Newspaper Association Of America Complains That Comedian John Oliver Failed To Solve Newspaper Biz Model Problem
from the maybe-your-priorities-are-a-little-off dept
You may have seen that on Sunday, John Oliver's main bit this week was about the collapse of the local newspaper business.However, other than encouraging people to "pay for" more news, he doesn't offer any answers. More particularly, he spends most of the piece making fun of publishers who are just trying to figure it out. Whatever you think of the name "tronc" and that company's announced growth strategy, at least they are trying new things and trying to figure out how to create great news journalism in the digital era. John Oliver doesn't seem to have any better ideas.This is pretty ridiculous. First of all, much of the mocking was over the Tribune Company's ridiculous rebranding as "tronc," and specifically the absolutely ridiculous "tronc employee video" the company put together, that I still am partially convinced is a parody of the kind of idiocy big newspapers put out these days to pretend they get technology. "Artificial intelligence!" "The future of journalism!" "Tech startup culture!" "Evolving, changing -- the fun part!" "Optimization group!" "Feed it into a funnel and then optimize it!" "Maximize all the time." "Monetize video!" "The role of tronc is to transform journalism -- from pixels to Pulitzers."
The fact is that we are in a transitional phase within the entire industry. People want, need and consume more hard news than they ever have. The core demand for the product isn't decreasing at all, and based upon that we will find our way to the far shore where the industry is thriving and growing once again. But in the meantime, there is going to be a lot of experimentation and evaluation of new business models. Some experiments will work and some won't, and our VP of Innovation, Michael MaLoon is committed to keeping you up-to-date on what is happening on that front. But making fun of experiments and pining away for days when classified ads and near-monopolistic positions in local ad markets funded journalism is pointless and ultimately harmful.
I would just ask Mr. Oliver to spend more time talking about what the future of news could be, and less time poking fun at publishers who are trying to get there.
And, really, despite the fact that we -- among many others -- have argued that Oliver and his team do real journalism at times -- at its core, his show is about comedy. Of course he's going to mock stupid stuff. Why shouldn't he? Expecting him to offer a "solution" is pretty silly. Whining about a comedian making fun of your failures to actually truly evolve seems like it should be fairly low down on the list of things the NAA should be focused on these days. If it's looking to comedians for solutions, and complaining when they don't provide any, perhaps the NAA itself should be spending a bit more time exploring how its members can evolve and adapt.
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Filed Under: business models, complaints, john oliver, newspapers
Companies: naa, newspaper association of america
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The real deal...
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This is very paradoxical.
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To broadly paraphrase someone insightful:
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Re: To broadly paraphrase someone insightful:
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Re: Re: To broadly paraphrase someone insightful:
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Where have I seen this before??
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I mean, they're clearly just phoning it in with math and fact cocaine.
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John Oliver did give a (partial) solution
Currently, the consumers paying more is the only solution. Getting billionaires to support the newspapers would lead to conflicts of interest, and getting governments to pay would be even worse. The only options left are the consumer pays, or the advertisers pay. Newspapers have for a long time relied on a mixture of these two sources of revenue, but now very few people are willing to pay for news and advertisers are also paying less.
Advertising can be great to supplement revenue, but Internet advertising heavily encourages click-baiting. Internet ads pay so little, briefly mentioned in the show, that readers need to see a lot more ads for the paper to make money. The strategy of click-baiting is entirely built around quantity. The title is designed to get as many people as possible to read them, while the articles are short and simple so that people can quickly read them, then read another. Shallow content makes the most ad revenue while also costing the least amount of money to make. Longer pieces of content, like the clip of John Oliver above, just mean that people will watch it instead of ads for 19 minutes.
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The Real Truth About MSM
As for viewer media? Well, most liberals see TV as a farce in most instances, and most conservatives fast-forward through pre-recorded shows. Take away home recordings, and I personally turn the show off forever. Make everything liberal, and I don't turn the TV on at all.
Funny, but Hollywood thinks they can steam-roller this idea of liberal social engineering on the masses, but when it comes to a paycheck, they still seem to pick up that Sig Sauer 9mm pistol as much as any NRA member would - wonder why? Because they know where their paychecks come from, it really is that simple after all.
