The economics of content

Rupert Murdoch has a special knack of provoking debate.  One of the more recent furores follows his proposals of charging for news content online and preventing stories being linked to by sites like Google. 

“Quality journalism is not cheap,” Murdoch said, “and an industry that gives away its content is simply cannibalizing its ability to produce good reporting.”

Sure, the money’s got to come from somewhere.  But is it as simple as this? 

Rob Andrews from Paid Content raised some interesting points in a recent lecture at Cardiff Journalism School.  Should publishers charge? he asked.  The business press he argued probably could.  B2B magazines and specialist press (for example Farmers Weekly) have such niche information they probably could get away with charging too. “Where else would you get that information?”

But what about general consumer news?  What makes normal news organisations so special that people would pay for the information they provide? 

Murdoch’s answer: “Just make our content better and differentiate it from other people.”

This, Andrews suggests, is the stumbling block.

Local papers have started to branch into the realm of paywalls.  Johnston Press believes that paywalls are the “sustainable business model going forward“. 

Rob Andrew calls this ‘suicide’.  He believes it’s too short term in its scope.  It is possible that local papers might make some money if the content provided is so specialised/localised that people cannot get content elsewhere.  But, as a long term solution, it simply isn’t tenable. 

Recent findings in a PCUK/Harris Interactive poll found that only 5% of consumers would be willing to pay for online news… even if it was their favourite news site.

 

If consumers’ favourite news site began charging for access to content, three quarters of people would simply switch to an alternative free news source.

Only five percent would choose to pay to continue reading the site. And eight percent would continue reading the site’s free headlines only.

So, how much would people spend on online content?  The findings of the PCUK/Harris Interactive poll suggest consumers are unwilling to pay more than the bare minimum for their online content.   

Just over 70% of news consumers said the maximum amount they would pay for an annual subscription is £10.  Compare this to the annual seven day Guardian/Observer package, which costs just under £310.

And for those who prefer to pay per day, 71% would not pay more than 25p.  Again, compare this to The Times weekday cover price of 90p!  

 

It would seem therefore that people put limited value on online content. No longer does the butler iron our crisp newspaper to arrive with the toast and kedgeree every morning, but it seems that the inky feel of an actual paper between the fingers is worth the extra cost… if we have to pay.  “If I’m going to pay, I want something to show for it.”

It seems we have reached the point of no return.  As The Guardian put it: “By choosing not to charge readers when they first got online, news publishers let the free genie out of the bottle – and it can’t easily be put back.”

What’s needed now is a new model.  But, conveniently, it’s late and my inspiration is starting to run out…

Any ideas?

The Great Ordinary Show – the neverending art of storytelling

Imagine opening your local paper tomorrow and seeing a photo of you taken 25 years ago.

         

This is what happened to a group of people who, at some point during the early 1970s, met this guy who lived and travelled around the UK in a converted double decker bus.

The guy was Daniel Meadows and the bus was JR404 – the free photographic omnibus – a travelling dark room and photographic studio.

At the time Daniel was a keen photographer with an inspirational idea to travel across the country telling ordinary people’s stories through the lens.  The result was a selection of honest portraits, each with a story behind them. 

But that was not the end of the tale.

Twenty five years later Daniel’s inspirational idea is living on.  The technology he is using has changed somewhat, but his art as a storyteller continues.   

His idea to find the muses of his original photos and retake their pictures began a nationwide search.

This was when people opened their local paper – over morning coffee, or on their way to work, or after an excited phonecall from a friend who’d recognised them – to reveal their faces, 25 years younger, staring back at them.

And so the next chapter of the story began with new photos and new stories.

        
Debbie and little brother Martin              … and 25 years later

What an extraordinary idea and a brilliantly simple and powerful way to show how, anthropologically, the world has changed – the fashions, the culture, the people, the politics, the attitudes, the ideas.

It also showed how the world has changed technologically. Daniel could never have dreamed how his stories would run on and on.  In an emerging digital multimedia age, with the liquid flow of information throughout and across the world, Daniel’s photos would have several more chapters ahead.

In this new era, Daniel explained, stories develop a life of their own.  They gather their own momentum and significance.

Over the years, Daniel’s photos had been published, republished and exhibited all around the world.   As more and more people saw them and heard the stories, they took on more and more meaning.  Each and every audience would take on their own individual interpretation and move the stories on in different and diverse ways. 

