Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Saving the newspaper industry

As someone that works for a newspaper the question of how to keep newspapers profitable is of utmost importance.  But recently it seems that the question has become popular among journalists (I know, big surprise) to the point that they're actually writing about it.  The cover story of Time magazine this week is more a commentary on why newspapers need to go to micro-payments for their content online.  There's a lot of discussion on both sides of the story.  The bottom line of the discussion for me is not 'how do we maintain an industry putting out a physical paper', but rather how do we maintain a quality journalistic core - I could care less if we stop putting out actual papers.  With every Tom, Dick and Joe being able to start their own blog and comment on the news, it becomes increasingly important to maintain journalists that are going to report on the news.  It's hard to find unbiased journalists - it's even harder to find them when they're working for basically free or at the whim of an advertiser.  So, the real question is how do we compensate journalists.  I'm not particularly a fan of the micro-payments model - it seems to complicated especially if you take it to the extreme that some would like.  It's becoming more and more clear that large news sites are not being thoroughly subsidized by advertisers.  I don't have any real answers, but I am curious as to what some of the Mod-Blog community think is the best or even a good way of keeping quality journalism happening?

1 comment:

Nomad said...

I wonder if the "instant printer" model is worth looking at again. It was raised in the 1960s, but the technology wasn't there. Under that model, a customer can go to a newsprinter and ask for a real-time copy of the paper to be printed for them there and then. They pay the cost, and can walk away. But at the same time, if there is only one article that interests them, they can view it for free so long as it shares space on the screen with an advertisement that pays for it.

Kind of a hybrid of the "get it on your iPhone" model and the traditional model. Either way, someone gets paid and no resources are shelled out if no paper is needed.

Or maybe I am just reading too much "classic" sci fi nowadays.