How Many Logical Fallacies Can You Make In A Single Column Defending A Paywall?

from the let-me-count-the-ways... dept

Recently, the Boston Globe (owned by The NY Times, so it was hardly a surprise) announced plans for a paywall of sorts. I say "of sorts," because the paper is actually creating two websites, one of which will have a paywall and one that won't. Apparently, Boston.com will cover local news, sports and weather -- and will remain free. Meanwhile, BostonGlobe.com, which will carry news, feature stories, commentary, analysis, photographs and such will have a subscription fee. Not that I think a paywall for either one makes much sense, but if they had to have a paywall, it seems like this setup is backwards. After all, it's the in-depth feature stories and commentary that are more likely to attract a "drive-by" audience from the web -- the sorts of people who will never pay a subscription fee to see that content. Whereas that local info may be more difficult to get elsewhere, and targets locals who would value content more on a regular basis enough to pay a subscription fee (maybe...). So that had me a bit confused.

That said... what really got me confused was a column celebrating the decision by Boston Globe columnist Brian McGrory. It seemed to get so many things wrong, that it made me wonder if this was the sort of "commentary" and "analysis" the Globe is hoping people will pay for. Let's go through some of the mistakes.

Seriously, for the better part of the last decade, every high-brow thinker in the new media business has condescendingly repeated a phrase that is somehow as insidious as it is inane: Information wants to be free.

Except that's not true. Point me to "every high-brow thinker in the new media business" who says that. As Cory Doctorow recently pointed out, it is a phrase that seems to almost only be used by those condemning the "new media thinkers," to mock them for suggesting such a crazy thing. The problem is, no one seems to be able to find those thinkers who do say "information wants to be free." Even the original quote, by Stewart Brand, isn't that "information wants to be free." The full quote is:

"On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other."

It is true that many folks -- myself included -- think that plenty of information will be free based on the economics, and that it's important to understand the economics to recognize which content will be driven towards free, and how to properly use that to your advantage -- but I'm not aware of any (respected, at least) "new media thinker" who simply claims "information wants to be free." In fact, we've said the same thing that McGrory says in retort: Information doesn't want anything.

So why must McGrory set up the strawman?

Trust me, people, information really doesn't care if it's free or paid. I asked it. It said it just wants to be read and appreciated. As a matter of fact, every half-wit who has ever uttered that absurd slogan should be lined up on Morrissey Boulevard and forced to watch an endless loop of cute kitten videos on YouTube. This is the information that wants to be free, and free is exactly what it's worth.

Ah, the fallacy of cute kittens on YouTube. As if that's the only content that's free online. Never mind the vast databases of information -- much of it valuable that's widely available "for free." Hell, let's move away from the internet, and look at broadcast radio and television -- both of which employ the same basic business model as much of the free content on the internet. Did that get reduced to an endless loop of cute kittens? But because some guy who has a column doesn't like some cute kittens on YouTube, it's "proof" that free content on the internet doesn't work. Did you know that the printing press is used to print some incredibly awful books? According to McGrory-reasoning, that means that nothing produced by the printing press has any value.

And while we're at it, I sincerely admire all the Internet whiz kids in scarves and black-rimmed glasses who've taken up shop in the Globe building and helped make Boston.com one of the most widely read newspaper websites in the country. But enough talk about the 6 trillion page views every morning. Until and unless the website can support the army of reporters and editors who make it unique, then it has yet to be a true success.

Sure, but why are you blaming the "internet whiz kids," when it sounds like the problem is the people upstairs in the suits who failed to properly monetize the traffic.

This whole mess came to be because, years ago, some lunkhead in some newspaper front office made the decision to give stories away for free on the Web while continuing to charge for the paper, the assumption being that the windfall in digital advertising would make it all worthwhile. Just about every newspaper in America timidly followed suit.

Ah, the myth of "the original sin" of newspapers. Of course, it's not true. Some newspapers did try to charge. And they failed, because no one would pay. It wasn't "some lunkhead," it was competition and people realizing that if they charged, and their competitors didn't, they'd fail. By the way, that hasn't changed today, so beware the newspapers that think they'll get away with charging.