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Re: The Real Truth About MSM
oooooo-kay, if you are so far to the right that obomber is counted as a 'liberal', then, yes, EVERYTHING is going to *seem* liberal to such a skewed worldview...
BUT, if you actually look at the outcome of the media, you have no other conclusion than that it is overwhelmingly conservative in every meaningful way...
...or, you can just keep yelling 'liberal!' until you are hoarse...
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Re: The Real Truth About MSM
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Re: The Real Truth About MSM
Liberals are bad (for uncited reasons).
MSM (which is clearly monolithic and homogenous) is too liberal now (again, no evidence needs to be cited for this).
Therefore, MSM is bad (hah! a syllogism -- therefore, logic!)
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Re: Re: The Real Truth About MSM
You obviously only read that single part and judged based on that word. I still like the people who worked there, and I left because newsprint was failing.
I'm sorry you felt that the word "liberal" marked out the rest of the comment. Wait... no, I'm really not.
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Re: The Real Truth About MSM
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Re: The Real Truth About MSM
Magazine also started dropping circulation, and it wasn't because they went crazy liberal all of sudden.
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Play the Victim Card
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Re: Play the Victim Card
victimization?
pity?
Wow, you got any more adjectives to express your slanted pov?
Certainly the news of another murder by "law enforcement" is hyped up because .... reasons.
Those murdered were simply playing victim because they want the pity?
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Oliver, problems, and failing to move forward
Like it or not, since the start of modern media, we have worked on a model of "advertiser pays" being the main income source. Yes, print paper and magazines have generally charged a token fee for their papers (usually enough to pay the newsstand and the distribution costs) but not much more. The real income has been made on advertising.
TV and other media have generally worked the same way. Pay channels and pay per view have been the exception rather than the rule, and channels like HBO have done really well over the years with the model. However, even they can tell you that the internet, piracy, and the "digital leak" is slowly draining away subscribers and income. Some of them have moved to streaming and it's somewhat successful, but it's doubtful they will ever make it back to their peak days.
Newspapers have no such fall back plan. Putting the news online isn't as cheap as we with it was, and with online ad rates being VERY low, they are put into the unhappy situation of having to load up every page with way too many ads, pop unders, and various forms of subscription models to try to make it pay out.
The end result of this has been the rise of ad blockers, and now the arms race between ad blockers and ad disguisers. So they are forced into unfamiliar territory, and generally they fail there.
The reality is simple: The internet has taught people (a) don't pay unless you absolutely, positively have to, and (b) blocking ads and other things that might help to pay for content is not only acceptable, it's "good for the internet". Since advertisers pay to be seen and are NOT being seen, they don't pay. Since people generally won't pay a subscription fee for content that is soon all over the place for free, they can't get it done there either.
The end result is a stalemate. Most of the ideas tossed around to "save" the print media generally don't come with any true income stream, just a vague notion of being somehow "valuable" online. Big media companies aren't going to trade their content for a vague shot at being online famous. So the problem remains.
My guess is that more print media outlets will fail, more "true" news sources will disappear, and the internet brand of insanely slanted opinion as news (started by Fox News, honestly) will win the day. People want to hear what they want to hear, they don't want the facts they want to be told they are right. It's one of the many reasons my posts are censored, moderated, and withheld here at Techdirt, because I say the things that most people don't want to deal with. We may have reached an interesting crossroads in the life of the internet where misinformation and self-congratulatory "journalism" will actually overwhelm the truth.
Don't think so? You only have to check out Drudge and the whole "hillary cough" and "hillary health" and "#hillaryhealth" thing. It's not news, it's misrepresentation of situations and actions to create a fictional narrative that people buy into not because it's true, but because they want it to be true.
Congrats people, you got the internet you always wanted!
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Re: Oliver, problems, and failing to move forward
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Re: Oliver, problems, and failing to move forward
If they don't like people mocking them then they need to either let the criticism roll off their backs or put forth better ideas.
Getting all tronc-ed out of shape when a comedian points out legitimate points is very silly.
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Re: Oliver, problems, and failing to move forward
It's one of the many reasons my posts are censored, moderated, and withheld here at Techdirt, because I say the things that most people don't want to deal with.
Your post showed up just fine. You're giving yourself way too much credit.
