Online life after newsprintocide

Only weeks ago we saw proof that the onset of the long-awaited newsprint death already may signify a new era’s dawn, as the U.S. Colorado online only InDenver.com rose — or is about to rise — from the ashes of The Rocky Mountain News. Examples are abundant, and seen even in the farthest corners of the world, such as here in Norway, where we’ve seen the first newspapers tumble already, alongside crumbling media corporations.

In a global perspective we even see “the Gray lady” — The New York Times — struggle to stay afloat. For a while it looked as if the NYT could avoid keeling over, after a substantial fund supply, which, obviously, didn’t last very long:

On February 19, 2009, The NYT Co. suspended its common share dividends (both classes of stock) completely, having already cut it by 74% to 6 cents per share in November, 2008.^[41] It was the first elimination of the dividend in four decades as a publicly traded company, and saved an additional $34 million per year.^[42] The NYT Co. laid off 100 employees on March 26, 2009 and cut salaries for the rest of 2009 by 5%.^[43]

— Wikipedia

As an example of later developments. I strongly suggest reading the entire Wikipedia chapter for a detailed explanation of the situation’s gravity. News has it that the NYT indeed is facing bankruptcy, once more, but is not alone.

Pay per view?

However, dwelling on the terrible state of newsprint is hardly very constructive. It’s time to look ahead, which, by the way, the patrons of the press try to do as we speak. One of the avenues explored by press executives around the world these days, is charging online readers money for news, by way of subscriptions or micropayments – a model tried out by several online dailies already, but hardly a viable one, unlike cable TV. There’s bound to be free alternatives, hijacking readers by the numbers.

All the same, we know that advertising alone is highly insufficient as a means to support large newsrooms. As demonstrated during the ongoing recession, advertisers back off when times are tough. Then again; are large newsrooms a prerequisite for good journalism? Not necessarily so.

As for micropayment, there may just be a compromise, as Steve Outing points out in this Editor & Publisher article:

[...] To start with, publishers have to get over the idea that they are going to get paid directly by the user. For the vast majority of a news publisher’s content, there can be no barriers before an article asking the user if he wants to pay a penny or a nickel, or buy a $2 monthly subscription, to read on.

The user must be given the option of whether to pay for a Web site’s content (by financially supporting the site), or read it for free. I’m betting this one will be a tough pill to swallow for many industry executives with traditional media mindsets, but it’s critical because it fits the culture, indeed the nature, of the Internet. Traditional micropayment schemes for online news content — “pay up or go elsewhere” — fight it, and thus are doomed to fail, in my view.

He may just have a point, but online news providers need to take a number of other factors into consideration, too.

Citizen versus old school journalism

We’ve seen several more or less successful alternatives popping up since the turn of the millennium. Quite a few of them based on user participation. And then there’s the bloggers, among whom quite a few advocate the press establishment’s demise, reckoning themselves the champions of future journalism.

I wonder.

But blogs and citizen journalism websites cannot be dismissed as a passing thing. We’d be ill advised to make that mistake. Is citizen journalism versus old school journalism the only vantage point? How about a citizen journalism and old school journalism symbiosis? It doesn’t necessarily have to mean full inclusion, but we’ve seen traditional online media thriving once allowing reprocitory trackbacks, as seen in services such as Twingly and Sphere. Both services that I personaly use (or abuse?) extensively.

Added value

Of course I ping these services in order to attract readers. You might even call it parasitism, but online newspapers who allow it actually offer added value to their readers, in terms of alternative angles, views and additional facts, even. Ignore this marvelous Internet trait, and you’re doomed as a publisher. Consider the very nature of the Internet: links and hypertext allowing users to navigate an ocean of facts. Restricting your users or readers to your own publication’s universe, is the safest way to ensure your users’ inevitable fatigue, prompting them to move on — to an open-ended alternative. In opening up, the newspapers make way for a vast network of blogs and other sites linking back, generating invaluable traffic only massive and all too costly advertising campaigns could otherwise produce.

Many online newspapers fail to see – or acknowledge – this potential:

Some commercial websites object to other sites making deep links into their content either because it bypasses advertising on their main pages, passes off their content as that of the linker or, like The Wall Street Journal, they charge users for permanently-valid links. Sometimes, deep linking has led to legal action such as in the 1997 case of Ticketmaster versus Microsoft, where Microsoft deep-linked to Ticketmaster’s site from its Sidewalk service. This case was settled when Microsoft and Ticketmaster arranged a licensing agreement. Ticketmaster later filed a similar case against Tickets.com, and the judge in this case ruled that such linking was legal as long as it was clear to whom the linked pages belonged .^[2] The court also concluded that URL’s themselves were not copyrightable, writing: “A URL is simply an address, open to the public, like the street address of a building, which, if known, can enable the user to reach the building. There is nothing sufficiently original to make the URL a copyrightable item, especially the way it is used. There appear to be no cases holding the URLs to be subject to copyright. On principle, they should not be.”