I'm no economist, but I believe we ended up being the only business in the history of commerce to give our product away for free one way and charge another.

Yes. I mean, other than music, which has done that for a while (listen free on the radio, buy the CD). Television lets you watch shows for free on TV, but sells the DVD. What else? Hell, right inside newspapers, comic strips were given away "for free" (with the newspaper), but top comic strips still made a ton of money on books (and merchandise). There are plenty of cases of products given away for free in one area and sold in another.

Then everyone acted perfectly shocked that paid newspaper circulations plummeted while free views on our websites soared. Picture these executives scratching their beards and saying, "I can't believe they're taking it for free."

I get that he's trying to be funny, but it's worth noting that circulation for newspapers started plunging long before the internet came along, and he conveniently pretends (incorrectly) that this was all in a vacuum. That if newspapers hadn't gone free, people still would have paid... not that competitors would have shown up and taken the traffic happily for free.

Yesterday's announcement was a game-changer to all this, a better-late-than-never victory for those of us who believe we should have been charging all along. Readers will still get a choice. Boston.com will remain free, with news updates through the day, but sometime next year Globe stories will live and hopefully thrive on a paid site, BostonGlobe.com.

Where you can get completely clueless commentary like this!

Free doesn't begin to pay for the expensive journalism that's produced here. Free doesn't pay for reporters who keep public officials and major institutions honest, and expose them when they're not. It doesn't pay for the best critics in the country, as we have. It doesn't pay for some of the best education reporters, the most attuned environment and public health reporters, sophisticated political reporters, tireless sports reporters, sharp financial reporters, and the restaurant critic who keeps chefs on their toes.

Free doesn't fund stories that expose corruption in the state's Probation Department, or lead to an overhaul of the pension system, or cost the House speaker his job. Free doesn't shake the Vatican to its core.

Say it with me again for the slow folks still catching up: giving away something for free does not mean you don't make money. The whole point of giving away content for free online was to make money elsewhere. Now, it may be true that The Boston Globe isn't very good at making money elsewhere, but that's not the fault of "free." It's the fault of people doing a bad job with their business model.

And whether or not "free" pays for all those things, one thing it has done? Made sure there's no good reason to pay the Boston Globe anything if they're going to spend it on clueless columns like Brian McGrory's.

But the bigger point is that newspapers have almost never been paid for by subscription fees. Today's subscription feeds don't even cover the cost of newsprint and delivery. In fact, you could argue that selling a newspaper at the price that many newspapers do today makes even less sense than giving it away for free online, because the margins are even worse directly for the paper. But the physical product makes it up (mostly) via ad revenue. The online ad revenue hasn't matched the offline one yet, but that doesn't mean it will never get there. It also doesn't mean that there aren't other interesting business models that newspapers can use. But slamming "free" isn't the answer. It's not even asking the right question. It's just wishful thinking.

Filed Under: boston globe, economics, history, paywalls

Rupert Murdoch's Paywall Disaster: Readers, Advertisers, Journalists & Publicists All Hate It

from the and-it's-working-for-who-exactly? dept

We had already seen the early indications that Rupert Murdoch's paywalls from The Times and The Sunday Times in the UK were a dismal failure, but as more information gets leaked about how the paywalls are working out, it's looking worse and worse. Beyond the fact that not too many people are signing up to pay, the move has upset advertisers who don't want to advertise to such a small audience:

Faced with a collapse in traffic to thetimes.co.uk, some advertisers have simply abandoned the site. Rob Lynam, head of press trading at the media agency MEC, whose clients include Lloyds Banking Group, Orange, Morrisons and Chanel, says, "We are just not advertising on it. If there's no traffic on there, there's no point in advertising on there." Lynam says he has been told by News International insiders that traffic to The Times site has fallen by 90 per cent since the introduction of charges.

