How Do You Make Money from This *@&#^!*ing Thing? Or: Revolutionizing the Economics of Digital Content
(I wrote this a few months ago as a thought-piece for a group of journalists strategizing about digital media and citizen journalism. Feel free to post your comments!)
The Little Engine That Could…. Revolutionize Media As We Know It
By Farai Chideya
I once sat next to Google co-founder Larry Page at a private dinner. He spoke so softly that I sometimes had trouble hearing him, but as I questioned him, he made one point clear. The problem with his otherwise fabulous invention, I said, was that if information didn’t exist on the internet, it might as well not exist at all. Kids don’t go to the library to do papers anymore, not if they know how to use a search engine. But what, I asked, about all the magnificent historical works that deserve a place in our consciousness? How would the internet generation find those documents?
“There are ways of dealing with that,” Page said.
I asked the same question again in a couple more ways. I was once a rare books researcher. You can’t find most of those dusty old tomes on the net. And what about out-of-print works? What about the things that students should cite in their term papers, but don’t? What about journalism from the last century that isn’t digitized?
“There are ways around that,” Page said again.
At the time, I thought he was blowing me off. But then, a couple weeks later, I picked up the New York Times. On the front page was an article about Google’s partnership with key libraries, including Harvard and Oxford, to scan in historical documents.
So there was a way around that.
==========
The rise of digital culture is producing larger problems for media than the loss of history. Try the loss of the media’s future on for size. Editors, publishers and producers are looking at a digital future and crying that the sky is falling. There is no way, they argue, to earn sufficient operating revenue from online or digital media. Customers expect it but won’t pay for it, a lose-lose situation for producers.
But there is a way around that too. And Larry Page has probably already invented it. But since he hasn’t announced it yet, I’ll jot down my ideas about what might make online and digitally distributed media financially viable and journalistically sound. At the very least, I hope I provide food for thought. This isn’t meant to be a top-to-bottom overview of the state of digital media, but rather a few data points and arguments worth keeping track of.
Part one of this document gives an overview of some of the challenges facing media. Part two discusses two possible technological devices that could revolutionize media, “the little engine that could” and the “Swiss Army knife.”
Part I: Is the sky falling? Or was that just a drop of rain?: A media in crisis, but with opportunities.
Traditional print and broadcast media have been losing market share for years. Online upstarts (particularly the blogosphere) are growing in popularity, but much of the content doesn’t fit widely accepted journalistic norms on ethics and fairness. And let’s be honest: a lot of it is just plain bad. It’s badly written, badly reported, badly shot (if video) and badly distributed.
So the cry has gone out from traditional institutions to save the media. But does that mean saving old media institutions? Or does it mean preserving key journalistic principles in an era of change?
It would be a mistake to think that old journalism (and by that I mean print and broadcast media) will be able to survive by the rules of bygone days. To the extent that “old media” thrives, it will be by leveraging the economies of scale, speed of distribution, and customization of the digital era.
I want my Me TV! Or, why customization is changing media customers.
Today, people want what they want, and they want it right now.
I mean, wouldn’t you love it if someone created a newspaper or magazine or television channel just for you? Maybe you just want wrestling, local news, and cooking shows. That’s a fantasy, right?
Not really. If you have TiVo, then you can create your version of “Me TV.” Digital Video Recorders (DVRs) like TiVo essentially allow you to create your own video-on-demand channel. I met one Bay Area techie who has a home computer server. He’s hooked it up so that when he’s on the road, he can plug his laptop into a broadband connection, log in to his home computer… and watch “The Daily Show” stored on his TiVo while he’s in, say, Peru.
Now that’s some badassed customization right there. And for the moment, only super-geeks with their super-powers can hook it up. But in the future—not the sci-fi future, but the near future—companies will create tools that give consumers more and more choices about what they read and watch.
The TiVo principle is at work in all forms of media. Newspapers with online editions offer customized email blasts on the topics you want to read about. Podcasting, or digital downloads of radio shows, mean you can essentially program your own radio station. Customization is changing not only the business but the customers. Customers are no longer satisfied with one-size-fits-all products. But many traditional journalism organizations are footing the cost of customization alone, unable to directly recoup for advances in giving customers what they want.
I want YOUR Me TV! Or, the role of the influencer in “remixing” media.
There’s one thing more frightening to media execs than consumers who want absolute customization. That is consumers who let someone else (but not the media producer) dictate what they read, listen to, or watch.
