Kevin Anderson, who has a new job title at The Guardian, which I missed, is talking about startups trailing new journalism funding models:- Circulate: they do semantic analysis on your content. Users sign up, and the system gives you new content based on your implicit and explicit interests.
- Journalism Online: High-powered startup. They're doing an arm-twisting job with content providers. Kevin doesn't see what their proposition is for users.
- ViewPass: Gated content - create a network of content providers
- Kachingle: Gift economy way of funding content: based on attention.
- Niche advertising networks.
Zombie debate about paywalls is back. NYT looks like they're considering $5 for the content.
One problem with all these monetisation models is that they're all focused on the publishers' needs, not the readers' needs.
Kindle: the problem is not technological but business. 70:30 split between Amazon and publishers. Nobody can afford to do that right now. Kevin sees the iPhone, with its new ability for in-app charging more interesting. The Kindle isn't social, as someone in the crowd pointed out.
Some discussion about News International and what it will put behind a paywall. Kevin suggested that the output of journalists and editors in not necessarily what people value most highly.
Most companies see community as a technological not a social problem. We build better commenting solutions, not social ones.
Hyper-local sites: MyMissourian model. Pro-journalists cover "official news", open a platform for other to cover everything else. Journalists are really bad judges of what's banal. People wanted to write about weather, pets and church.
Journalism has become definition by exclusion, not be inclusion. If we define ourselves by a big bag of things we don't do, we're going to define ourselves out of a job.
Build niche communities around content and sell advertising against those niches? [Yes, says I, 'cos that's what we do...] Kevin says that advertisers are even more risk adverse than we are, which is true. But advertisers can be educated...
Columnists are based on annoying people. Community is often built by doing something positive, which means a whole shift in journalistic mind set. And moderation needs are much lower (and therefore cheaper...) "The more you piss people off, the more you have to moderate, the more you have to pay, and the quicker you fail."
Audience: Has journalism found new things to sell? No, not so far. Maybe we have found things, but nobody wants to pay for them.
Back to Kevin: 2005 was a high-water mark for journalism employment in the US. That was a 50 year flood, and now things are coming down. There's some creative destruction going on right now. It's not just repackaging what we've always done any more - its new thinking. Niche specialised coverage - that's trade pubs and people look down on that [yes, they do. I speak from experience] - but we need more of that. Expert aggregation isn't seen as journalism - but it's needed.
We have a really poor relationship with our audience.
Does unionisation hurt our prospects of moving forwards? [Declining to get involved. Been there, taken the abuse]. Kevin suggested that he is not a member because there are still people vocally questioning his professionalism because of the medium in which he works. And he is concerned that people are still harkening back to a lost past. But we do need to move together if we are to survive.
thought bubble over my head should read... 'ho-hum. we still don't know how to make money from news...'
think someone was having fun with the unionisation question...
This is interesting stuff, but a few points confuse (and depress) me. (Actually, the whole situation depresses me, but I'm trying to be more positive today.)
First, of course publishers are looking at publishers' needs when they're considering how to monetise their publications. I don't understand how or why they should be focused solely on the reader, for two reasons: firstly, it's clear that, not only in an ideal world but in the actual one we inhabit, given the choice, readers want high-quality content delivered at their convenience on the platform(s) of choice instantaneously and at no cost to them. In the absence of huge ad revenues there's no way to do this. Second, publishers are corporate entities which exist to make a profit, and if they were to tailor everything to such demands, that wouldn't happen. What IS a problem - and may have been what Kevin said, and what you mean here, Adam; I realise that you were writing quickly and paraphrasing what was clearly a lengthy and complex presentation - is that too many publishers appear not to realise that they need to meet their users part of the way. There wouldn't be the kind of reluctance to part with money for journalism I detect among many people who are part of the theoretical user base were corporations somewhat less confrontational and a bit more pragmatic. It's clear that the everything-for-nothing option won't work, but it's also clear that blockading off all journalism behind paywalls won't work either. The future surely lies in the vast middle ground, and that requires movement from both ends.
Second, the NUJ; like it or not, an organisation like that is defined and directed by the people who choose to get involved. If Kevin and others see problems there, part of the solution is to get involved and help steer the debate in a direction that feels more realistic. Isn't that the essence of social media anyway - participation, the notion of influencing and changing the course of discussions and policies? Personally, I don't recognise the NUJ from the comments made above - though I do remember, Adam, your contratemps, and the discussion that followed. The notion, particularly, that the NUJ would look down on institutionally, or that individual members would be sniffy about, someone whose work was published exclusively online (or in non-traditional/non-print media) is simply bizarre to me. Then again, I'm freelance, and a member of the London Freelance Branch, where much more pragmatic views over how journalists need to interact with and be accountable to their readers (as well as their editors) have long been the norm, and where many of the things people critical of journalistic institutions, and the NUJ in particular (protectionism; defending ivory-tower positions) simply don't happen because they're not a part of our working lives. Also, we all work in "new" media - we might be commissioned to write something for a print title but it's then republished on the title's website.
LFB is, incidentally, in the process of organising a conference on new models for funding journalism. We did have a date but a clash with another event came to light and I believe a new date is still being fixed, but I think it's going to be Sept/Oct time. From my perspective, it can't come soon enough - the reality for me this year (and I'm sure for many of my fellow freelances) has been that I'm doing more work than ever before and earning less money for doing so. To me, "work" includes generating ideas and pitching them to editors, building new working relationships with new client titles, and spending time investing in my "brand" - ie, doing unpaid work either as hoped-for loss-leaders to get new work in new areas, or online and in social media to attract attention to myself and my work. While all that's going on, a number of extant titles I used to be able to pitch to regularly have either gone out of business, cut their freelance budgets, or slashed their rates. I'm not saying this in a bid to gain sympathy - if I go out of business then I'm sure in part it's because I'm not doing a good enough job so I will deserve it. But I know I'm good at what I do and I know that it's valued by some people - the challenge for me, and for the publishers who I work for, is to find ways of deriving maximum financial benefit from that work. And at the moment, us freelances are in a tricky situation, because we have very little power to change minds at publishing companies, and even if we were to band together to provide joint web services, we don't have the promotional clout to attract the numbers of eyeballs we'd need to start to make those investments pay off. (Also, we don't get paid time off and/or paid holiday during which to go to events such as this one, and often don't know about them until they're happening - which means our voice isn't getting heard in the debates, which in turn makes it seem like we don't care. We do, passionately, desperately - and we are keen to be part of the solution, rather than part of the problem.)
Cheers,
AB
One of Kevin's colleagues asking the question with a smirk on his face? Nothing playful about that at all… ;-)
A couple of things:
1. I don't think anyone was suggesting that the focus should be solely on reader need, but that the focus at the moment was only on publisher need. Any successful solution must meet both reader and publisher needs. One without the other is not a winner.
2. I both recognise and don't recognise the NUJ from Kevin's description - mainly because the NUJ is an incredibly hard organisation to generalise about (which was my big lesson from earlier in the year). For example: In RBI, a move towards strike was voted down by the members. Now did the NUJ push for strike, or did it vote it down? The answer is "both", but only because I have phrased the question badly. The NUJ officers pushed for a strike, the NUJ chapel members voted it down. I've seen and heard elements within the NUJ which are very pro-active and forward thinking, and elements that want to drag everything backwards. Sometimes the reactionaries are louder than the proactive people, which can distort both discussion and perception. All of this was rather complicated to explain in the last few minutes of the discussion, which is why I declined to get involved. :)