On top of that, various PR people and publicists are keeping their sources away from Times reporters, preferring to provide access to news organizations where the story might actually get seen by people, rather than locked up behind Murdoch's paywall:

Publicists have told me that clients are increasingly reluctant to give interviews or stories to The Times, on the grounds that they would not be made freely available via search engines.

Oh yeah, and because of all of that, journalists at the papers aren't very happy either. None of this should be a surprise, of course. Many folks, including us, warned that this would happen. Murdoch and his supporters keep trying to spin a happy story about the paywall, and are expected to release some official data soon, but the feedback coming out already suggests that rather than "saving" his newspapers, this action may have sped up the troubles they face.

Filed Under: paywalls, rupert murdoch, the times

Wait, Wasn't A Paywall Supposed To Boost Ad Revenue?

from the that's-what-we-were-told dept

One of the claims we regularly hear from supporters of online newspaper paywalls is that even if it decreases page views, it can actually increase ad revenue, because the publisher has a lot more information about the audience and can sell that for more -- and, in theory, the audience is more loyal and engaged. We still haven't seen that in practice, of course. And it's worth pointing out that Cablevision, who put up a disastrously ill-conceived paywall for the newspaper Newsday, is now reporting that ad revenues continue to decline pretty substantially. To be fair, some will point out that Cablevision doesn't care that much, and is really just trying to use Newsday to stop people from dumping their cable TV/broadband offerings. That may be true -- and the same report does note that Cablevision added both TV and internet subscribers -- but it's worth pointing out for other news publications who make the claim about how paywalls can boost ad revenue.

Filed Under: ads, journalism, paywalls
Companies: cablevision, newsday

FT Claims Paywalls Are Morally Necessary... And Then Shows How Immoral The FT Is

from the that's-not-how-it-works dept

A few folks have sent over the thorough debunking, done by Boing Boing's Rob Beschizza, of the CEO of the Financial Times, John Ridding's recent interview about paywalls (amusingly done with staunchly paywall-free The Guardian). Most of Beschizza's debunking focuses on Ridding's slapping around the old "information wants to be free" strawman, which isn't the argument anyone is making. Yes, Stewart Brand said it a long time ago as a part of a much longer and more complex concept, but there are serious economic and business model discussions held by lots of people that think paywalls are a bad idea, and none of it has anything to do with "Information wants to be free."

But what's even more ridiculous is Ridding's claim that paywalls are morally necessary. Seriously:

There is a moral dimension too, as he makes clear by drawing on the views of Henry Luce, a co-founder of Time magazine.

Luce, quoted in a Time article by Walter Isaacson last February, could not stomach the idea of papers and magazines relying solely on advertising revenue.

He called the formula "morally abhorrent" and "economically self-defeating." A publication's primary duty was to readers rather than advertisers. The advertising-only revenue model is self-defeating, because, eventually, it weakens the bond between publication and reader.

Now, to be clear, the pronoun choices in those sentences are a little ambiguous, so it's not entirely clear if it's Ridding, Luce or Isaacson who specifically said advertising only was "morally abhorrent" and "economically self-defeating." But, either way, it does seem like all three share that general sense. There are a few problems with this, logically. First, it assumes that there are two and only two revenue streams available: advertising and subscription. That is not the case at all.

Second, if it's morally abhorrent to rely on advertising, then pretty much every major publication is morally abhorrent -- including the Financial Times, in getting a pretty good chunk of their revenue from advertising. Historically, if you look at publications, subscription revenue hasn't even covered printing and delivery costs -- meaning that subscriptions were effectively meaningless in terms of actually mattering to a paper's bottom line.

But, the biggest point that disproves Ridding is given by Ridding himself (and highlighted by Beschizza). Apparently, in an interview just a few months ago, Ridding talked up how the subscriptions were useful in getting advertisers to pay more:

"If you have an audience that is paying for your journalism they are engaged and that is an important message for advertisers."

Remember, this is the guy who was just saying that if a publications primary duty was to advertisers rather than readers, it was morally abhorrent. But, even here he admits that the subscriptions are driven by... advertisers. If this was really about getting the influence of advertisers away from newspapers, why is he playing up the increased ad revenue due to the paywall?