And then Daniel told us a tale that highlighted so simply and eloquently the neverending beauty and power of storytelling.  The story of Florence Alma Snoad.

Florence Alma Snoad © Daniel Meadows

Florence has an intriguing face. To me there seems to be a depth and a warmth that flows out from her photo.  And it seems I am not alone in this interpretation. 

In one of her letters to Daniel, Florence wrote: ‘I’ve tried to live each day waiting for that midnight rainbow with stars to light the darkest night.’ Moved by these words, Daniel put them on his website.  A while later a poet from New Zealand – David Howard – inspired by Florence wrote some musings in his book.  Several years later, it was discovered on a Slovenian website that there was a piece of music entitled String Trio Florence Alma Snoad.  The composer, Brina Jez Brezavscek, had found Daniel’s photos in a local newspaper and had been so inspired by Florence’s photo and words, that she wrote a piece of music that reflected her vision of Florence’s personality. 

The composer wrote to Daniel: “It is as if the things would live their lives and then attract us into the play.”

Daniel’s photos have taken on a life of their own.  And every person creates their own meaning and interpretation of the face and stories therein.  Florence’s face has inspired music and poetry that now tell their own stories, which could continue to evolve further. 

And it is the extraordinary that comes from the ordinary that makes these stories so powerful. 

Daniel Meadows, his stories and his life are an inspiration to the art of storytelling.   

“Once, I was at the wheel, now I know that I was never more than just another passenger” – Daniel Meadows

 

Rants written by weirdos

Q: What is blogging?

A: Rants written in bedrooms by weirdos.

I am sitting in my bedroom. I am, arguably, a bit weird. And I have been known to go on the occassional rant (don’t get me started on automated telephone systems and the use of apostrophes!)

But blogging has to be about more than rants – it needs to be an ever evolving conversation.  A person who comes to the pub and talks at you for 10 minutes will probably not be invited next time you descend on your local. Blogging, it would seem, is the same. 

To be a successful blogger we need to be a successful conversationalist. That is we need to be inviting people to comment, link, feedback, respond and interact to what we and everyone else across the blogsphere are saying.

Blogging is part of the biggest information transfer infrastructure ever known and the new age of journalism is (and needs to remain) very much a part of this.

A recent lecture by Adam Tinworth from RBI informed us that a good blogger is inquisitive, communicative, honest, enthusiastic, social and informed.  The qualities of a good journalist should be exactly the same.

By extension, the journalist’s blog is his notebook.  It should hold good ideas for stories, have feature development, plot conversations with sources, link to contacts and be one of the main places and means whereby the journalist develops his patch reporting. 

The difference the blogosphere has made to journalism is where the story starts and finishes.  A journalist’s job has always been to develop stories.  And in the bygone age he might have finished a story with his 5pm deadline.  With the emerging blogosphere, there is no ‘end’ to the story. Comments, links, tweets, bookmarking, blogging, UGC, videos and photos mean the story is never finished.

This is not the end…

It’s good to talk

According to Twitter Grader I’m currently ranked at 1,460,210 out of 5,459,922 of Twitter users. My ‘grade’ is 73 out of 100 – in my language that’s got to be an ‘A’ – hasn’t it?! Initially it came as a pleasant surprise. I had thought my pathetic tweet record (currently a grand total of one) and my measly 43 followers would put me in a pretty hopeless position (no offence meant to those following me – in fact, what I mean is thank you!). 

But then I gained some perspective…  I ranked Stephen Fry. 

2,680 out of 5,459,922
Followers: 900,913
Tweets: 4,610
Grade: 99.95 out of 100

My ‘A’ grade had suddenly become a ‘could do better’.  Maybe if I stole part of Mr Fry’s Twitter bio – ‘Lord of Dance, Prince of Swimwear & Blogger’ – it might help?

Twitter Grader is one of numerous internet ‘tools’ mentioned in our most recent online journalism lecture.  Dr Claire Wardle, who gave the inspiring and enthusiastic talk on the benefits of social media to journalists, said that to begin with it wasn’t about how many people we were talking to, but the fact we were talking.  To begin with we needed to engage with people and develop stronger relationships with new and existing online audiences.

To help us with our first few online mumblings she suggested various delightful and extraordinary ‘tools’ and philosophies.

