Jay Rosen's New Media '10 Cmdts' ain't necessarily true

Starting wit his claim media atomization has been overcome. It hasn't, because of the price level of new media. To the degree it consolidates, then it will professionalize, with some of the issues of "old media."

For instance, more than three years ago, in Dallas, a group of people started a site called Pegasus News. It serves as an aggregator of bloggers (and maybe Twitterers, soon enough) on local arts, entertainment, politics, etc, while mixing in rewrites and expansions of press releases and the occasional actual story.

So, my default, if you're one the cool/lucky bloggers to have been picked up, especially early in Pegasus' history, and especially if it was without being noticed by the Dallas Morning News, you've got an inside edge.

So, in that sense, atomization may be lessened. But, Pegasis doesn't run all of the blog posts it gets from bloggers it "favorites." So, it's now ... wait for it ... a filter.

Some of the commandments are "fat chance," like this from Rosen's second commandment:

Closed systems [i.e. old media] bring editorial oversight and the authority of a respected brand while open ones crowdsource information and are easy to use. What both systems should have is trust and ethics.

But, if Rosen would have read Tech Crunch's pieceon an infamous Fort Hood-posted Army blogger, which I blogged about here, he'd be more circumspect about the likelihood of that happening soon.

Another of his commandments he just throws out without saying what will happen to it:

"Half my advertising is wasted, I just don't know which half."
Unlike the first six recent quotes, this one is almost a century old. Rosen attributes it to Philadelphia businessman John Wanamaker/

But, Rosen doesn't wonder what will happen ot the good half vs. wasted half of advertising if he's wrong, and the new media does remain atomized to some degree.

Others of the commandments aren't "wrong," they just fall into "what does this mean?" If people need better filters, since "old media" now isn't a "filtering force," or whatever, will they just give up instead? Give up filtering, or eventually tune out?

Rosen, along with Jeff Jarvis and some others (I don't think Clay Shirky is that bad) need to take to heart a previous post of mine, that "Internet triumphalism is not a public good.

It's kind of frustrating for people like this to be triumphal to the point of making overstated new media guru claims. Be more modest, realistic and fact-based about what's actually happening, or you start repeating the mistakes, and the hubris, of the old media on which you shovel dirt.

'Old media' vs. 'new media' and media vs. messages

"Old media" vs. "new media"? The difference is ultimately in the medium more than the message quality. Yes, blogs have broken news stories before the "MSM" and Twitter has added color to stories, but Twitter has releasd just as much inaccurate info as the MSM outlets at breaking news events, adn blogs can look like news but be as slanted as bad MSM coverage.

Give me paywalls - from the top down

It's nice that some seven-day dailies, which have a fair amount of local news content, are going to paywalls, but really, that's not enough to solve the national issue.

The real problem, though, is lack of leadership by the AP, not individual newspapers. AP ought to put mandatory paywalls, with anti-Reuters/AFP exclusivity, into another revision of new AP contract. Then, it ought to abut quintuple its rates for Google et al, (with similar exclusivity clauses), high enough that Google would have to paywall, too, and couldn't do this on ads alone.

Who died and made Jay Rosen God of what's wrong with papers?

Some of his ideas about the future of media are good, but others, like saying papers ought to forget about putting up paywalls, are lunacy.

So, we should ignore the fact that ads will likely NEVER monetize online papers, and rely on the kindness of tip jars, pledge drives and whatever else?

If people like him actually worked at papers, it would be one thing, but he's an academic. As for Jeff Jarvis, another bloviator, I swear he's on Google's payroll.