Filed Under: morality, paywalls
Companies: financial times

Debunking The Logic In Favor Of Paywalls

from the big-money-fail dept

This is a guest post from regular commenter, Ima Fish, and is cross posted from his own blog:

Marion Maneker over at the Big Money website wrote a piece entitled "The Weird Logic of Paywall Challengers."  He attempts to show that the arguments used by those against paywalls are illogical.  He also attempts to show that paywalls are not only a good idea but a necessity for news websites.

First, a little background.  Some internet news sites are making people pay to view content.  That's called a paywall.  You can't view the content without paying.  So far the attempts to implement paywalls have been complete failures.  For example, when Newsday set up a paywall, only 35 people paid.  After the Times instituted a paywall, its readership dropped by 2/3rds.  And because those articles are not being indexed by Google (or Bing or Yahoo), they're essentially invisible to people on the web.

So what's Maneker arguments in favor of paywalls? What errors in logic have those against paywalls made? Let's go through his points.

His first point is that even if ad revenues are back, news outlets should diversify by charging anyway.  He doesn't seem to get this, but as I explained above, paywalls kill off advertising by driving viewers and readers away.  So Maneker's argument that news outlets should diversify by relying on both advertising and paywalls fails as it is self contradictory. 

His second point is that news outlets charging "for content has always been part of its long-term strategy."  He's absolutely right that newspapers have tended to charge for content. However, that was never done for profit. Profits always came from advertising, classifieds, and obituaries. 

There were two reasons newspapers did charge.  The first was to cover the costs of publishing.  However, those costs no longer exist in the digital realm. 

The second reason newspapers charged was to show advertisers how many actual readers they had.  If a newspaper publisher simply gave away its papers, it could claim that millions of people are reading when in fact no one is reading.  People paying for newspapers is a pretty good indication to advertisers that people are in fact reading.  But in the digital realm news outlets do not need paying customers to tell advertisers how many unique people are reading.  All that information can be tracked automatically in real time.  Heck, in the digital realm news outlets can give specific information about page views and what ads are working and what ads are not.

His third point is that "central to any media strategy should be the idea of charging for some content."  Has he never listened to broadcast radio?  Has he never watched broadcast TV?  Has he never used Google, Facebook, or Twitter?  And despite being contradicted by legitimate business models, his third argument is circular.  He's essentially arguing that news outlets should charge for content because they should charge for content.  It only concludes its premise without telling us why.

Along with his third point he pulls the following assertion out of his ass, "Digital distribution should make content much cheaper--but it shouldn't make it free."  Why shouldn't it be free?  He never explains.

Hundreds of years ago the most efficient means to distribute news was to print it on paper and deliver it locally.  Times changed.  Radio came along and made delivering news in real time more efficient.  But it still lacked the newspaper's depth.  TV news had the same problem.  But the internet does not.  It has the efficiency, the immediacy, and the depth.  Because the distribution costs are essentially zero, economically speaking, there is no reason why the cost of the content should not also be free.

If Maneker's piece is any indication, the pro-paywallers' dream of making us pay for news is a lost cause.

Filed Under: paywalls

Australian Newspaper Says The Only Way To Get Its iPad App Is To Subscribe To The Paper Version

from the you're-doing-it-wrong dept

rorybaust points out that the Sydney Morning Herald has joined the popular trend these days of offering an iPad app of its content. Nothing wrong with that, of course. However, what's odd is that the business model appears to be that you need to get a paper subscription in many cases to get the iPad version. It's no secret that some publications view the iPad and paywalls as ways to slow down the rate at which people are ditching subscriptions to paper publications -- but it seems particularly short-sighted to make that the only way to get access to the digital app. And that seems doubly true when people who have seen the app say it's little more than a PDF of the physical paper. If you're going to push an iPad app, at least let it take advantage of some of what the digital platform allows...