There’s a term in the entertainment industry, “influencer.” Somebody who’s an influencer is the magnet that all the rest of us little iron shavings follow. The theory goes like this: When an influencer starts dancing with a trashcan lid on his head, you will too. When an influencer starts drinking Red Bull and vodka at a party, even though it tastes like battery acid, so will you.
When an influencer starts a blog, you’ll read it. And if you have your own blog, you’ll link to it. In the future, if an influencer can share her TiVo list with the world, people will record the shows she likes. If you’re the influencer, you can use your magnetism (intellectual or otherwise) to draw people into your orbit.
The concept of influencers is, well, influential in modern media. As media fragments, more and more people are seeking out voices they like or trust to guide them through the maze. The odd thing about digital influencers is that they often find a way to monetize the content that most news organizations can’t. Say the Houston Chronicle writes a fabulous series on motorcycle culture. And a motorcycle blog links to it. Some consumers would voluntarily donate to the blogger while reading the linked Chronicle coverage for free. The blogger, in this case, is being paid for his or her taste and selection; the primary media producer gets not much out of the deal except a couple more visits to the site and a fraction of a penny for online ad sales.
Today’s media influencers can be likened to DJs. A good DJ is valued for her ability to string together songs of different styles and pacings to create a seamless musical experience. Likewise, a powerful media influencer like, say, blogger Markos Moulitsas of the Daily Kos, can “remix” news and opinion in a way that resonates with a national audience. (The Daily Kos, a left political blog, gets 8 million visitors a month.)
But some journalistic values like fairness aren’t faring well among influencers. In fact, the bloggosphere favors people and institutions who come from a strong ideological position. That’s because the passion of partisan rhetoric “pops.” In television, an anchor or host who “pops” has an unquantifiable mix of attractiveness, charisma, and authority. People like to watch people who “pop.” And, in the new media world, we like to read people who “pop.” But much of traditional media mistakes blandness for fairness. Without any apparent passion, traditional journalism looks like chaperone at a high school dance: all caution and caveats, and no fun.
A powerful, relevant, nonpartisan journalism?
Which brings us to the purpose—and the attitude—of journalism. All professions are stereotyped by attitude. Firefighters are heroic. Accountants are nitpicky. Reporters used to be seen as crusading mavericks but now, I would argue, are seen as spineless little women and men. The public’s respect for journalism has waned in the face of questions about consolidation, bias and independence. Many Americans seem to prefer the echo chamber of partisan/ideological media—where at least they hear their views parroted back to them—than a nonpartisan media that is so cautious not to offend it seems toothless.
So: how can nonpartisan media regain the esteem and attention of the American public? First, media producers will have to listen both to their audience and to the people who aren’t reading/watching/listening. In some communities, people may want more local news. In others, they might want more analysis of national and international stories, or more investigative reporting.
I suspect that in most communities, people want the news to be more relevant. “Relevant” is a dangerously vague word, but here’s what I mean. If Haiti wants debt relief, why should I care? If a bomb goes off in Madrid, why should I care? Heck, if some person I don’t know is shot in some neighborhood I never visit in my own city, why should I care? In each case, a good journalist can explicitly or implicitly explain the relevance of the story to the life of the reader. But if that connection isn’t made, much of the news seems like a random assortment of facts—usually depressing ones. The saying in TV news is “if it bleeds, it leads.” And for some people, crime and disaster “pop.” But other Americans view the constant stream of bad news as toxic. (Dr. Andrew Weil even recommends a news fast as part of his health regimen!)
There’s a difference between watching helicopter footage of a car chase and reading an article on debt relief. The first is easy to comprehend, cinematic, and, unless you live off the stretch of freeway the car is going down, irrelevant to your daily life. The second is harder to understand, less “sexy,” but if written vividly can make you understand more about your role as an American citizen and voter. If written poorly, it’s the kind of thing you flip past on your way to the arts and sports pages. And judging from newspaper circulation figures, a lot of people aren’t making the connection between hard news and their lives. Which raises the question: what does make the connection?
Citizen=journalist. Is that a good thing?
Journalism was once a home for tough working-class reporters. But it’s turned into a “book learning” occupation, where you go to school to learn to do something that you then do until you die or are downsized. Most journalists are not expected to do other kinds of work. In fact, it’s frowned upon.