Poetic thoughts on newspapers, tech and punditrynews

The tombstone silence
Of the quiet places
In a not-so-noisy daily newspaper
Are symbolic.
Symbolic of death by technology,
Death by over-technology,
Death by technomancy.
Anti-Luddites say
The news will always be there.
But, who will pay?
Donations will only go so far
In a Balkanized “information” world,
Subscriptions remain anathema to many,
And, the Googleization of online text ads
Means there’s little money there.
So blogs consolidate,
Between a precious few New Media “winners”
And detritus eates of the Old Media,
Whie Twitterers blithely tweet.
What’s new?
New information,
Or just new communications speech,
Whether news, information, or misinformation?
You know that, but
“They,” of media both old and new,
As well as pundits thereof,
Won’t admit it.
And so, per a ’60s rock song,
The media is still the same.

No, newspapers aren’t dead yet, and they probably aren’t that close

Which is why I get frustrated by people both well-meaning and intelligent who want to bury newspapers, especially the hardcopy versions thereof.

First, yes, newspaper readership has been stagnant since what, the early 1960s? But, if you throw out illegal immigration, and even a fair chunk of first-generation legal immigrants, as a percentage of the populace, readership didn’t decline that much until the age of the Internet.

Second, half of the revenue decline of the last 2-3 years is due to the recession, pure and simple. Much of the ad losses will bounce back, except for some car and some real estate dinero.

More proof that a fair part of what does ail newspapers is recession-related? The rumors of an impending CBS bankruptcy, whether true or not — sparked by CBS’s ad sales dropoff.

Meanwhile, Eric Schmidt doesn’t know what he’s talking about. First of all, Herr Freeloader (albeit abetted by the clueless chairman of the AP, Dean Singleton), there’s a difference between “news” and “information.” And, except when Google links to AP, Reuters or AFP news stories, you provide information, not news.

(Also, side note to Schmidt: Stop lying about how much China censors the Internet and how much you self-censor Google there. That alone makes the rest of your claims less believable.

And, while you’re at it, tell us if Jeff Jarvis gets paid a retainer by you.)

And, none of this mentions Google becoming the new Microslob, a point I've blogged about before.

Now, back to why newspapers are still going to be around.

Especially in smaller markets, businesses need a vehicle for advertising. Radio usually doesn’t cut it, and TV is too expensive for too many local advertisers.

That leaves a conventional newspaper vs. a shopper.

Shoppers are all ads; the worse aren’t even fully disambiguated by type of product, etc.

Newspapers have style and design, and news, which people want to read about local and regional events, to set off ads.

More proof that newspapers aren’t so bad off? The New York Times has plans to start a Chicago regional issue and maybe others.

Online ads? Thanks to Herr Schmidt, the margin on them is sinking out of sight, and newspapers are finally wising up that advertising-only is NOT a profit angle for online newspapers. Add in the fact that between hosts files, ad blockers, etc., that those in the know can block most online ads, and that there’s also a fine, and usually violently crossed, border between “creative” and “annoying” with online ads, and they don’t work for most advertisers, either.

Now, what are newspapers doing WRONG?

Plenty. Details after the jump.


One, most still don’t have paywalls, though more are talking about them again. And, those that are going beyond talk are often pricing them high, to which I say GOOD! Casual readers can go away. Real ones will pay for online-only, or else will buy a hardcopy subscription with a free online one with that.

Two, it’s possible that, at all but the biggest dailies, a lot of ad salespeople still don’t know how to sell online ads. It’s wholly different. At the minimum, instead of taking a couple of pages of spec sheets, if you want to show something to a customer, you have to take a laptop computer. And, you have to be “Internet intuitive” in some way.

Three, though, is that many newspaper corporations/execs have been incompetent, mainly in running up massive debt. That debt came from buying other overvalued newspapers 7-10 years ago, buying back their own then-overvalued stock, etc. Per the lines of pre-deregulation utilities, they need to accept smaller profit margins, look for “steadiness,” stop trying to buy each other out, and go from there.

That said, even with some of these chains in Chapter 11, let’s note that almost all individual daily papers in the U.S. still have decent, or better, profit margins. And, with the Minneapolis Star-Tribune coming out of Chapter 11 pretty decently on its debt restructuring, if its new management (unfortunately, primarily from LBOs) remembers the points I just stressed, it should do OK in the future.

