Write elephants

Ryan Sholin has a typically thought-provoking post up about the future business model for journalism, calling the "broken business model of newspapers" the elephant in the room. In it he points out the unsolved problem of news shifting to digital - that the value of online news audiences is a fraction of the value of that same audience in print. (This is, broadly, the same point that Vin Crosbie has been making since at least 2006 and might most easily be abbreviated as The Impossibility of the Rusbridger Cross.)

Here's the bit I'm stuck on. As one of four news industry "givens", Ryan writes:

"Regardless of what else we change about our print edition, or how we present information online, or how we reorganize our newsrooms, funding investigative and enterprise reporting must be part of the core mission of the industry"

Taking a step back, this seems an extraordinary economic position. What other industry organises itself around the proposition "in this business it is a given that we must produce X. Now, can we get anyone to pay us enough money to produce X?"

If it costs £20 to dig a ton of coal out of the ground and people will only pay £15 per ton, no-one digs coal. At that point we stop digging coal and start...well, making computers or flipping burgers or farming or whatever other activity does make us money.

I'm not sure it's the business model that's broken here. Maybe the elephant in the room is a reluctance to even think of newspapers (or journalism or whatever you want to call it) in business terms. Because if we did, we wouldn't start with the premise "since we're definitely going to keep making journalism, how can we pay for it?" We'd already be thinking "is there enough of a market for journalism to keep doing it?" And nobody wants the answer to that question, because we kind of know already what it probably is.   

Comments

[Ryan Sholin]

Right. It's definitely a bit of a leap, in my view, to say that traditional news organizations are necessary for investigative/enterprise work at all levels, and we should finance it even if it isn't profitable.

I think some of the more interesting online-only news startups lately are the ones that are a) about politics and b) non-profits to some extent.

So you end up with MinnPost.com and Politico and a few others that take as given: "Big-J Journalism is good and necessary even if people don't say they want it" and they look for funding for it.

[Seamus McCauley]

Ryan -

Wow, quick response! :)

I agree, almost nothing really interesting online has started with anything you could call a business model (from Google down). If we find a future for journalism it won't emerge from the (IMO) wrong question "this is journalism, how can we pay for it?" but the right one - "what do people really want and value in journalism and how can we make sure they keep getting it?"

[Charles Arthur]

Ooooh nonononono! You must subscribe to the idea that papers must survive *anyway* for the Good Of Humankind: http://www.alternet.org/democracy/92284/?page=entire

Jeff Jarvis calls it 'curmudgeonly claptrap'..

You're right, though. What do people want to pay for?

[Seamus McCauley]

Charles -

That one's easy - people don't want to pay for anything*! But if we can at least work out what it is they want(ed) from printed newspapers in the first place, and keep an open mind about whether the answer to that question is really "investigative journalism", we might be onto something.

*Technically almost anything - some things become undesirable if cheap or free.

[Nicolas.]

Hi Seamus,

Reading your post, I ran a quick poll. First results: Fast food and football players are valued 3 times over journalists ;) (n=100, I'm working on more data)

Blogged it here: http://windowonthemedia.com/2008/07/fast-food-3-times-more-important-than-journalists/

[Ron Davison]

Seamus,
I wonder how you'd factor in externalities. A strong media keeps government and business honest and less able to exploit citizens and consumers. Perhaps consumers would see that at the point of purchase, but it’s not clear how. Maybe the trick is to somehow have a trickle down journalism: as (and if) your reporting or data collection or poll ripples out into various op-ed pieces, talking head discussions, and other media bits, you get a little piece of that. In such a world, good reporting would be well rewarded.

[Ron Davison]

Seamus,
After reading your post, I saw this ted talk by Clay Shirky. Among other things, he challenges the notion of professional journalists as a model that will survive.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/clay_shirky_on_institutions_versus_collaboration.html