But a new movement towards “community journalism” argues that everyday people might just know more about some things, particularly local issues, than traditional journos. For example, a recent Los Angeles Times article highlighted the efforts of a Greensboro, North Carolina newspaper to get into the information-age swing. They use reporters as bloggers, link to non-staff bloggers, and are building a cadre of local citizens who will report on their neighborhoods. But the Times report adds, “It's unclear how all this will generate significant revenue for the newspaper. The paper's website was profitable last year, said [editor John] Robinson, but right now he's not sure what the future business model might look like…. `We'll figure out a way to make money,’ said Robinson, who runs a newsroom of 120.”
“We’ll figure out a way to make money,” sounds good in theory, but can be hell in practice. Wait, I take that back: it doesn’t even sound good in theory. While the idea of getting free content from your readers sounds compelling, it takes a lot of editing time to put it into print or online in a form that makes sense and reflects sound editorial judgment. Newspapers who see community journalism as a free lunch are in for a bad case of indigestion.
Another player getting into the mix of community journalism is Craiglist.org founder Craig Newmark. The founder of the phenomenally popular free listings service is working with a couple of Bay Area stalwarts to start a daily political report. An Associated Press article says Newmark “believes the reason why newspapers are losing circulation is that too many traditional journalists are willing to quote politicians and business executives even if they're blatantly lying — merely for the sake of perceived objectivity. He'd prefer an `open source’ model of journalism where legions of volunteers act as writers, assignment editors and fact checkers to challenge mainstream journalists.”
Newmark’s idea of community journalism (or open source journalism) is very different from the Greensboro model. And terms like “community journalism” are overused and over-broad. But both iterations of the concept have promise. Local citizens will have a better idea of what’s going on in their communities than a reporter who parachutes in. But they may also have biases, axes to grind, and poor writing skills. (I can just imagine a headline that read, “People should not park on lawns,” with the first line of the article being, “That means you, Edna!”) Open-source journalism could succeed by learning from the Wiki model of allowing volunteers to collaboratively create content. But the Wiki model applies best to an informed, tech-savvy, honest, and large group of people. (Large so that any error has many fact-checkers.) In the case of voting and political coverage, the people most at risk of being under-informed and not going to the polls will not read online content, let alone contribute to it. There’s always the question of whether community journalism, if done only on a digital platform, will widen rather than shrink the information divide. That doesn’t make it an unworthy or un-influential effort, it just puts some constraints on how many people this new journalism will reach.
But what if community journalism could be generated and exchanged digitally, but transmitted to all sorts of platforms: print, television, radio, SMS/text messaging? Of course it can, and in some cases it already is, but what if…what IF…you could actually make money on it?
II. So, how do you make money on this thing?
A reporter at a newspaper or television station gets paid for putting his or her time into a story; the company gets paid by advertisers; the advertisers get paid by people who buy things. A public radio station gets underwriting from companies and foundations and donations from listeners. A freelancer gets paid on a case-by-case basis by a company. Some bloggers get paid by donations to their websites. Most people who contribute sporadically to the bloggosphere get no money at all.
As media becomes less centralized, the financial rewards and burdens are being radically redistributed. News organizations with shrinking audiences also have shrinking ad rate bases. And yet they’re expected by consumers to provide more free online products while they have fewer resources. And then there are the dedicated amateurs—not only writers but videographers and photographers—who provide free content to community media (on or offline) while they struggle to pay the rent and the car note.
One of the realities of modern media is that everything that can become multi-platform will become multi-platform. The New York Times is a print newspaper. But it produces broadcast television; runs audio and video on its websites; and distributes and syndicates material electronically. ABC News is primarily a television entity, but it has one of the most widely read political blogs (“The Note”) and radio broadcasts. Fox News is now distributed by cellphone. The list goes on.
Consumers, by and large, are not willing to pay directly for subsidiary products of traditional media companies. There are some exceptions, like the Wall Street Journal, which keeps most of its online content in a fee-based system. So if consumers aren’t willing to pay directly, would smaller media producers and “remixers” consider paying for material that they can better market and monetize? And could smaller producers be financially rewarded for the work they do if their work is acquired by others? It’s possible, under the right conditions, and with the right technology. But what is that technology?
The little engine that could, or the dynamic multi-platform content engine.
This is where I go off into the territory of the purely speculative. But while I’m making my intellectual foray, companies like Yahoo and Google are racing to come up with a marketable solution to the problem of being paid for content.
As media becomes more distributed and multi-platform, the one thing that media producers need most is a secure system for buying and selling content. If you think about a newspaper syndication service, you have an electronic transfer of material that mainly ends up in print. If a newspaper subscribes to, say, a particular columnist, they will get her work for a set fee (usually based on subscriber numbers) and then can run it in their paper.
