Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Retiring Cleveland editor says readers must pay for news on the web
The work of newspapers, in whatever form, is vital
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Doug Clifton
Plain Dealer Columnist
When I got into this business almost 38 years ago, most cities had two
newspapers, nearly everyone read one of them and Walter Cronkite - the
even-tempered, erudite, gentle Walter Cronkite - personified broadcast
news.
Now, as I prepare to leave, most cities are lucky if they have one
newspaper and luckier still if even half the population reads it. And
you'll search almost in vain to find a TV anchor even remotely
even-tempered, erudite or gentle.
But change even more fundamental than that unfolded in those 38 years.
Cable TV morphed from a novelty to a 150-channel universal presence.
Entertainment programming like Studio One or Omnibus became "Beavis and
Butthead" or "Desperate Housewives." The three network news programs that
offered sober reflection on the day's most significant events became
promotion-filled, self-aggrandizing, collections of tidbits dressed up to
look like news - accompanied by thumping music and flashing lights.
And the Internet - the medium that just a decade ago was a concept beyond
the comprehension of most Americans - now threatens to bury us in www
addresses.
The sum of all that change, some say, poses a grave threat to newspapers
and the work they do.
To some - perhaps even to many - newspapers' demise would be no loss. To
them, the press is an intrusive, sensational, often malevolent, purveyor
of negativism. Worse, many newspapers rake in double-digit profits. The
mainstream media, or MSM, as they call it, has become the slur of choice
for the critics.
Perhaps the excesses of the few in this business have tainted the
reputation of the many. And perhaps the many have, at times, given critics
reason to be distrustful.
But an evenhanded review of the work of newspapers over the last 100 years
tells another story. No other institution in a democratic society performs
their function.
Go to the archives of any newspaper in America and leaf through their
pages. It won't be long before you find a significant piece of journalism
that exposes a social ill, a failed institution, an abuse of power, a
misdeed by a trusted official.
Journalism, I would argue, provides the lubricant that keeps the wheels of
democracy spinning. It is the ultimate check in our system of checks and
balances. It evens the contest between the haves and the have-nots. Even
with its countless flaws, its frequent excesses, its sometimes mindless
pursuit of the trivial, journalism ensures balance in society's balance of
power.
Since the birth of the republic, newspapers have been providing that
service. But today, because of the radically changed media landscape,
their ability to provide that service is being compromised.
Newspapers operate on a very simple model. They carry content people want
to read. Advertisers want to reach that audience of readers, so they pay
for the privilege of having their messages accompany the news. The
resulting revenue covers most of the costs of producing a newspaper.
The formula worked to society's advantage for decades. But the Internet
began to change all that.
Content that once appeared only on paper began appearing on the Net,
thanks to newspapers' own Web sites and aggregators such as Google. These
Web sites offered content free to anyone with a computer.
Advertising also appeared on the sites, but not in the same volume as in
the paper version.
You may have heard or read some of the dire forecasts about the future of
newspapers.
Newspapers are a dying medium, some say, and their death is being hastened
by the Internet. The once-healthy profits are fading fast.
I hear this at least once a day: "I don't need the newspaper; I get my
news from the Internet."
Of course, that's not true. People who prefer the Internet do get their
news from the newspaper. The Internet doesn't produce the content, it
merely distributes it.
If you go to Google News or Yahoo News you will find news, but it will
have been provided by AP, Reuters, the Washington Post, The Plain Dealer
and countless other newspapers.
In other words, the newspaper, which at great expense employs reporters to
find, evaluate, analyze and present news, gives it away free on the
Internet. This can't go on forever. Eventually, something must give.
If readers abandon conventional newspapers and go to the Internet,
advertisers will be forced to look for other media - the Internet included
- to present their messages.
Newspapers will survive if readers pay them for their Web content or if
advertisers flock to newspaper Web sites in sufficient numbers to offset
the revenue lost to the ink-on-paper enterprise. One or both of those
options is likely to happen.
If they don't, newspapers - and the journalism they produce - could die.
And why will that be worth your tears? Because without journalism,
democracy and civil society will falter.
Clifton is retiring as the editor of The Plain Dealer. His last day at the
paper will be Tuesday.
dclifton@plaind.com, 216-999-4123
Previous columns online:
cleveland.com/columns
© 2007 The Plain Dealer
© 2007 cleveland.com All Rights Reserved.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
STRATEGIC: Tribune's Jack Fuller says "time to pay the piper"
Nov.14, 03
By Staci D.Kramer in Evanston, Ill.