Filed Under: business models, ipad, paywalls, sydney morning herald

Early Indications Say Paywall For The Times Is A Dreadful Failure

from the no-surprise-there dept

Well, this will hardly surprise anyone, but as we predicted, Rupert Murdoch's new paywall for the Times is not looking so hot right now. Of course, there are no official stats (in part because Murdoch is hiding them, Michael Wolff (who is well connected in the Murdoch world, and wrote an entire book about the guy) says that his sources are reporting that almost no one is signing up to pay for the new site, and even those grandfathered in thanks to a paper subscription aren't using the site. As one of his sources explained, the new site is "an empty world."

Wolff's piece makes a few other important, but not surprising, points. He notes that journalists won't like being in such a world (and we've already seen some jump ship. But, he also notes that this makes The Times a lot less attractive as a place for folks to go with breaking stories:

A Murdoch and Fleet Street veteran with whom I've been corresponding about the paywall reported to me on his recent conversation with an A-list entertainment publicist: "What was really interesting to me was that this person volunteered a blinding realization. 'Why would I get any of my clients to talk to the Times or the Sunday Times if they are behind a paywall? Who can see it? I can't even share a link and they aren't on search. It's as though their writers don't exist anymore.'"

Of course, some reporters might note that they don't need or want publicists anyway. But, from the standpoint of reporters being able to get a good quote from someone, it seems like most PR people/publicists will go where the traffic actually is, rather than an empty walled garden.

The other point that Wolff brings up is a point that we've raised numerous times before: the way many people interact with news these days is they want to "interact" with it. They don't want to just passively "consume" it. But the whole concept of the paywall is to passively consume it. I was thinking about that as I watched this promo video that The Times put out to try to get people to subscribe to the paywall. As the person who sent it to me noted, you keep waiting for the reporters to turn to the screen and say "Please! Help me! Subscribe or Rupert will shoot me! I have a family!" But the other telling thing is that many of the reporters focus on how they can use this new-fangled "web" thing to deliver news in interesting ways. There's very little mention of actually interacting with the community at all (one reporter mentions it, but that's it). To everyone else, it's still very much about "we are the experts, you take what we give you."

We already know that with a similar experiment, the newspaper Newsday in New York got all of 35 outside subscribers. You have to believe that The Times is doing at least somewhat better than that. The question is how much... and (more importantly) how will they adjust? In the meantime, I'm curious if folks from The Times are still standing by their prediction that newspapers who don't follow in their footsteps will go out of business.

Filed Under: paywalls, rupert murdoch, the times

Newspapers Doing Well With Membership Clubs Instead Of Paywalls

from the join-the-club dept

One of our biggest complaints with news publications that insist "a paywall is the answer" is the fact that they never seem to actually add any more value to their publication that makes it worth paying. They're so focused on getting people to "pay for content," they miss the fact that there's plenty of competing content, and the real focus should be on providing value that builds a community. Thankfully, not all newspapers are making that mistake. Bill Mitchell, at Poynter, has a post about a new study looking at newspaper business models that both highlights that straight paywalls need to be about more than just paying for content, but also which highlights the success some publications are having with membership clubs, which specifically provide additional value behind the content for those who are willing to subscribe:

Take, for example, the street-level bookshop at Politiken, the leading newspaper in Denmark. I stopped in there one drizzly Saturday morning last Fall after teaching in Poynter's Scandinavian Summer School. I picked up a couple of travel guides and an English language version of a popular Danish novel. But I paid my bill and left the shop oblivious to the range of products and services available to Politiken subscribers via its Politiken Plus loyalty program.

"We can say 70 percent of (our subscribers) use Politiken Plus during the year," the paper's sales and marketing director, Poul Skott, told the authors of the WAN report. "The more products we have the better ... the harder it is to say good-bye to the newspaper. It's going to hurt a bit, because you can only get a Plus card as a newspaper subscriber."

This Google translate page will give you a sense of what the program offers, including special offers on travel, restaurants and theater, and how the activities and deals of Politiken Plus are integrated into the newspaper.