— Wikipedia

This kind of attitudes have lead Danish online journalists to introduce the Link manifesto:

First law: We link to the sources for the data we use in our journalistic products. If we have read, seen or heard important new information on an external site – for instance about companies, people or surveys – we will link to it.

Second law: We link directly and precisely to the information we use from external sites. In this way we provide proper service to our readers rather than just linking to the front page of the external site.

Third law: We are precise in our information about where a link leads to; about who has produced the information we link to and when. The readers should know where it takes them when they follow a link.

Fourth law: We recognise that an article consisting of precise links to information that represents different angles on an issue is a journalistic product.

Fifth law: We are open to inbound links to our own news sites because we want to be an integrated part of the web’s ecosystem

Sixth law: We aspire to making it easier to link directly to our articles.

— Via Kristine Lowe

Bearing these six laws in mind, you’ve come a long way in facilitating increased traffic, which, after all, is the chief factor, in the eyes of the advertisers on whom the newspapers so depend — and wish to attract.

The Internet enthusiasts’ MSM dislike

Most bloggers or journalists moving in blogging circles are familiar with the widespread near-hatred towards the mainstream media harboured by some of the most avid netizens, among whom some even have proclaimed Twitter the MSM’s successor – at least as provider of breaking news. Granted printnews was replaced as conveyor of breaking news many decades ago — by radio and TV. Which is not to say that printed news have been made obsolete altogether.

And surely, we’ve seen several incidents over the past few months, where Twitter has proven itself an excellent channel for distributing on-site reports, but expecting it to replace traditional news channels, may be just a little optimistic. As a collaborative tool, on the other hand, Twitter has potential, if not always. I asked my followers, among whom we find several media professionals, a very simple question, resulting in this (in reversed order):

1. 
   JarlePetterson is writing piece on newsprintocide and viable biz models for future web presence. Suggestions, relevant links much appreciated. #journalism 07 Apr 2009 from web
2. 
   JarlePetterson thought he’d use this as proof of Twitter’s unsurpassed strengths, but realises they may be overrated: http://tinyurl.com/djsovm #journalism 07 Apr 2009 from web

— this quote was brought to you by quoteurl

(Awkward silence)

Then again, even the Internet enthusiasts’ creed; information wants to be free, has its limitations, at least when business models are tossed into the equation. Had the question been a different one, the outcome may have been equally different. This particular attempt at demonstrating Twitter’s many useful purposes, however, failed. Lesson learned: If you ask people for business models, there’s always a chance they may have one.

Great expectations

Bloggers’ and citizen journalists’ anticipated dominion in the wake of newsprintocide, as I’ve decided to dub it, for want of better words, isn’t very likely to be seen, though – unless the mainstream media display an unbelievable level of misconduct in managing their future online presence. There are numerous reasons for this, among which we find these:

• The majority of private blogs are maintained for social purposes
• News readers — any kind of readers — expect a certain level of literacy in the material, which may be hard to come by in the blogosphere (alas, this increasingly also holds true among presumably educated journalists)
• There are limits to our craving for opinions — news reports require a journalistic methodology and format, with which bloggers in general are all too unfamiliar

Needless to say, the list could go on, but the facts remain: Professional journalists know journalism, while bloggers know what ever their professional trade may be. Luckily, though, we find unique voices among people of all trades, but it hardly suffices as a replacement for the mainstream media.

Basing future media on enthusiastic amateurs, would imply the acceptance of a significant drop in journalistic quality, even if it includes an intimacy and immediacy lacking in the mainstream media. Are the gung-ho Internet enthusiasts prepared to make do with technology for technology’s sake?

I’m afraid so.

But the newspapers would do well to embed the social media and their users, as external as well as internal partners, both out of respect to traffic generation and user-adapted content.

At any rate, newsprint is definitely in for a rocky ride this year — and for years to come, if, by then, it still exists. The online dailies, on the other hand, face a golden opportunity.

Please don’t waste it on old-school thinking.

On that note I think I’ll leave the stage to Jeff Jarvis: