18
There are plenty of models to pay for journalism, some that resemble traditional advertising strategies, like what Coudal Partners is doing with The Deck network. Of course, their ads are targeted at certain audiences, not remnant fillers. Everyone seems to understand the idea of niche audiences with editorial content, but few seem to understand the idea that you can use that same targeted audience as a basis for ads. Here in Chicago, the Windy Citizen is pioneering real-time ads from its sponsors.
Of course, there are other models as well, some outlined above. But I don't think traditional advertising is dead yet, it's just waiting to be resurrected. We're looking at some of these models at the Chicago Media Future Conference. (chicagomediafuture.org).
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19
@Josh Q: "At the same time, CPMs will increase, Web advertising will get smarter and new e-reading devices... will restore subscription revenue..."
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I kind of want to give a one-word answer: Why?
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But to elaborate: yeah, maybe CPMs will increase. But it is not a given that they MUST; certainly online CPMs have so far been disappointing outlets in their ability to increase to compensate for lost print revenue. (Or, say for network TV, to compensate for on-air ads.) Online advertising MAY get smarter, but for some time both advertisers and publishers have had every incentive to get smarter, to target better--and yet, there is an awful lot of dumb advertising being served up, banner by banner. Are they just not hard up enough yet to be motivated to get smart? Because then I've got to wonder what it will take.
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As for the Kindle / magic Apple iTablet / what have you... maybe it will become a significant platform for subscription-based content. I don't know. (It falls under the "unnamed model that someone else will invent later" category.) Maybe it will be a silver bullet that funds content. But it, like print today, will still exist in a world where audiences can choose to save money and settle for free options online—maybe less satisfactory ones, maybe not, but hey, the price is right. If so, maybe you have a situation where e-readers can fund *some* of the infrastructure of knowledge-gathering but not all. And then you're, again, looking at some combination of the various alternatives I outline above, and probably others.
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As for your description of the professional-journalism world today... ah, I can only say I'm glad you know a better, more-highly-remunerated class of writer than I associate with. -
20
James,
Imagine a world where vendors give away Big Macs on every street corner. And somebody asks the question "How much would this Big Mac cost if it wasn't available for free so easily"
That's a moot question until the free Big Macs go away. And that's where tradtional journalism is right now. Because the WWW has made it so easy to get the product for free, the suppy-and-demand dynamic is compromised. Until the easily free content goes away (and I don't see how that happens without the profession that gathers the news goes away with it, or through some sort of deal like the music industry has done) than we cannot even begin to address the issue of how much electronic information is worth.
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21
Sorry for typos...hastily hammered out thoughts at work here...
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22
My guess is that either tech companies like Google will be forced to start creating their own content or that news companies will survive by developing their own proprietary technologies. That goes for any type of publishing eg journalism, music, movies, books, etc.
Up to this point, technology and content have pretty much developed apart from each other but his has to change if content creators and publishers want to get paid for their work. Up until this point tech companies have won out over content producers, profiteering off the content created by others.
I think in the future we will see more embeddable media that still gives the creator some control over their work and allows them to run ads against it. This is already happening with video (eg comedy central) but I think it will eventually extend to written content as well.
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23
"That's a moot question until the free Big Macs go away."
There is such a thing as the BBC. I read it everyday. If the NY Times wanted to charge me $2 a day to read them, I could switch over to using it and blogs entirely and not feel I was uninformed. Are there a ton of peeps like me? Not yet. But any attempt to force a cartel will immediately drive traffic to sites that remain free, and there will be world class sites that do that.
"You might even get more pay out of it if you could convince journalists to stop regarding byline credits as a form of substitute compensation."
I feel that this is completely backwards. What the internet had made possible is to allow the non-monetary benefits of the job to become accessible to anyone with a laptop.
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24
"My sense is that the number of journalists on the web making decent salaries and benefits probably number in the dozens..."
Hundreds of sports journalists make a living for the Scout and Rivals networks. They provide an information service that is exclusively on the web and users pay for 'premium' information. Why might this work or not work for 'real' journalism? Interestingly, sports reporters for the traditional media are far more likely to leach off these online sites than the other way around. -
25
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