The syndication model is outdated in many ways. First of all, in a multi-platform media world, you don’t want to be someone who just provides text to a company that needs text. If you’re a producer, you want to be able to sell text, audio, and video through one engine or system. Likewise, if you’re a publisher, you want to be able to buy text, audio, and video through the same provider. The syndication model also relies on one company aggregating independent producers (columnists) and marketing them to a set of subscribers. In the new media world, you want to be able to sell to whoever’s buying, and buy from whoever’s selling.
The nature of digital information is that it’s easily copied and tough to protect. So any digital “marketplace of ideas,” i.e. content, would have to be secure. (Of course, any “secure” system is hackable, so we’re not talking absolutes.)
So, say you create a secure online market. First, you charge people to subscribe to it. If you subscribe, for a modest fee, you get the ability to browse the wares on the site. There have to be wares to browse, of course. I envision these as summaries or excerpts of articles for purchase; short clips of video and audio for purchase; and thumbnails of photographs for purchase. Media producers would be charged a nominal fee to upload their excerpts, clips, or thumbnails into the system. And then the buyers, using a Google-style search engine, would see if there was anything they wanted.
Buyers could range from large traditional media outlets to small scrappy online newsletters. In a dynamic system, you could have several pricing models operating at once. Some examples:
1. Flat-fee for one time use. In this case, anyone who wanted could purchase the item for a price set by the seller/producer. The sale would stipulate one-time-use only, though that could be hard to enforce.
2. Flat-fee for unlimited use.
3. Exclusive auction. In this case, if a seller/producer had a hot item (say, video of Michael Jackson’s nose falling off), she could auction it to the highest bidder within a time frame of her choosing.
4. Exclusive first-rights auction and second-rights sales. In the book and magazine world, it’s common to sell first serial rights at a premium and reprint rights at a lower fee. (The first rights have a certain time period of exclusivity.) You could do that via an engine as well.
5. Subscriber-base indexed fee. In this case, media outlets would be charged a fee per subscriber, much as syndicated newspaper columns charge more to larger papers for the same content they sell cheaply to smaller papers.
6. Special licensing and sales. If a producer/seller wanted to use a Creative Commons license that allowed nonprofits to acquire the content for free, but commercial companies had to pay, that too could work in this system.
In some ways, the system I envision would be a hybrid of Google and eBay. Let’s call it e-Google. Or maybe, for short, Eagle. The company that invents an Eagle, a little engine that could, would get paid both by subscribers and by taking a cut from sales. The biggest challenge is making Eagle secure and enforceable. If you logged on to browse the content for sale, you’d want to know there wasn’t a version floating around for free before you bought.
The Swiss Army Knife
A completely different technological tool that could invigorate community media is what I call the “Swiss Army knife.” Less one tool than a toolbox, it would provide citizen-journalists with a one stop shop for setting up their own information outlet. The idea would be to take the innovations from many different content technologies and aggregate them into a customizable fee-based service. For example, if you wanted to create a blog with RSS feeds and weekly email blasts, plus the ability to take donations or subscription orders, you could do that. If you wanted to add a calendar, offer your users email accounts, give them a chance to sign up for broadband at a discount, or buy a domain, you could do that too. All of these tools exist already but it can be prohibitive (in terms of time, money, and learning curve) for individuals to put them together in a coordinated way. A coherent, customizable one-stop technology shop would lower the barriers of entry into creating citizen media.
Here are some example of functionalities that might go into the Swiss Army Knife, and examples of who’s already a player in the field.
1. Blog creation (Blogger, Moveable Type)
2. Web-based email (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail)
3. Email listservs (Yahoo)
4. Connectivity (Earthlink, AOL, cable operators)
5. Donations engines (Groundspring, Paypal)
6. Domain registration (Godaddy, Network Solutions)
7. Tailored events marketing/email blasts (Flavorpill, GenArt)
8. Social networking/business networking (LinkedIn, Tribe, Friendster)
9. Contact management (Plaxo)
These are just a few examples of services that might go into the Swiss Army Knife. But how would you create it? Companies would either have to work in partnership (less likely), or key players in one area would have to create tools in the other areas (possible), or key players will buy smaller companies that offer these functionalities (as when Google bought Blogger; highly likely). In fact, the likelihood that the Swiss Army Knife has already been invented is highly likely. We’ll have to see who rolls it out first, and whether it can do what we ask of it.