This actually fits in well with some of the suggestions that people came up with back at the Techdirt Saves* Journalism event last month, highlighting how publications can focus on building up services for the community which keep them loyal to the publication and the community itself.

It sounds like the early results from such programs suggest they work well (or, at the very least, better than comparable newspapers that don't use them). Still, reading through the analysis, it still feels like most publications are looking at these programs as ways to "retain subscribers," not as a central reason to buy. That is, they're still focused on "selling the newspaper" with this is a bonus add-on, rather than trying to sell this bundle, which is made more valuable by getting the news as well.

Filed Under: membership clubs, newspapers, paywalls

Newspapers Having Trouble Reporting On Their Own Paywalls

from the lock-'em-up dept

It appears that newspaper giant Gannett, owner of USA Today and a bunch of regional newspapers, is beginning to experiment with putting up some paywalls on many of its regional newspapers. Jeff Sonderman has been pointing out, on his Twitter feed, that many of the newspaper's announcements about their own paywalls are really bad reporting. Now it looks like Steve Buttry has written up a blog post pointing out just how bad these newspapers are at announcing their own paywalls.

They give misleading headlines, they pretend that paywalls are some huge journalistic advance (rather than just a business model choice -- and one that's been tried and failed a bunch), and most importantly, they all totally bury the lede, and don't bring up the paywall until many paragraphs into the article. In the online announcements from The Tallahassee Democrat, the Greenville News and the St. George Spectrum, the paywall isn't even mentioned on the first page of each of those articles. Instead, you have to click through to the later pages to even find out what the announcements are about! Talk about burying the lede...

All three waste the beginning of their articles talking up how great they are and how important they are, as newspapers, to their community. But it's all just a way to try to butter people up before hitting them with "so now we're charging for access to our web content." They're acting as if they think their readers are stupid -- which isn't exactly a strong selling point for getting people to pay you money.

Buttry points to other failings in these announcements that any business journalist would have certainly covered if doing the same story about another business:

The editors and publishers who signed the Gannett announcements boast of the resources they commit to covering local news, without acknowledging they have cut those resources severely in companywide staff cuts in recent years. The Tallahassee and Greenville announcements prattle on at length about their newspapers' history (appropriate, I guess, since they are clinging to a strategy rooted in the past).

None of the three announcements discloses that the papers are conducting an experiment for Gannett (in fact, none of the announcements even mentions Gannett). I'm pretty sure that the editors of those papers would expect their business writers to note such a fact in stories about any other business in town.

What we're seeing is the implicit realization that these newspapers know a paywall won't work. If it was something their audience wanted, they would be upfront and honest about it. Or if they had a good rationale for the decision they would be upfront and honest about it. Instead they have to be misleading, defensive and hide the important point. Quite an "experiment" by Gannett...

Filed Under: newspapers, paywalls, reporting
Companies: gannett

Sunday Times: Pay Up To Have Us Tell You How We Were Totally Wrong In Our Climate Change Story

from the that's-worth-paying-for? dept

Now that Rupert Murdoch has put up his paywalls around The Times of London and the Sunday Times, it's creating some interesting moral and journalistic dilemmas. Earlier this year, apparently the Sunday Times ran a highly publicized report claiming that climate change scientists had made predictions about rainforest threats from climate change that were based on bogus information. Unfortunately, it turns out that that the bogus part was actually in the coverage by The Times, and not the researchers. Months later, The Times has issued a massive retraction. While the Sunday Times has simply disappeared the original article from the web (article? what article?), the retraction is behind the paywall. This is leading some to question the journalistic ethics here. If you put out a huge, publicly-accessible, fear-mongering report that accuses researchers of relying on junk science... and it turns out to be totally wrong, doesn't there seem to be something wrong about then putting the retraction behind a paywall? I recognize that the Sunday Times' strategy is for all of its content to be paywalled, but there are times when you make an exception. This seems like an important one.

Filed Under: corrections, journalism, paywalls, retractions
Companies: news corp., the times