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My wife worked in newspapers for years, as the graphic artist setting the ads. She was paid less than the ad salespeople, despite the fact she had to have experience, qualifications, training, and then do a whole lot more work. Hell, the night before we got married, I ended up working on some of her stuff with her, so she'd get finished by 9pm, for a thrice-weekly paper (that folded last year after more than 120 years). Before ti folded it closed its print dept., outsourcing it ALL to a print company 70 miles away, and reducing the quality (and upping the errors) as well as making the paper less timely.
It got so bad, a few of the people they fired started up their own competition paper, and once they got the 'legal organ' status, that was it for what was the area's oldest business, which shut its doors back in November.
I've recently been paying attention to the replacement local paper the last 2-3 months. The articles have almost always been reprints, although how bad it was hadn't been apparent to me until this past week.
Two months ago, the kids group I volunteer with (a non-discriminatory, non denominational version of scouting) had their first annual award/badge ceremony. My son took the group photo, and I sent the newspaper an email with it. Was told "it'll be in next week or the week after's". It ran this past week. The photo was badly done (over-saturated on ink) and the accompanying text was literally just a copy+paste from my email. Absolutely nothing more.
The local sheriff's department ran a program where they took 60+ 6th graders to DC and toured the capital. It too ran almost 2 months later (I should also point out that the official photos from the the trip were sent to parents contained in two video files, overlaid with copyrighted music, no actual individual photos). Meanwhile most of the paper consists of what looks to be near verbatim copies of police reports. Oh, and sports. Because half the paper is literally high school sports (for this county and surroundings)
Nowadays, no-one buys the paper, because the paper is shit. If the editor and publisher don't give a fuck (and in this case, the editor IS the main writer), why should anyone else?
Right now I think they only exist because of the whole 'legal organ' (things like legal notices) thing and classifieds about yard sales and church bake sales. Tempted to start my own local paper, in competition.
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So, it's pointless but still somehow manages to be harmful? Who would have thunk?
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Their "experiments" will only stop being funny if they're successful. Asking people not to laugh only makes it funnier.
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Competing with free for dummies
Provide background to the events, context to flesh out otherwise 'pointless' facts and bits of information, go the extra mile to really investigate the details, don't just focus on the 'obvious'.
The problem(one of them anyway) that news agencies face, and that is giving them so much trouble is that they've spend so long taking the lazy path, going with the quick and easy stories and reporting, when they're not throwing out junk pieces that might interest people for a few minutes but nothing beyond that.
All flash and no substance as it were, and people are increasingly getting tired of the equivalent of cheap tabloid 'reporting' and getting their news elsewhere. If they want to bring people back the first thing they need to do is realize that people have plenty of sources for quick and easy entertainment, leaving them hopelessly out-gunned in that field. Instead they need to focus on what they're in a position to be better at, more in-depth investigations and reporting, more details and depth.
It might be too little too late for many of them at this point, but continuing with the same as before is a guarantee that they'll continue the downward spiral until they crash and burn, overtaken by those offering the same low level entertainment but without the financial requirements that they have.
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My irony meter just exploded.
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we're hip to their lies
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Times have changed, greed hasn't.
With that said, their Olive solutions and online web management was in direct competition with NYT, waiting to see who would go full pay online. This is where all newspapers were having problems.... how do you provide news that people will pay for, if you have a plethora of news sites online for free?
The answer lies in 2 different facets. By providing local news by zoning, which quite a few large paper companies do, or by providing news that nobody else has seen, first.
The second part of that is where the problem lies. Small town newspaper companies are still a little stable because they provide local news. They'll pull their other stories from a syndicate without the need to fabricate, stretch, or exaggerate news based on their personal opinions. Not as much, of course.
With larger beasts, you've got to come up with something to get people coming back. Though, if you try to stay even a bit balanced, you need to expand your distribution, like USA/Today, Gannett. For places like TWP, they've got to feed on emotion and beliefs such as liberal views. There's nothing wrong with that, but it ends up becoming a feeding ground for trash and dirty laundry... because that's what readers like. Anyone can make up conspiracy theories or read about a leak online, but if you can get it first and use it to your advantage with surgical precision, you can sell papers with that above the fold.