The Little Engine That Could…. Revolutionize Media As We Know It
By Farai Chideya
I once sat next to Google co-founder Larry Page at a private dinner. He spoke so softly that I sometimes had trouble hearing him, but as I questioned him, he made one point clear. The problem with his otherwise fabulous invention, I said, was that if information didn’t exist on the internet, it might as well not exist at all. Kids don’t go to the library to do papers anymore, not if they know how to use a search engine. But what, I asked, about all the magnificent historical works that deserve a place in our consciousness? How would the internet generation find those documents?
“There are ways of dealing with that,” Page said.
I asked the same question again in a couple more ways. I was once a rare books researcher. You can’t find most of those dusty old tomes on the net. And what about out-of-print works? What about the things that students should cite in their term papers, but don’t? What about journalism from the last century that isn’t digitized?
“There are ways around that,” Page said again.
At the time, I thought he was blowing me off. But then, a couple weeks later, I picked up the New York Times. On the front page was an article about Google’s partnership with key libraries, including Harvard and Oxford, to scan in historical documents.
So there was a way around that.
==========
The rise of digital culture is producing larger problems for media than the loss of history. Try the loss of the media’s future on for size. Editors, publishers and producers are looking at a digital future and crying that the sky is falling. There is no way, they argue, to earn sufficient operating revenue from online or digital media. Customers expect it but won’t pay for it, a lose-lose situation for producers.
But there is a way around that too. And Larry Page has probably already invented it. But since he hasn’t announced it yet, I’ll jot down my ideas about what might make online and digitally distributed media financially viable and journalistically sound. At the very least, I hope I provide food for thought. This isn’t meant to be a top-to-bottom overview of the state of digital media, but rather a few data points and arguments worth keeping track of.
Part one of this document gives an overview of some of the challenges facing media. Part two discusses two possible technological devices that could revolutionize media, “the little engine that could” and the “Swiss Army knife.”
Part I: Is the sky falling? Or was that just a drop of rain?: A media in crisis, but with opportunities.
Traditional print and broadcast media have been losing market share for years. Online upstarts (particularly the blogosphere) are growing in popularity, but much of the content doesn’t fit widely accepted journalistic norms on ethics and fairness. And let’s be honest: a lot of it is just plain bad. It’s badly written, badly reported, badly shot (if video) and badly distributed.
So the cry has gone out from traditional institutions to save the media. But does that mean saving old media institutions? Or does it mean preserving key journalistic principles in an era of change?
It would be a mistake to think that old journalism (and by that I mean print and broadcast media) will be able to survive by the rules of bygone days. To the extent that “old media” thrives, it will be by leveraging the economies of scale, speed of distribution, and customization of the digital era.
I want my Me TV! Or, why customization is changing media customers.
Today, people want what they want, and they want it right now.
I mean, wouldn’t you love it if someone created a newspaper or magazine or television channel just for you? Maybe you just want wrestling, local news, and cooking shows. That’s a fantasy, right?
Not really. If you have TiVo, then you can create your version of “Me TV.” Digital Video Recorders (DVRs) like TiVo essentially allow you to create your own video-on-demand channel. I met one Bay Area techie who has a home computer server. He’s hooked it up so that when he’s on the road, he can plug his laptop into a broadband connection, log in to his home computer… and watch “The Daily Show” stored on his TiVo while he’s in, say, Peru.
Now that’s some badassed customization right there. And for the moment, only super-geeks with their super-powers can hook it up. But in the future—not the sci-fi future, but the near future—companies will create tools that give consumers more and more choices about what they read and watch.
The TiVo principle is at work in all forms of media. Newspapers with online editions offer customized email blasts on the topics you want to read about. Podcasting, or digital downloads of radio shows, mean you can essentially program your own radio station. Customization is changing not only the business but the customers. Customers are no longer satisfied with one-size-fits-all products. But many traditional journalism organizations are footing the cost of customization alone, unable to directly recoup for advances in giving customers what they want.
I want YOUR Me TV! Or, the role of the influencer in “remixing” media.
There’s one thing more frightening to media execs than consumers who want absolute customization. That is consumers who let someone else (but not the media producer) dictate what they read, listen to, or watch.
