I’m beginning to lose all faith in the future of American newspapers.
Last Thursday, in a not-so-secret secret meeting at an unnamed hotel near Chicago’s O’Hare airport, a couple of dozen gray-suited American newspaper executives -- including leading honchos from The New York Times, Hearst,
and McClatchy
-- held an emergency meeting to discuss the future of their industry.
So what was on the agenda? Fundamental restructuring of a 19th century mass media industry as a 21st century niche market? Rewriting the idea of static daily newspapers in the age of the real-time data stream? Ripping up their archaic paper product and going totally digital?
No, no, and no. Instead of long-term wisdom, the O’Hare meeting focused on short-term myopia. Unimaginatively entitled “Models for Monetizing Content,” this all-too-pedestrian meeting focused principally on an industry agreement to build walled gardens around newspapers’ much-cherished content, thereby establishing a “model” for “monetizing” said “content” through micropayments.
Now, the three most overused and misunderstood words in traditional Internet newspeak are “models,” “monetize,” and “content.” So when these three words are strung together into a cliche that becomes the subject of an emergency meeting of American newspaper honchos, then it’s clear that the future of American newspapers is dire.
So here’s my sub-140-character response to the grayest of America’s newspaper graysuits: Dudes, get real -- micropayments are a macro-error.
Instead of schlepping out to a nondescript corporate hotel near O’Hare, the insufficiently dangerous couple of dozen newspaper execs could have stayed at home, replaced their gray suits with some shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, put their feet up, popped open a beer, and read the highly descriptive new book by Kissinger Associates managing director Joshua Ramo: The Age of the Unthinkable.
Thinking the unthinkable is exactly what the graysuits are evidently incapable of doing. As Ramo argues so persuasively, we live in a revolutionary age where the only viable business strategy is to foment perpetual creative destruction. From
Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) to Hezbollah to Barack Obama, Ramo demonstrates, successful organizations and individuals never rest, continually reinventing themselves to suit our revolutionary environment.
A strategy of building walls around their online content and charging readers micropayments for access is, of course, the least unthinkable strategy in a revolutionary epoch where newspapers have become the highest-profile victims of the digital insurgency.
Revenue is, of course, critical for any business. But in an age where content has shifted from having an impersonal monetary value to an intimate, personalized, non-monetary value, imposing micropayments for content is nothing more than a band-aid solution to a life-threatening wound.
So the unspeakable is what the graysuits should have confronted themselves with last Thursday at the O’Hare hotel. They should have started with a fundamental reevaluation of their business, beginning by acknowledging the seismic shift in the nature of media in the digital age: The individual is replacing the institution as the dominant player -- the creator of value -- in media. This is true not only for the consumption side but also for the production side of the newspaper world.
What this means is that, in the digital age, newspapers like The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal are, like it or not, becoming aggregators of individual journalistic brands like Thomas Friedman or Peggy Noonan. And as the value of the Friedmans and the Noonans increases, we are seeing an equivalent decrease in the traditional institutional value of the newspaper.
The challenge for newspapers, therefore, is to emulate new media businesses like the Huffington Post
that are already pioneering this 21st century model of journalism. In contrast with traditional print newspapers, the Huffington Post, founded by a woman who is the epitome of a new-age journalistic brand, is merely an enabler -- a technological platform and distribution network for talent.
Could traditional newspapers retire gracefully into the background and mimic the Huffington Post as a partner to journalistic talent? If this sounds unthinkable to the graysuits of the traditional business, then it probably should have been front and center of their agenda at O’Hare last week.
The uncomfortable truth is that newspapers can only survive by blowing themselves up. Micro-solutions are for the micro-brained. In the chaotic disruption of the digital age, fortune favors the macro.
— Andrew Keen, Silicon Valley author, broadcaster, and entrepreneur, can be reached on Twitter at @ajkeen.
Its always easy to look back and critique these guys after the fact. But I think the train was there, just the newspapers never went to the train station. Look at the increase of informationi sharing over the internet. First micro websites (like geo cities), then blogs, WSJ made a pretty good play online compared to many others.
Nothing says that a newspaper couldn't have started exploring these online concepts. Develop a team of young 20 somethings who are eager to do something great and have them develop the next online information sharing mechanism. OR maybe purchase a few key blogs and use them as the new outlet, phasing off the hard paper, or use it as a loss leader for online.
I think the idea here is no one really did it so we're not sure of what it could be. I'd argue, if they made the right developments or acquired the right companies, the best would still be here with a strong online presence. Instead, a bunch of new innovators are growing, filling the void -- take this website, or consumerist, or huffingtonpost, etc....
It's tough to see a way of life and work shoved out of existence by the oncoming Internet train. Sure, the newspapers might have adapted. But I'm not sure they could have done much to change the inevitable demise of their print media.