Probably my favourite is wordle. A brilliant programme that allows words to be transformed into clouds of concepts and abstract theories in their own right.  Below is a word cloud formed from my most recent blog post. The bigger the words, the more frequently they were used.

          

But, these ‘tools’ are not just about boosting my twitter ego or creating pretty images.  They are about finding out and sharing information.

As a starting point we were encouraged to find out what people were talking about right now. What were the main topics of interest? Why were people talking about them? And what were they saying?  Twitter scoop was recommended to help find out what’s going on in the twittersphere.

Another way to keep up to date with online conversations is Twitterfall.  I tested it on Thursday night. I chose a relatively small and unheard of subject as a starting point – a programme called Question Time featuring a Nick Griffin. The result was instant.  Hundreds of people talking to each other simultaneously across the internet about the programme. And, before I had even typed in the words, the search was out of date.  Dozens more posts had stacked up in the seconds it had taken to type 12 letters. 

Our mission we were told was to find out and stay on top of information.  To use aggregators such as google news and addict-o-matic.  To find local, hyper local and community blogs on search engines.  To use RSS readers to deliver news as it breaks.  To actively look within online communities for issues, stories and people that could help generate new conversations and channels.  To encourage others to source information. And to share interesting information with others by bookmarking using delicious.

These tools, aren’t just a bit of fun – although I have already wasted far too many hours playing. They are a way of helping an organic process of information, communication and conversation. 

I now feel my web toolbox is a lot bigger.  But, I now need to know how to use the right tools to do the job. And unless we journalists equip ourselves with the right tools, we won’t be able to do our job anymore. 

Social media is about people talking. And journalists can engage with this to tell better and more varied stories that reflect what really matters to people.

It marks a new shift in journalism where transparency is the new objectivity. It’s not about keeping your story a secret until it breaks anymore.  Journalism is about sharing your information.  About making content out of the processes and the steps you take to get to the story.

To borrow words from Bob Hoskins, “It’s good to talk.” Especially if you’re a journalist and it’s with online communities.

And, final tips given in the lecture:

Be Human.
Be Honest.
Be Aware.
Be Everywhere.

I think I’d better start by improving my Twitter grading!

The week of the superinjunction, Jan Moir and the Twitterati

At the beginning of this week I joined Twitter.

I did it begrudgingly – because I was told to.  How useful is it to read sentences of 140 characters about people eating sandwiches?  I was told I should look beyond this and embrace its power as an online community and as a source of information. To be honest, I wasn’t convinced.

And then it happened. The week of the superinjunction, Jan Moir and the twitterati!

140 characters aren’t much. But when those 140 characters (or 90 to be exact!) say: “Now Guardian prevented from reporting parliament for unreportable reasons. Did John Wilkes live in vain?”, they have the power to cause quite a storm. 

This was what journalist Alan Rusbridger tweeted on Monday evening referring to the superinjunction on the Trafigura case and the Minton report, which outlined the dumping of toxic waste on the Ivory Coast.

It was enough of a hint to get members of the twitterati and blogosphere investigating what might constitute the untold story.

It wasn’t long – less than an hour – before the internet had revealed what the paper could not. And by midday on Tuesday “Trafigura” was one of the most talked about issues of the day, helped along by re-tweets by the likes of Stephen Fry and his thousands of followers.

Apart from being a brilliant case study from Trafigura in how not to manage your PR!  It was also a brilliant case study in the power of the blogosphere.

The intensity of the instantaneous messages and shared passion of the online community made it clear that what Trafigura was trying to gag was a matter of public interest and something people wanted and needed to know. Admittedly, it was the ‘principle of the thing’ and the challenge of the investigation that seems to have driven most of this forward.  But Trafigura eventually realised that where it might once, pre-blogosphere, have successfully controlled the voice of one newspaper, it was not going to succeed now in silencing the voices of thousands.

The triumphant Alan Rusbridger said: “This is the greatest explosion of access to information, the potential for creativity and the ability to connect and communicate the world has ever seen.”

Comedian Stephen Fry delighted in the power of Twitter. “Carter-Ruck caves in! Hurrah!” he wrote. “Trafigura will deny it had anything to do with Twitter, but we know don’t we?”

Just a couple of days later, there were two simultaneous public outpourings.  One of grief as Stephen Gately’s funeral took place in Dublin; the other of disgust at Jan Moir’s article in the Daily Mail on the singer’s ‘unnatural’ death.

Once again Twitter started tweeting.