There’s a term in the entertainment industry, “influencer.” Somebody who’s an influencer is the magnet that all the rest of us little iron shavings follow. The theory goes like this: When an influencer starts dancing with a trashcan lid on his head, you will too. When an influencer starts drinking Red Bull and vodka at a party, even though it tastes like battery acid, so will you.
When an influencer starts a blog, you’ll read it. And if you have your own blog, you’ll link to it. In the future, if an influencer can share her TiVo list with the world, people will record the shows she likes. If you’re the influencer, you can use your magnetism (intellectual or otherwise) to draw people into your orbit.
The concept of influencers is, well, influential in modern media. As media fragments, more and more people are seeking out voices they like or trust to guide them through the maze. The odd thing about digital influencers is that they often find a way to monetize the content that most news organizations can’t. Say the Houston Chronicle writes a fabulous series on motorcycle culture. And a motorcycle blog links to it. Some consumers would voluntarily donate to the blogger while reading the linked Chronicle coverage for free. The blogger, in this case, is being paid for his or her taste and selection; the primary media producer gets not much out of the deal except a couple more visits to the site and a fraction of a penny for online ad sales.
Today’s media influencers can be likened to DJs. A good DJ is valued for her ability to string together songs of different styles and pacings to create a seamless musical experience. Likewise, a powerful media influencer like, say, blogger Markos Moulitsas of the Daily Kos, can “remix” news and opinion in a way that resonates with a national audience. (The Daily Kos, a left political blog, gets 8 million visitors a month.)
But some journalistic values like fairness aren’t faring well among influencers. In fact, the bloggosphere favors people and institutions who come from a strong ideological position. That’s because the passion of partisan rhetoric “pops.” In television, an anchor or host who “pops” has an unquantifiable mix of attractiveness, charisma, and authority. People like to watch people who “pop.” And, in the new media world, we like to read people who “pop.” But much of traditional media mistakes blandness for fairness. Without any apparent passion, traditional journalism looks like chaperone at a high school dance: all caution and caveats, and no fun.
A powerful, relevant, nonpartisan journalism?
Which brings us to the purpose—and the attitude—of journalism. All professions are stereotyped by attitude. Firefighters are heroic. Accountants are nitpicky. Reporters used to be seen as crusading mavericks but now, I would argue, are seen as spineless little women and men. The public’s respect for journalism has waned in the face of questions about consolidation, bias and independence. Many Americans seem to prefer the echo chamber of partisan/ideological media—where at least they hear their views parroted back to them—than a nonpartisan media that is so cautious not to offend it seems toothless.
So: how can nonpartisan media regain the esteem and attention of the American public? First, media producers will have to listen both to their audience and to the people who aren’t reading/watching/listening. In some communities, people may want more local news. In others, they might want more analysis of national and international stories, or more investigative reporting.
I suspect that in most communities, people want the news to be more relevant. “Relevant” is a dangerously vague word, but here’s what I mean. If Haiti wants debt relief, why should I care? If a bomb goes off in Madrid, why should I care? Heck, if some person I don’t know is shot in some neighborhood I never visit in my own city, why should I care? In each case, a good journalist can explicitly or implicitly explain the relevance of the story to the life of the reader. But if that connection isn’t made, much of the news seems like a random assortment of facts—usually depressing ones. The saying in TV news is “if it bleeds, it leads.” And for some people, crime and disaster “pop.” But other Americans view the constant stream of bad news as toxic. (Dr. Andrew Weil even recommends a news fast as part of his health regimen!)
There’s a difference between watching helicopter footage of a car chase and reading an article on debt relief. The first is easy to comprehend, cinematic, and, unless you live off the stretch of freeway the car is going down, irrelevant to your daily life. The second is harder to understand, less “sexy,” but if written vividly can make you understand more about your role as an American citizen and voter. If written poorly, it’s the kind of thing you flip past on your way to the arts and sports pages. And judging from newspaper circulation figures, a lot of people aren’t making the connection between hard news and their lives. Which raises the question: what does make the connection?
Citizen=journalist. Is that a good thing?
Journalism was once a home for tough working-class reporters. But it’s turned into a “book learning” occupation, where you go to school to learn to do something that you then do until you die or are downsized. Most journalists are not expected to do other kinds of work. In fact, it’s frowned upon.
