Yet more bad news for newspapers

Among the findings of an exhaustive Nielson survey about readers' attitudes toward paying for online media (exhaustive enough to interview 52,000 people in 27 countries!) nearly two-thirds said, in essence, that if they pay for the content, that gives them the copyright to the material, as well.

Sam Zell was sooo dumb when he kept the Chicago Trib and sold the Cubs.

More cluelessness about journalism answered

Per a survey about how many online readers "expect" free content to stay free, and some comments about that on a LinkedIn journalism group, I offer my extended thoughts:

In my opinion, one key problem at newspapers is the AP has an inherent conflict of interest between its traditional customers and its new ones, the news aggregators. Member papers need to figure out a way to push AP to charge the Googles, MSNBCs, etc., more for content, and to figure out a way to involve Reuters et al in this without collusion.

In my opinion, also, beyond this issue, the AP has been pretty clueless in dealing with a lot of online issues, starting at the top with Dean Singleton.

As for charging for content affecting readership, other surveys show that:
A. Many online readers are "casual" ones;
B. A paywall can be combined with collection of user data, which then allows advertisers to target ads.
C. Apropos the old hardcopy pay model, and contra Fred above, I wouldn't call 20-25 percent of revenue (the tradition for newspapers) "almost free."

Besides paywalls, another solution is simply delayed posting of online content, for as much as, say, 24 hours.

Couple of other comments.

Howard (a blogger who used to be a reporter and is trying to get more paying freelance gigs, and talks about his blog as a "brand" builder): Of course you're not going to get more. The fragmentation of the Net, plus traditional dysfunctionality of the journalism profession salivating for any jobs, have mashed up to feed off each other. Keep giving stuff away, and keep being part of the problem.

Building "brand"? Isn't that about as much a myth as Reaganomics?

Bottom line is, if a newspaper ain't making money on the online portion of its business, priced out separately from its hardcopy business, then it needs to do something to change its business model. This isn't a supermarket able to offer an occasional "loss leader," if you're offering an **ongoing** loss leader. And, spending more on websites, and web editors, in hopes of getting more of those casual readers more involved, ain't the answer.

I don't know which is worse: clueless traditional newspaper management, or possible clueless online newspaper pundits/analysts.

Finally, no duh on the survey. If you asked, 85 percent of ppl getting anything free would want more.

Journalist naivete 101

I pity every under-35 journalist, even more, under-30 journalist, like this one, who thinks he, as compared to all the others now on his own, actually WILL "make it" as a-Net based freelancer.

Sheelah Kolhatkar tells a great story of the descent of all the Paul Smaleras:

You can tell when a print journalist has lost his full-time job because of the digital markings that suddenly appear, like the tail of a fading comet. First, he joins Facebook. A Gmail address is promptly obtained. The Twitter account comes next, followed by the inevitable blog. Throw in a LinkedIn profile for good measure. This online coming-out is the first step in a daunting, and economically discouraging,

transformation: from a member of a large institution to a would-be Internet “brand.”
Beyond that, writing a blog that amounts to little more than a search engine optimization tool?

Just as Google Ads is killing a lot of online advertising, the fragmentation of news/content/analysis and whatnot online is going to kill salaries, too.

Keep dreaming, Paul Smalera. Until you wake up. Or, until you OD on the Kool-Aid of the Jay Rosen types who keep hawking the Net, including the free-range, unpaywalled Net, as the salvation of media.

Read like this one to get more of a sense of how he's scraping and scrimping by. Paul, half the job dumps and revenue losses may be recession-related, but the other half? As long as print media keep repeating the same non-charging-for-online-content insanity, the other half is gone for good.

Mark Cuban calls Google a 'vampire' – and he's right

He's also right that newspapers — and, even more, press organizations like AP — largely continue to be run by people who are too inept, timid, and "old thinking" as well as old media in dealing with this.

Cuban has cojones, if nothing else. He made his comments at an online media conference, and as the keynoter, no less.

Not just that, he called newspapers cowards for being afraid to let go of Google traffic even as they remain clueless, in his words, about how to monetize said traffic.

Salon, as part of its own take on his comments, highlights the pull quote:

“Show some balls,” he said. “If you turn your neck to a vampire, they are [going to] bite. But at some point the vampires run out of people’s blood to suck.”

The problem lies not so much with individual papers (though those with their own news services, like NYT, McClatchy, etc., fall under the following finger-pointing) as it does with AP (and Reuters and AFP, to the degree my solution could dodge collusion issues).

AP is not charging Google, MSNBC et al enough.

Pure and simple. If AP would increase its contract charges about six-fold — YES, as in 600 percent — and could do a work-around on the collusion stuff, not only with Reuters, but NYT News Service, MCT, etc., it might be enough to force Google to paywall.

And, yes, I think AP could write its contracts in a way as to do a work-around on the collusion issue while leaving the door open for Reuters et al to cut similar deals.

That said, AP's chairman of the board, Dean Singleton, is so effing clueless about this that he ran his own newspaper company, MediaNews, into the ground of Chapter 11, so what should we really expect?

If nothing else, maybe more newspaper chains will reverse cutting back on DC bureaus, and rebuild them — with money they save from canceling AP contracts.

Calling Jay Rosen and Google's chief ass-kisser Jeff Jarvis. Have you already started attacking Cuban?