Reporter Annoyed To Discover He Doesn't Own Facts; Suggests 'Global Paywall' For Reporters Like Himself
from the good-luck-with-that dept
Every so often we see this kind of thing: a reporter (who may very well do amazingly good work) gets upset to realize that other news sites and aggregators pick up on some of his stories and write about them -- potentially even getting more attention than the original. In this case, it's reporter Matthew Taub, who is annoyed that other sites got the glory for his investigative reporting on... on a guy dressing up as a clown and running around a Brooklyn cemetary:A story I did, like this, gets repackaged, like this (with a reference to the original reporting deep in the second page), and finally reaches you, like this:Hey, we've all been there. I've had plenty of stories that I've written get rewritten and repurposed by other, much bigger sites and then watched those sites get all the traffic. It happens. Of course, sometimes it's happened the other way as well, in which we get traffic that we probably don't deserve after we write about a story that originated elsewhere, but for reasons unknown, the world bestowed the traffic to our story first.
Taub takes the silly line that, because of things like this, "original reporting" (as he defines it) "will cease to exist in about five to ten years." Of course, we've been hearing this refrain for longer than five to ten years and it never really changes. And it's silly and somewhat meaningless. First of all, reporters don't own facts. Period. It's something that's kind of important to learn if you're going to report on stuff. Hell, for the cemetary clown story, is Taub paying the clown? Of course not, but the story really originates with that guy, not Taub, right?
Furthermore, the idea that original reporting will go away is just silly. In fact, if you look at sites that often start out doing the kind of aggregating and rewriting that Taub complains about, many of them also do plenty of original reporting, and that role keeps growing over time as they realize how important that can be. Just look at the prototypical example of a site that got big by "aggregating" information from elsewhere: BuzzFeed. Yet these days, it has a large and growing "original reporting" staff that often does amazing work. Many people don't realize it yet because they're still focused on the other junk the site produces, but the idea that original reporting goes away is just silly.
But Taub thinks the answer is a "global paywall" where all "real" publications can all team up:
Solution: A Global Pay Wall Across All Sites.Except, no. Not everyone is behind the paywall, because any even halfway entrepreneurial journalist will look at Taub's global paywall and leap for joy over the fact that Taub just cleared the field for competition by taking all those papers out of the open internet. And it's not like this idea hasn't been discussed before.
All cooperating media outlets agree to the same pay wall appearing on their sites, with revenue divided behind the scenes.
No fear of a loss of eyeballs to competitors: everyone is behind the pay wall.
Taub compares his solution to Spotify and iTunes -- but, again, the industry tried to set up an "iTunes for news" five years ago and it hasn't worked out particularly well. It's just been a bunch of paywalls that haven't really helped. Music and news are very different products. Not realizing the difference in how they're consumed (and what the substitutes are) dooms this particular analogy.
But the real problem here is that Taub is overvaluing the reporter and undervaluing the audience. We've tried to make this point for years, but the whole reason that newspaper businesses were viable in the first place was that they brought together a community of attention, and then were able to sell advertisements against that. That "community" was often local. But the problem today is that there are so many competing communities, made possible by the internet, that newspapers no longer have that kind of monopolistic control on attention.
But the problem with a paywall is that it's actually a barrier to building a community. It's limiting the community and providing less value to the community for more money. Consumers of news today want to be able to share it with others and discuss it. And a paywall gets in the way of that. Thus, you're making the news significantly less valuable, yet expecting people to pay more for it and devaluing the community value that the publication itself needs. Economically, it's stupid.
Here's a better idea: if other sites are getting all the traffic for your stories, maybe look at why the traffic is going to them and see what you can do better to get that traffic directly. There's a reason people went to those other sites rather than the original, and maybe instead of just blaming the evils of the open internet, it's because you or your publication could be doing a better job attracting and keeping a community of interest.
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Filed Under: aggregation, antitrust, community, global paywall, journalism, matthew taub, paywall, sharing
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Heck, set up that paywall, I'm all for it. I suspect there will be plenty of news outside that garden for us mere mortals that aren't interested in paying for news but would gladly support news blogs, publications and organizations we believe are doing it right.
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Or maybe as this plan fails, they will jump up and down and yell "pirates! pirates are ruining our business!" and some handy governments will create a bunch of laws that f*** up the internet a little more.
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There will be no second story.
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If it helps, think of it as defending a principle, rather than defending Gawker.
It's like the ACLU defending the right of Neo-Nazis to march in Skokie. They weren't defending the goose-stepping morons' beliefs, they were defending the right to freedom of speech and assembly (and so, by extension, defending all of us).
(Apologies to Gawker for the Neo-Nazi comparison. You can be bad, but not that bad. Generally. Except for some of the commenters.)
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It's because of douchebags like you that the entire news industry is dying.
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" providing less value to the community for more money."
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Reporting the news is an expensive and dying business. It takes a lot of money to send people into the world in search of the truth. As much as I hear about how traditional mainstream outlets are outdated and unnecessary, I don't see many new school publications stepping up to the same level. In fact, I just see a lot of ctrl-c ctrl-v.
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Any that didn't provide something more than just a reprint of an existing story were not profitable and died. You see a few spring up now and again, but unless they start to provide something useful, they don't seem to survive.
If an aggregator IS taking a lot of your traffic, you really have to examine what they are adding and fix your product.
I noted above, the story in question does not look like it was actually taken from Taub and re-written. If it was, they did a WAY better job and provided links and videos, etc. It's simply a better product.
If Taub (or, you know the first publication to write about this because Taub WAS NOT FIRST) had done a better job with the story, he may have seen more of the traffic. His version is news print moved online - there are no videos, no links to more information, NO INTERNET.