But a new movement towards “community journalism” argues that everyday people might just know more about some things, particularly local issues, than traditional journos. For example, a recent Los Angeles Times article highlighted the efforts of a Greensboro, North Carolina newspaper to get into the information-age swing. They use reporters as bloggers, link to non-staff bloggers, and are building a cadre of local citizens who will report on their neighborhoods. But the Times report adds, “It's unclear how all this will generate significant revenue for the newspaper. The paper's website was profitable last year, said [editor John] Robinson, but right now he's not sure what the future business model might look like…. `We'll figure out a way to make money,’ said Robinson, who runs a newsroom of 120.”
“We’ll figure out a way to make money,” sounds good in theory, but can be hell in practice. Wait, I take that back: it doesn’t even sound good in theory. While the idea of getting free content from your readers sounds compelling, it takes a lot of editing time to put it into print or online in a form that makes sense and reflects sound editorial judgment. Newspapers who see community journalism as a free lunch are in for a bad case of indigestion.
Another player getting into the mix of community journalism is Craiglist.org founder Craig Newmark. The founder of the phenomenally popular free listings service is working with a couple of Bay Area stalwarts to start a daily political report. An Associated Press article says Newmark “believes the reason why newspapers are losing circulation is that too many traditional journalists are willing to quote politicians and business executives even if they're blatantly lying — merely for the sake of perceived objectivity. He'd prefer an `open source’ model of journalism where legions of volunteers act as writers, assignment editors and fact checkers to challenge mainstream journalists.”
Newmark’s idea of community journalism (or open source journalism) is very different from the Greensboro model. And terms like “community journalism” are overused and over-broad. But both iterations of the concept have promise. Local citizens will have a better idea of what’s going on in their communities than a reporter who parachutes in. But they may also have biases, axes to grind, and poor writing skills. (I can just imagine a headline that read, “People should not park on lawns,” with the first line of the article being, “That means you, Edna!”) Open-source journalism could succeed by learning from the Wiki model of allowing volunteers to collaboratively create content. But the Wiki model applies best to an informed, tech-savvy, honest, and large group of people. (Large so that any error has many fact-checkers.) In the case of voting and political coverage, the people most at risk of being under-informed and not going to the polls will not read online content, let alone contribute to it. There’s always the question of whether community journalism, if done only on a digital platform, will widen rather than shrink the information divide. That doesn’t make it an unworthy or un-influential effort, it just puts some constraints on how many people this new journalism will reach.
But what if community journalism could be generated and exchanged digitally, but transmitted to all sorts of platforms: print, television, radio, SMS/text messaging? Of course it can, and in some cases it already is, but what if…what IF…you could actually make money on it?
II. So, how do you make money on this thing?
A reporter at a newspaper or television station gets paid for putting his or her time into a story; the company gets paid by advertisers; the advertisers get paid by people who buy things. A public radio station gets underwriting from companies and foundations and donations from listeners. A freelancer gets paid on a case-by-case basis by a company. Some bloggers get paid by donations to their websites. Most people who contribute sporadically to the bloggosphere get no money at all.
As media becomes less centralized, the financial rewards and burdens are being radically redistributed. News organizations with shrinking audiences also have shrinking ad rate bases. And yet they’re expected by consumers to provide more free online products while they have fewer resources. And then there are the dedicated amateurs—not only writers but videographers and photographers—who provide free content to community media (on or offline) while they struggle to pay the rent and the car note.
One of the realities of modern media is that everything that can become multi-platform will become multi-platform. The New York Times is a print newspaper. But it produces broadcast television; runs audio and video on its websites; and distributes and syndicates material electronically. ABC News is primarily a television entity, but it has one of the most widely read political blogs (“The Note”) and radio broadcasts. Fox News is now distributed by cellphone. The list goes on.
Consumers, by and large, are not willing to pay directly for subsidiary products of traditional media companies. There are some exceptions, like the Wall Street Journal, which keeps most of its online content in a fee-based system. So if consumers aren’t willing to pay directly, would smaller media producers and “remixers” consider paying for material that they can better market and monetize? And could smaller producers be financially rewarded for the work they do if their work is acquired by others? It’s possible, under the right conditions, and with the right technology. But what is that technology?
The little engine that could, or the dynamic multi-platform content engine.
This is where I go off into the territory of the purely speculative. But while I’m making my intellectual foray, companies like Yahoo and Google are racing to come up with a marketable solution to the problem of being paid for content.
As media becomes more distributed and multi-platform, the one thing that media producers need most is a secure system for buying and selling content. If you think about a newspaper syndication service, you have an electronic transfer of material that mainly ends up in print. If a newspaper subscribes to, say, a particular columnist, they will get her work for a set fee (usually based on subscriber numbers) and then can run it in their paper.