Four, tying points two and three immediately above together, many of those same CEOs are clueless, still, about how the Net likely never will be monetized for newspapers on an ads-only basis. In hardcopy, for pay newspapers, circulation traditionally paid one-quarter the freight. Why, instead of a TV model, didn’t newspapers take their own financial model to the Net in the start?


Five, is it too late today to install a paywall? No. First, see the AJR column I linked. Second, if Dean Singleton had more brains, he would implement mandatory paywalls for AP content as part of new AP content package contracts.

He would then, instead of haggling with Google about a few dinky ads, would quadruple or quintuple the rates AP charges it, and have an exclusivity sidebar in there which would force Google to treat AFP and Reuters the same to avoid the freeloader problem.

The price would be set so high that, even after negotiated downward, Google couldn’t afford to cover it with ads alone, unless it wanted to do so as a major loss leader. In other words, if Dean-o had brains, he would force Google, Yahoo and MSN to paywall also.

But, while he may have built MediaNews into an empire, I’ve never accused Dean Singleton of having brains while running the AP.

As for online-only newspapers, if they don’t paywall, they have to depend on donations from individuals, non-profit foundations, or both. The latter puts you at the whim of non-profit interests, or potentially so. The former has worked for a couple of blogs that have expanded into reporting, like Talking Points Memo, but only (so far) for narrow, focused political news. Ditto for online papers.

Will people donate for bonus local sports coverage? Hell, no, is my intuitive answer. Ditto for feature stories. Will they donate for something as mundane as community calendar listings?

So, online newspapers, without paywalls, will simply balkanize the situation further.

(Note: This paywall issue and related parts will be posted again, separately.)

Newspapers - pretty alive for a 'dying' industry

More proof that newspapers aren’t so bad off? The New York Times has plans to start a Chicago regional issue and maybe others.

More proof that a fair part of what does ail newspapers is recession-related? The rumors of an impending CBS bankruptcy, whether true or not — sparked by CBS’s ad sales dropoff.

No, no, no to ‘non-profit’ newspaper start-ups

Among other things, pay in corner office suites is NOT so “non-profit,” as Jack Shafer notes.

Second, some of these start-ups leaning heavily on student interns means an unfair wage advantage, AND poorer news quality; see here for more.

Third, back to Shafer. Non-profit journalism is at the whims of its donors just as corporate journalism is at the whims of its owners.

Beyond Shafer: Yes, a Talking Points Memo has been successful with fund drives, but despite the Wal-Mart touch, how many readers will pay — and pay and pay and pay — to become “donors” rather than simply subscribing?

In that vein, non-profit papers are no more ready to address the paywall situation than are “old media” newspapers, it seems. And, so, will be not much more successful at new media hoops until they do.

On the other hand, the idea of just letting newspapers die is stupid in general, and is “rich” coming from someone at Newsweek, struggling more than a lot of newspapers.

Should we subsidize newspapers?

I'm worried about benign paternalism more than actual active interference, but The Nation argues that newspapers need a direct tax infusion, as is the case in Europe.

That said, to avoid partisanship like we've had over the Corporation for Public Broadcasting budget, along with those of NEA, NEH, etc., we'd have to launch this program with a multi-year budget.

That said, while PBS is not a total lapdog, it's not the best example that could be cited, either? Or NPR. They're perhaps better than commercial networks, but not great.

Govt support can ONLY go to entities that declare themselves nonprofit, is one stipulation -- with strict definitions of what nonprofit is, like, say Pacifica.

Murdoch to charge to read all online papers

Of course, the Wall Street Journal already charges for some content, but this is news indeed, and good news.

My only question is, does he mean just staff-generated news, or is he going to try to charge for wires, too?

To me, this has been one of the biggest failures of Dean Singleton as head of the Associated Press — the failure to push for a paywall, perhaps as a mandatory requirement under the new AP package, then doubling or tripling charges to Yahoo, Google, et al. And, playing hardball with AFP and Reuters if they don’t want to play along.