Trib's Jack Fuller -- Time to Pay the Piper (by Staci Kramer, guest
blogging the ONA conference from Evanston, Ill): No surprises but a smooth
look at online economic reality from Tribune president Jack Fuller, who
opened ONA's 4th annual conference with a warning about giving content
away. He should know -- Fuller estimates that he has signed off on
online-related expenses netting out to $600 million. "Eventually someone
will have to pay the piper," said Fuller, predicting that news sites will
move to a model at least paid in part by the subscriber. (The Trib's
LATimes.com is already charging for access to some coverage.) Offering
free content from the start "may have been our biggest mistake... We all
did it." Compounding the problem: much of that "free" content is expensive
to produce. He said free online content may not be siphoning readers away
from newspapers completely but that online is cannabilizing print in terms
of frequncy of use. Instead of reading the paper seven days a week people
are picking up the print edition less and going online in between.
http://www.journalists.org/2003conference/news/000036.html
Keynote speech
Tribune's Fuller: Future is paid content
By Kelly O'Brien
November 14, 2003
EVANSTON, Ill. -- The president of Tribune Publishing said Friday that the
future of online journalism will likely include paid content.
.We got everybody used to the idea that things that cost a lot of money to
make ought to be available for absolutely nothing,. said Jack Fuller,
describing the earliest days of online news publishing.
But, he said, out of necessity, .I think everyone will move, at least in
part, to a model paid by the reader..
Addressing the Online News Association.s fourth annual conference in
Chicago, Fuller conceded, "Nobody wants to go first. If you go first, you
lose."
Fuller, the keynote speaker, pointed out another lesson that must be
learned if the online media are going to thrive: adaptability.
"People get upset when newspapers change," said Fuller, but they also get
upset when online media don't.
The trick is knowing how to change, he said.
"What we need to do in confronting changes," he said, "is experiment,
assess the results and adapt over and over and over again."
In essence, Fuller said, journalists would be "experimenting our way to
the future."
Since the advent of online journalism, Fuller said that a great deal of
information has been gained on what young people, in particular, expect
from their news coverage.
He was encouraged that "we can reach young people with what we like to
think of as news," he said, "so long as we don.t make the news reports too
demanding, too long, or too difficult."
However, he added that young readers want editors to acknowledge that they
know "what the difference is between what.s important in the world and
what's just entertaining."
Fuller's comments to about 250 ONA members kicked off the two-day
conference, which will also address media convergence, coverage of the
Iraqi war and the increasing popularity of Weblogs. The winners of the 4th
Annual Online Journalism Awards will be announced Saturday night.
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This article above is copyrighted material, the use of which may not have specifically authorized by the copyright owner. The material is made available in an effort to advance understanding of political, economic, democracy, First Amendment, technology, journalism, community and justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' as provided by Section 107 of U.S. Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Chapter 1, Section 107, the material above is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this blog for purposes beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
STRATEGIC: Big payoff for inventor of "software metering"?
http://www.nytimes.com/cnet/CNET_2100-7784_3-5418184.html
EXCERPT:
Dan Griffith, software asset manager at Motorola's Freescale Semiconductor
subsidiary, said there's big business awaiting whoever comes up with the
software equivalent of an electricity meter. "As the utility model moves
forward, somebody needs to make a meter the customer accepts and the
vendor accepts," he said.
October 19, 2004
Pay-as-you-go software licensing going slow
David Becker, Staff Writer, CNET News.com
SANTA CLARA, Calif.--Pay-as-you-go software might sound like a fine idea
in principle, but it's a bear to put into practice.
That was the gist of conversation at the SoftSummit conference, as
software executives discussed the promise and reality of utility computing
and subscription pricing.
Utility computing, a tech buzzword, essentially promises that a company
will have to pay for only the computing resources it actually uses,
dramatically cutting costs and improving efficiency.
Sounds good on paper, but both software makers and customers have been
slow and inconsistent in committing to the model, for reasons ranging from
economics to privacy.
For the software industry, utility pricing poses a threat to the bottom
line, said Jason Maynard, an analyst at Merrill Lynch. It's hard to
precisely predict software needs, and under standard perpetual license
models, that usually results in drastic overbuying.
"We have an industry that's still addicted to the crack of perpetual
licensing," Maynard said. That's why utility pricing, to date, has largely
been restricted to upstarts like Salesforce.com, where the whole business
model is built around alternative pricing, he said.
"I don't think you're going to see the big vendors change out of
inspiration," Maynard said. "This is going to be a slow transition that
happens as customers demand this."
Also, usage-based pricing is new and thus inspires all sorts of novel
legal issues, said Erik Larson, director of product management for
software maker Macromedia. That means lengthy contracts that are expensive
for software makers to hash out, making them reluctant to apply utility
pricing to all but their biggest accounts.
"People don't think much about the end-user agreement that comes with a
perpetual license, even though it's a big legal contract, because the
terms are pretty familiar, at this point," he said. "With utility pricing,
by its nature, everything's different. Those contracts are 200 pages and
take a whole team of lawyers to work out."