The syndication model is outdated in many ways. First of all, in a multi-platform media world, you don’t want to be someone who just provides text to a company that needs text. If you’re a producer, you want to be able to sell text, audio, and video through one engine or system. Likewise, if you’re a publisher, you want to be able to buy text, audio, and video through the same provider. The syndication model also relies on one company aggregating independent producers (columnists) and marketing them to a set of subscribers. In the new media world, you want to be able to sell to whoever’s buying, and buy from whoever’s selling.
The nature of digital information is that it’s easily copied and tough to protect. So any digital “marketplace of ideas,” i.e. content, would have to be secure. (Of course, any “secure” system is hackable, so we’re not talking absolutes.)
So, say you create a secure online market. First, you charge people to subscribe to it. If you subscribe, for a modest fee, you get the ability to browse the wares on the site. There have to be wares to browse, of course. I envision these as summaries or excerpts of articles for purchase; short clips of video and audio for purchase; and thumbnails of photographs for purchase. Media producers would be charged a nominal fee to upload their excerpts, clips, or thumbnails into the system. And then the buyers, using a Google-style search engine, would see if there was anything they wanted.
Buyers could range from large traditional media outlets to small scrappy online newsletters. In a dynamic system, you could have several pricing models operating at once. Some examples:
1. Flat-fee for one time use. In this case, anyone who wanted could purchase the item for a price set by the seller/producer. The sale would stipulate one-time-use only, though that could be hard to enforce.
2. Flat-fee for unlimited use.
3. Exclusive auction. In this case, if a seller/producer had a hot item (say, video of Michael Jackson’s nose falling off), she could auction it to the highest bidder within a time frame of her choosing.
4. Exclusive first-rights auction and second-rights sales. In the book and magazine world, it’s common to sell first serial rights at a premium and reprint rights at a lower fee. (The first rights have a certain time period of exclusivity.) You could do that via an engine as well.
5. Subscriber-base indexed fee. In this case, media outlets would be charged a fee per subscriber, much as syndicated newspaper columns charge more to larger papers for the same content they sell cheaply to smaller papers.
6. Special licensing and sales. If a producer/seller wanted to use a Creative Commons license that allowed nonprofits to acquire the content for free, but commercial companies had to pay, that too could work in this system.
In some ways, the system I envision would be a hybrid of Google and eBay. Let’s call it e-Google. Or maybe, for short, Eagle. The company that invents an Eagle, a little engine that could, would get paid both by subscribers and by taking a cut from sales. The biggest challenge is making Eagle secure and enforceable. If you logged on to browse the content for sale, you’d want to know there wasn’t a version floating around for free before you bought.
The Swiss Army Knife
A completely different technological tool that could invigorate community media is what I call the “Swiss Army knife.” Less one tool than a toolbox, it would provide citizen-journalists with a one stop shop for setting up their own information outlet. The idea would be to take the innovations from many different content technologies and aggregate them into a customizable fee-based service. For example, if you wanted to create a blog with RSS feeds and weekly email blasts, plus the ability to take donations or subscription orders, you could do that. If you wanted to add a calendar, offer your users email accounts, give them a chance to sign up for broadband at a discount, or buy a domain, you could do that too. All of these tools exist already but it can be prohibitive (in terms of time, money, and learning curve) for individuals to put them together in a coordinated way. A coherent, customizable one-stop technology shop would lower the barriers of entry into creating citizen media.
Here are some example of functionalities that might go into the Swiss Army Knife, and examples of who’s already a player in the field.
1. Blog creation (Blogger, Moveable Type)
2. Web-based email (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail)
3. Email listservs (Yahoo)
4. Connectivity (Earthlink, AOL, cable operators)
5. Donations engines (Groundspring, Paypal)
6. Domain registration (Godaddy, Network Solutions)
7. Tailored events marketing/email blasts (Flavorpill, GenArt)
8. Social networking/business networking (LinkedIn, Tribe, Friendster)
9. Contact management (Plaxo)
These are just a few examples of services that might go into the Swiss Army Knife. But how would you create it? Companies would either have to work in partnership (less likely), or key players in one area would have to create tools in the other areas (possible), or key players will buy smaller companies that offer these functionalities (as when Google bought Blogger; highly likely). In fact, the likelihood that the Swiss Army Knife has already been invented is highly likely. We’ll have to see who rolls it out first, and whether it can do what we ask of it.
posted by Farai at 9:33 PM
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