It's all a competition behind the doors. Of course, you have the journalists who have been around for ages and continue to write articles based on the grand scheme of things, but the younger ones out of college who were the prime of their Podunk town, end up needing to be seen. They're the ones who dig up garbage and try to make a name for themselves. Unfortunately, this is what people feed on, and this is what their business model is based on. I've seen it first hand, and I've seen the streams filing in from AP, Reuters and others, to watch the reports dismantled from 8 pages to 2, with whatever info they feel benefits their cause.
Why is it this way?
Because the people who pay money for their product, want that type of garbage. It doesn't matter what kind of trash or opinion you have, if people buy it, someone will sell it. And that's why we have Clinton and Trump in line for presidency.
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Liberal?
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Re: Liberal?
Holy fuck, I've offended everyone on the internet by saying the "L" word... and it wasn't even in a harsh context.
TWP is liberal, as with everyone I worked with. My point was newspapers in general have their own political bias if they want to get a targeted demographic. LATWP was just an example.
Jesus fucking sensitive Christ.
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The internet didn't kill newspapers
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Re: The internet didn't kill newspapers
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Can't Bring Back The Past
"we will find our way to the far shore where the industry is thriving and growing once again"
Meet in the middle. Technology. AI-assisted buggy whips. Other stuff. Loud noises. This is how we will achieve our goals.
...or NOT. Sometimes businesses just evolve, and that evolution can mean shrink or go away. It happens particularly fast to industries who lacked clarity about what their actual product was, and where their value was. The notion that they will "find our way to the far shore where the industry is thriving and growing again" is the kind of mistaken goal-setting that will result in failure. You can't go back to the way it was, no matter how much tech jargon you sling in your boardroom or your videos.
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Re: Can't Bring Back The Past
Can't bring back the past but you can repurpose it.
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Re: Can't Bring Back The Past
I read that as a goal of a healthy journalism industry that looks different than it used to, rather than trying to go back to the past. And that must be their goal. The alternative is "our goal is to go out of business as slowly as possible".
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TRONC USE CONTENT OPTIMIZING FUNNEL!
TRONC USE SMART MACHINE TO MAKE CONTENT!
TRONC MAKE PIXEL INTO PULITZER!
WHY EVERYONE LAUGH AT TRONC!?
GAAARRRGGH!
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Rich guy controlling the press is an old problem.
Then there's General Electric's vice-grip on the balls of the media during the cold war (GE paid well for advertising and to suppress stories from reaching the public ever, hence how little known it was the hilarious number of GE nukes the US deployed for fear of a USSR preemptive strike.)
And we still have Rupert Murdoch and The Pravda Channel (I'm sorry, Fox News) which is so notoriously yellow that Jon Stewart made a third of his illustrious career pointing out how yellow it is. (Including his recent encore on the Tonight Show!)
I call bullshit. Journalistic integrity has always been second to sensationalism and readership numbers. It's a luxury that has only been afforded after bills are paid. Sure we've had papers with policies of integrity, some good journalists and some great stories. But we've never had an era or clime in which journalistic integrity was a reliable mainstay. Maybe we've had times where the corruption and bias was most revealed in the stories that did not see the light of print, which made it harder to see.
The internet age is a disruption to the age of printed newspapers, and really, the standard has always been low enough so any change is a good gamble that things might get better.
As for me, I lost confidence in the US mainstream media long before I had the internet to confirm what stories were multi-sourced, and what stories were a single article from a single op-ed periodical. The internet not only allowed me to fact-check, but also gave me news about topics that were not typically covered before.
Intellectual Property overreach, police brutality and our completely corrupt justice system, for three, all especially terrible since it's evident they were all happening my entire life, whether or not anyone reported on them. The age of internet news may not be great for the classic investigative journalist, but it has shown to be pretty solid for hacker-dumps and end-user video coverage.
So yeah. Disruption.
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Bias I expect; people writing the stories have their own feelings about it - this is being human. Allowing that bias to slant the story is a totally different matter.
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John Oliver != Journalist
I did watch the whole episode earlier and John specifically notes that he is not a journalist, and feels bad when other media publications call him a journalist.
For what it's worth, I believe that his show is definitely a form of journalism. It's primarily comedy, but the subject matter is definitely newsworthy. His team of researchers do a great job condensing a complicated issue down to an entertaining segment and I certainly consume it as one of my news sources.
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