One of the biggest areas for potential dispute is what gets measured and
how. Software usage can be volatile and hard to predict, and coming up
with a metering scheme fair to all is a fine balancing act, said David
Rowley, vice president of business development for copy protection
specialist Macrovision.
"When you go in and lease a car, the contract says so many cents per mile,
and people have a pretty good idea of how much they're going to drive in a
year," Rowley said. "Software isn't necessarily like that."
Customers may also have issues with how much information the software
maker gets to collect. Usage patterns for key applications can provide
valuable information on a company's business plans, making companies
reluctant to share such data, even with the folks who made the
application, said Rowley, likening the situation to telling Sprint, "you
can keep track of my minutes but not whom I'm calling."
Dan Griffith, software asset manager at Motorola's Freescale Semiconductor
subsidiary, said there's big business awaiting whoever comes up with the
software equivalent of an electricity meter. "As the utility model moves
forward, somebody needs to make a meter the customer accepts and the
vendor accepts," he said.
STRATEGIC: Napster venture capitalist on "self-expression" payments
invested in the original Napster before it got shut down by lawsuits. He
is interviewed on the future of digital media at a blogging website called
Courante.
Barry was CEO of Napster and previously was a partner with Wilson Sonsini
Goodrich & Rosati, where he led the firm's interactive new media practice.
Hank holds a B.A. degree in economics with highest distinction from the
University of Michigan and a J.D. degree from Stanford Law School, where
he was managing editor of the Stanford Law Review.
The link is here:
http://www.corante.com/vision/digitalmedia/hank_barry.php
Here are excerpts:
"[W]e are in the early days of payments systems other than
advertising in what you might call the "self expression market." That is
changing, as we get into payment structures for RSS (subscriptions),
digital object marketplaces like Bitpass, etc. But there is no eBay for
digital objects, where an individual can choose to, say, offer one work on
a Creative Commons license and another for many dollars. That will
happen."
" . . . If you are looking at it economically, I can see a time when the
sum of all the individual information commerce has economics that look
like that of "traditional content producers," but it will be a long while.
And I am not certain that independent (i.e., small or individual)
producers will necessarily benefit. As I said, the tools for creating that
work are ahead of the channels for distribution (and the tools for
search). That is changing, as we get into new payment structures, etc."
STRATEGIC: European publisher says Google stealing content; free can't continue
European Publishers Group Says Online Content Cannot Remain Free
By HELENA SPONGENBERG, Associated Press Writer
Published: December 06, 2005 2:25 PM ET
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) European publishers warned Tuesday that they cannot keep
allowing Internet search engines such as Google Inc. to make money from their
content.
"The new models of Google and others reverse the traditional permission-based
copyright model of content trading that we have built up over the years," said
Francisco Pinto Balsemao, the head of the European Publishers Council, in
prepared remarks for a speech at a Brussels conference.
His stance backs French news agency AFP which is suing Google for pulling
together photos and story excerpts from thousands of news Web sites.
"It is fascinating to see how these companies 'help themselves' to
copyright-protected material, build up their own business models around what
they have collected, and parasitically, earn advertising revenue off the back
of other people's content," he said.
"This is unlikely to be sustainable for publishers in the longer term."
Consumers were drawn online by free content but this needed to change, he said.
"The value of content must be understood by consumers so that new business
models can evolve. Industry must have legal certainty and the confidence that
their intellectual property will be protected.
Balsemao said that good quality content produced by professionals would be the
"gold content" for new media.
Last March, Agence France-Presse claimed the "Google News" service infringed on
AFP's copyrights by reproducing information from the Web sites of subscribers
of the Paris-based news wholesaler.
It is seeking at least US$17.5 million (euro14.85 million) in damages. AFP says
Google is breaking rules on the "fair use" of copyright material because its
news site looks similar to AFP subscribers.
The Google News service, which debuted in 2002, scans some 4,500 news outlets
and highlights the top stories under common categories such as world and
sports.
Many stories carry a small image, or thumbnail, along with the headline and the
first sentence or two. Visitors can click on the headline to read the full
story at the source Web site.
Yahoo Inc. has a similar service, though it uses human editors and pays some
news sources, including AFP and The Associated Press, for rights.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HELENA SPONGENBERG, Associated Press Writer (letters@editorandpublisher.com)
Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not
be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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This article above is copyrighted material, the use of which may not have specifically authorized by the copyright owner. The material is made available in an effort to advance understanding of political, economic, democracy, First Amendment, technology, journalism, community and justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' as provided by Section 107 of U.S. Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Chapter 1, Section 107, the material above is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this blog for purposes beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