Charlie Brooker’s response to Moir was re-tweeted around Twitter by the likes of Derren Brown and his followers.

Stephen Fry, obviously not wanting to aggravate the situation any further, tweeted: “I gather a repulsive nobody writing in a paper no one of any decency would be seen dead with has written something loathesome and inhumane.”

Before long it had become one of the most talked about stories on the blogosphere and a focus of international attention. As a direct result, the Press Complaints Commission received so many complaints its website crashed. 

Twitter had succeeded in turning a simple newspaper article into a matter of important public debate.  The online community was able to voice its opinions and form a movement of astute comment and power.

If ever there were a set of events to convince a cynic like me that Twitter is more than just sandwiches, this week’s set was probably it.  It’s fair to say that I now accept its incredible role in the free movement of and access to information.

But, in all this celebrating of ‘victories’ – for freedom of the press, for freedom of information, for the intelligent investigations and pressure of the liberal twitterati over evil mindsets and multi-million pound giants – we must not forget the story that really needs to be told.  The story that originally led to this incredible movement at the beginning of the week – the story that thousands of people in Abidjan are suffering lesions, sickness, diarrhoea and breathing problems because toxic waste has been dumped on their shore.

Now we must use our victory to ensure theirs.

 

carpe internetium?!!

Two questions:

How many times have you resolved an argument by checking facts on the internet? I’ve done it countless times – the name of that actor in that film, the year of an historic event, the exact details of a recent scandal.  Thanks to the internet, individuals can now inform themselves better than ever.

And, how often have you wondered – “how did we ever manage without?”  I’ve always marvelled at this fountain of knowledge sitting in the corner of the room or, now, at the touch of a button on our phone. A portable door into the world. And I wonder what did we do before? It’s the same when I make a quick call on my mobile to say the train has been delayed.  Before such an invention, the other person would have sat and worried while the dinner burnt on the stove.

Technology is continuously developing and changing.  Arguably it is often for the better. And, as journalists, we need to embrace and utilise these resources to our advantages to improve the content of what we deliver and how we deliver it. We cannot shun such technological inventions or we will be left behind – only to become antiquated and out of touch – which, given that the media should reflect and respond to the people, would be absurd.

This is what the internet manifesto – a document drawn up by a group of German journalists – proposes.  It urges journalists to embrace the ‘technological reality’ to develop the best possible form of journalism.

Rightly, they herald the internet as ‘a victory for information’ and welcome the ‘socio-educational role’ it plays. 

I also embrace their sentiments that information – like a language or culture – is an ‘ever-changing, continual process’.  And the internet allows this evolution of information, which journalism must embrace and deliver.  It allows a dialogue of information – a constant movement and interaction across boundaries, whether they be political, social or geographical.

The manifesto also points out that the internet has become ‘the new venue for political discourse’.  That democracy is based on participation and the freedom of information.  That journalism must now use this to involve the public in active discussions in political debate. One only need recall the success of Obama’s campaign on the internet to know the power the internet has in doing this. 

The manifesto states ’there is no such thing as too much information.’ As journalists we must surely agree with this. Knowledge is power. ’That more information leads to more freedom, both for the individual as well as society as a whole.’

But, I do have a slight concern.  We must not be too swept up in all this positive sentiment of seizing the internet moment (carpe internetium?!) without reservation. 

The demands of the internet are for speed, immediacy, succinct bites of the ‘now’.  As journalists we must be a part of this, but we must not do this at the expense of high journalistic standards.

It is very well to tweet, post photos, livestream using Qik or Bambuser as a story breaks, but we must not let this need to be there as the story breaks jeopardise our principles of accuracy, clarity and ethics.

We can no longer be gatekeepers of the news and information agenda, but we can be the continual custodians of our basic journalistic standards.

We must, as journalists, be part of online communities, but we must remember that the only thing that marks us out, and therefore, will save journalism from drowning in a sea of user-generated-content, is the quality of our investigation and analysis.  And, ironically, these take the one thing the internet doesn’t allow for – time. 

Our mission is to strike that balance. 

So, going back to my original two questions, we must embrace the fountain of knowledge that is the internet. We must, as journalists, move with the technological developments so that we can access, reflect, respond and provide information through a continual discourse and evolution.  And we need to be there to ensure we maintain the quality, investigation and analysis.

If journalism fails to do this now, the internet and its users will not wait for us to catch up.