I'd argue, though, that the automakers had far more opportunity to see the train coming. I'm not as sympathetic to the directors that not only ignored the signs pointing to the future, but willfully turned away from the path of opportunity.
Its interesting that newspapers and Detroit are one of the last bastions of a successful 1940's type economy. Just build it and people will use it. Along comes our international ecomomy and through in a little internet economy and a tad bit of online information sharing and Poof.
You have people who can get the best prices on cars through the internet, see auto quality quickly, buy and sell stuff on the internet (early amazon), share information on the internet (scientists in the 70s and it grew, etc...).
Now you have two business models that didn't really change much for the past 50 years. A person on June 10th mentioned "Dinosaur" when talking about a company.
Newspaper predicaments (like many auto makers) are the result of non-innovation and no forethinking. No matter what business or market you're in, you constantly need to be acting like there's a tiger stalking your business model. What keeps the customers? What are your competitors doing. What do you do better than them. If youre not sure, you need to polish your resume.
What an absolutely brilliant response, far more powerful and right on, than the original post.
Even as a technical type, and involved with newspapers since being published in the Pakistan Times at age 17 (1979), I believe the smart news(non)paper and newspaper giants will emerge from realizing and fulfilling their role as trusted, and now eminently customizable, filters from the million bits of data (not even information) that zoom towards us.
Micropayments is/are the answer for more than just the news industry. I recently launched an online content continuity assurance company (http://neternity.org ) and am now targeting my own organization as a client to pitch a new micro-payments service to.
My small team and I, among many others around the world, are working on a project enabling information-filtering-value (used to be called editing I think in the old days) to be purchased for micro payments.
Will we be the only ones offering it. Surely not. Do we need to be the only ones offering such a service to build a business? No. Just like a thousand news organizations flourish, dozens of entrepreneurs can still build general or niche micro-payment services.
Thank you again for your intense, but real, analysis on how this is really going to play out.
Imran
Will Your Life's Work "Live, Forever"? It Will, At http://neternity.org
As a reader, many a times a story or two captures my curiosity for which I will be ready to pay a micro amount <USD1 to get in depth access to reports, alternate views, videos & other reader's opinion. Currently I have to fire a search which often lead to right story but rarely to the angles I am looking for as an extension to the story. This will save me time for which I am willing to pay for.
I totally agree with both of you. Micropayments, and nickle and diming the consumer is a macro error. The answer lies in reaffirming quality journalism and providing that to the public interested in "real news", then building a viable business model that delivers that valued content in a variety of ways.
What I am saying is, as the article points out, doing some "real" thinking and new work, instead of trying to profit from old ideas, would produce some viable answers. Maybe they should go back to the basics, as you point out in those great new books, and become "literate" on the changes taking place.
As long as we all continue to care and share these ideas, maybe that can happen!
OK, as a long time ubergeek, I think you're all gone a bit far here. One of the greatest attributes of newspapers is that you don't have to have any more technology than a few coins in your pocket to read them. Nice as the Kindle is, when newspapers are only published for Kindle, only Kindle users can read newspapers.
Info geeks keep ranting about how video will replace the written word, and it has in a lot of ways, but a close look at the difference in the level of reporting between the Washington Post and NBC News shows how fundamentally flawed this idea is at it's basis. The written word ushered in a new era of critical thinking during the Rennaisance, as it had earlier during the Roman Empire when it became possible to send letters to other cities.
Videos on the other hand are used primarily to entertain idiots. The NBC News investigation of the George Bush reserve transfer non-scandal was the perfect case against 'video journalism.' The last thing ours or any society needs is a MORE direct tie between the so-called news and product ad placements. I can see the 21st century city desk editor, chomping on a cyber-cigar (smokeless, of course, it just directly stimulates the receptors in his brain that making him think he's killing himself) and yelling 'We gotta have 30 seconds on a train accident, we got an insurance ad to run!' as a team runs out the door to cause a train wreck.
Sure, newspapers have done a dismal job of monetizing their online content. They need to look at where their past revenue streams came from (grocery ads and want ads) and figure out how to serve those customers using this 'internet thing.' Who knows, maybe Craig and Angie are interested in partnering with local online news organizations? Then the un-papers will have the revenue to continue paying journalists to make up stories from their bedrooms instead of getting out and reporting real news. Oh, wait, that's just the New York Times, right?
If your little senario ever came to fruition, heaven help us all that will have to read such slosh as this thread. Keeping journalistic integrity to 140 characters shall continue to undermine this country's ability to string two lucid thoughts together.
There is nothing wrong with unbiased, unedited, untethered news, but if it travels beyond baseball box scores or movie reviews, I'll stick to traditional journalism.
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