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Can you present *any* evidence to show that it's really dying? I'm seeing tons of new investigative reporting, and new investigative reporting outfits popping up all the time.
It takes a lot of money to send people into the world in search of the truth.
Indeed. And we're seeing some really great new experiments on the front. ProPublica, TheIntercept, Vice, Buzzfeed, BeaconReader -- are all doing some pretty impressive investigative reporting lately. Or do you only believe it can come from major newspapers?
don't see many new school publications stepping up to the same level. In fact, I just see a lot of ctrl-c ctrl-v.
Ah, because you haven't been looking.
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- Print media reporters (such as Wesley Lowery from the Washington Post and Matt Pearce from the L.A. Times, for example) using Twitter and Vine, freely linking to other reporting from other outlets (including online-only such as HuffPo) and from "citizen journalists" on the ground.
- The Guardian and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch teaming up to collect (online) people's accounts of racial profiling.
Collaboration, done right, can lead to better reporting and at the same time conserve resources (staff time and money).
Publications that are willing and able to adapt can endure and even thrive.
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But look at why mainstream outlets are dying. It's not because of the internet -- they started dying before the internet provided a serious alternative to the daily newspaper.
The reason they're dying is because they decided to stop doing doing their jobs. With only rare exceptions, journalism doesn't really exist in the mainstream outlets. It's been replaced with entertainment pieces and press releases.
In other words, mainstream outlets started doing pretty much the same thing as the web sites they're complaining about now. They just start doing it first.
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It looks like Taub's complaint is really that he was the "middle guy" that discovered this and should therefore get all of the credit?
I can see why the Village Voice is getting more traffic for their story. It's BETTER. There are videos, more details, and LINKS TO MORE INFORMATION. Guess what you clueless people at the Brooklyn Daily Eagle - having some external links to more information will help your search rankings. Oh, and maybe if you enable anonymous commenting you could actually start building up a community and a discussion.
Please don't complain when people go to the superior product - make yours better.
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The media usually don't discover stories, they rarely just happen to be at a place where something happens and get to be the first to witness something. What normally happens is they hear about something from someone else then they write about it. They think the act of writing about something gives them ownership of something they didn't create.
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Reporting is obviously the other big part, even when Ars Technica gets a story i still look forward to reading about it on TechDirt b/c the articles tend to have more insight and depth in addition to the superior comment quality.
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And they don't shout at you for blocking ads. ;-)
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Good luck with that.
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Corizon?
Vermcast?
Vomcast?
Vomitcast - That's It!
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I represent the OROA (Organized Rats Of America) in matters of law and public perception. While my clients are fully aware of their association with vermin, quickly handing over information to authorities, and generally disliked behavior, it is their position that they should not be associated with the likes of Comcast and Verizon.
We would never attempt to stifle your ability to refer to the merged companies of Comcast and Verizon as Vermcast, it is offensive to refer to these companies as rat-like.
Although we do not intend to seek a legal remedy, it would be appreciated if you would kindly post a retraction and apology for this gross misrepresentation of rats.
Thank you.
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Let me get thi sstraight
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I'm guessing
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No, he's predicting that there won't be any news sites anymore. I have a feeling he won't mention it when that doesn't come true.
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Who's the Clown?
He might have a argument if he had broken an important story, but then, if he had, he would have all the documentation, and any followers would either need to collect that documentation, delaying publication, or link back to the original story for that documentation.
I think there is much more as to how the story is presented, rather than who's there first. I would rather read from someone who has done some consideration of a situation than someone who rushes to publication just to be 'first', and does a piss poor job of analysis.
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The New Form of Sharing
So something changed, something is always changing.
Now, the news business needs to adapt. Taub wants to make a change by putting all of the big legacy news organizations behind a big all-purpose great paywall of legacy news agencies. Somebody tell them good luck with that and good-bye.
Other "new media" organizations are organizing around the different "communities of interest" instead of just people who just happen to live near each other. It seems to be working well for them. Too bad (or good) the legacy players just want to live in the past.
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The end of News?
Guess that solves his problem.
In ten years no one will copy news because there will be no news left to copy!
I can see the Techdirt headlines in the future:
"This just in, nothing new happened today!"
"2024 year in review, nothing happened"
"Predictions for next year, nothing new will happen"
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Re: The end of News?
( http://www.cartoonistgroup.com/store/add.php?iid=79027 )
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Original Reporting
Now, everyone with a camera can be at the right place, at the right time and report the news.
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hardly "repackaged"
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★ Unless your news is about something people relate to, you have no market. No market means no pay.
★ Unless your news is about things local, people have far less interest in paying for it. They can get global news everywhere already.
★ Unless you can deliver your news up to the minute, you are running on yesterday's tech. No one today wants to pay for day old news in the form of a newspaper.
★ It no longer takes a reporter and a photographer to record news. See what happened in Ferguson as the cops tried to prevent reporters from recording the events. People everywhere at the scene did that and there were too many to prevent it from happening.
★ The contents of news is changing. I personally don't want to hear of the equivalent of reality tv in the news. You can keep your Hollydud actors and what they are doing as well as dumb crook news. I'm not interested and I am not going to pay for it.
★ The NYT has this paywall idea. Know what? I don't live in NY, neither city nor state. Exactly why would I pay for news that isn't going to help me? Simply, other than the rare article it's not relevant to my lifestyle.
★ Journalism is also changing. For all that haven't gotten the word yet, advertisers are not willing to pay the old rates. Guess what that does for salaries?
★ News is no longer as valued as it was because now interaction has become more important. Locking up the house doesn't encourage interaction. You will always loose out to the news aggregator that allows commenting.
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Nah, this isn't an obvious violation of anti-trust laws. Not at all.
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