Times kills online fee program; the zen koan of no content
Posted on | September 18, 2007 | No Comments
You could kind of sense it was going down from the start, but then again you never want to underestimate the Gray Lady. The folks in midtown have done a remarkable job, really, getting their heads into the digital age. It’s not an easy proposition for an old-line media company and they’ve done well… better than most really. But today they pulled the plug. The only big player still making money on online subscriptions from old-line media is the Wall Street Journal, and there are rumors swirling that that program may be headed for a similar fate.
Longtime Ghost Buster (we need a better handle) Christian Fahlen tipped me to the Reuters story as my head was firmly up somewhere in a major fire drill on the work front. He pointed out that when EE Times was considering a paid model, we held up the New York Times and The Journal as prime examples of how premium content can be monetized online. On the editorial side, we always moaned that no one on the business side had the stones to do it; they couldn’t give up suckling the milk teet of advertising because they knew no different. Well….maybe….just maybe…
….they were right.
But in the case of this troubled subscription model, The Times news is just not good. Not good all around. Banner and what-not advertising is not carrying the day. Subscriptions aren’t carrying the day. What financial model will emerge to support online journalism? AdSense? Yeah, for small shops, one-off hacks who are really focused and have built good audiences. Is that what journalism is moving toward? A kind of twisted Big Box Retail logic where we want it cheap so we’ll opt for Big Box volume and low-overhead journalism?
As Dilbert would say, “Dang.”
Here’s what’s happening: there are two bells that are constantly ringing, often faintly, in my head. One is Chris Anderson of “Long Tail” and Wired fame. “Content wants to be free.”
The other is a combination of Matt Sanchez, CEO and co-founder, and Troy Young, CMO, of a South-of-Market startup called VideoEgg. They play in the video-advertising space, which is like saying you’re a gunslinger in Deadwood in the 19th century. It’s wild. Things are going a mile a minute in that business.
But they have a quiet mantra: it’s about the viewer; it’s not about the content.
Stitch together Anderson, Sanchez and Young. And noodle on that for a while. Bottom line: it’s not about the content. True to a degree. But advertising as a funding mechanism doesn’t support no content.
It starts to become a zen koan.
And that’s when you start looking for the key to the liquor cabinet.
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Related posts:
- Content is free and content is king
- Times pushes into U-gen content
- Update on TechInsights and EE Times
- More layoffs at EE Times–UPDATE
- EE Times Going Biweekly
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September 19th, 2007 @ 7:52 am
It’s not about the content and it’s not about the viewer/reader. It’s about the conversation. McLuhan said the lightbulb is a medium without content in that it creates a place for people to be and interrelate in an area that would ordinarily be engulfed in darkness. The net does the same thing. You can read something in a newspaper or see it on television and you are only a spectator. but the net provides the means to interrelate to the content…unless you don’t provide that option.
The current media industry give lip service to giving their audience a say into what they present, but they really don’t respect the audience. They consider them cattle that need their guidance. But the world has gotten much more sophisticated and many believe that their opinions are just as valuable as a journalists; their knowledge often greater.
The net makes it possible for everyone’s story to be told by someone and all the audience to respond personally.
The danger here is that we lose our anonymity and have to become a lot more thick skinned. We can all have freedom of speech but we will no longer be free from speech.
September 19th, 2007 @ 1:35 pm
BF –Not sure what “ghost rider” implies, but certainly an improvement over “media gadfly”. thanks for the upgrade
Noted w. interest that it sounds like Murdoch’s hinting at WSJ abandoning its online pay-for-content model as well:
http://gawker.com/news/explications/rupert-murdoch-will-rape-pillage-the-new-york-times-301443.php
September 21st, 2007 @ 2:29 am
Well blow me down.