the web is not like print
posted 2005.03.16
Oh, it sounds so simple when you put it that way. But why oh why oh why do businesses continue to not GET it?
Case in point: this NYT article on the future of online news. And really, people, visit that link fast, before they start charging you for it.
The attitude of newspapers never ceases to amaze me. Choice quotes from the article:
"Print is going the way it's going, which is down, which is unfortunate because it's the revenue engine that keeps this whole thing going," he said. "The online business model won't ever be able to support the whole news infrastructure."
Well, of course it's going down. Why would people want to haul around a big, wasteful, heap of messy newsprint? Something that is guaranteed to turn your fingers black? EW! Plus, you know, the online world - us crazy kids - we're global now. News from all over. From far more sources that you'd ever imagine.
"For some publishers, it really sticks in the craw that they are giving away their content for free," said Colby Atwood, vice president of Borrell Associates Inc., a media research firm.
Oh, yes, I can imagine it does. But with their print version, and in the "good old days", did they have literally thousands of other publishers referencing their works, encouraging readers to visit? In the days before hyperlinking, baby, you just didn't see this very often.
The web is a cooperative. It is rife with interdependencies. Yes, they give their content away for free - and in return, thousands and thousands of people link to them. Search engines link to them. If they have something interesting to say, there's no limit to how many people may throw up a link and say "you have to see this!".
Now, with the NYT, that may not be as big of an issue (though I can't think of too many news agencies MORE linked from other web sites than the NYT). But with smaller papers - that's exposing you to thousands or millions of viewers you would never normally command with your puny little print version.
And we all know what more viewers mean: you can sell more ads.
Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, said of relying on advertising as the sole revenue stream: "My main concern is that, however we distribute our work, we have to generate the money to pay for it. The advertising model looks appealing now, but do we want our future to depend on that single source of revenue? What happens if advertising goes flat? What happens when somebody develops software to filter out advertising - TiVo for the Web?"
Dude, your business model NOW is primarily ad revenues. Getting scared over that is either pointless or long overdue.
Now, as for the TiVo for the web, it could definitely happen. But like all old-skool businesses, you're Just Not Getting It. We've all seen (ahermmm..... RIAA) what happens when an industry reacts out of fear. Try to protect your ass is just going to make you look like a scared school bully - and your consumers (you remember them - those media-savvy people who your advertisers want to reach?) are going to smell that fear a mile away.
But here's the thing. Instead of implementing a business model that doesn't make sense just to protect your bottom line, why not come up with something that DOES make sense? Why not offer something new, something unique, something that your users will not only respond to but be willing to PAY for? Get creative. Sit down a bunch of your newest interns and let them brainstorm for a few days. You'd be surprised what those wacky, net-savvy kids will come up with.
Shutting out your potential audience - via forced free registration, paid access archives or the like - is just going to make you look like Prodigy circa 1993. The web isn't a closed system. Your core competency needs to be accessible to the average Joe.
Otherwise, why would he ever care what you have to say?
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Forced free registration is driving people away in droves. If there's an article that catches my eye and I'm inclined to link to it, I will but only after a search to find a referencing site that does not require registration. If the Daily Bugle reprints a NYT article, the Bugle get the link, not the NYT. My home town paper, the Star Telegram, behaves the same way - email exchanges with the editor are nothing more than an exercise in futility. They are convinced that without forced free registration, advertisers will go away.
Amen, Gary.
The "we need to do this for our advertisers" forced-free registration is another whole rant, really, but I'll summarize it here:
Why is your username and password required?
Sufficiently accurate data could be gathered ANONYMOUSLY by simply issuing a cookie on a first visit, and referencing it with future visits. With this cookie, ANONYMOUSLY, you could send data back to the ad server about what articles the viewer is viewing - so a regular reader of "travel" could be shown airline ads.
Alternatively, KEYWORD YOUR CONTENT and let your advertisers bid on those keywords, just like Adwords. As we can see, this model obviously works for both advertiser and content provider, or it wouldn't be so damned ubiquitous.
There are just SO many reasons why newspapers need to wake up and smell the new century.
And Gordon -- LOL. ;)
The news industry is in decline, and there is no saving it in its previous version. The writing has been on the wall for a very long time.
Because much of the news is a commodity, the 'charge the consumers directly' model is almost impossible to pull off on an online site. It's increasingly difficult to pull off with the print version too. Many newspapers deliver the paper to everyone for free, and get higher revenue from advertisers due to their larger circulation.
The web has done to news what cable TV has done to the networks, but on an even larger scale. It continues to decentralize the power in the news industry.
The news industry is in decline, and there is no saving it in its previous version. The writing has been on the wall for a very long time.
Do you really think the industry is in decline? If it is beyond saving in its present guise, and the writing has been on the wall for so long, why hasn't the establishment news industry disappeared yet?
I work at a community newspaper which will probably be moving toward registration before mid-2006. As much as I hate it...I think it's a necessity in our market.
You see...our advertisers are NOT savvy. They're mostly local retailers -- mom and pop shops. They don't know about keywords. They barely understand pixels. They don't like the fact that stories look different online than they do in the paper.
We have fantastic statistics about who subscribes to our paper. The advertisers are spoiled. So when we say we can't tell that kind of detail about who visits our site, they are turned off. I was actually told that getting national exposure on our stories (drudge, fark, etc) was a BAD thing because we only want to serve local readers to our local advertisers.
And I'm charged with increasing our online revenue immensely without incurring extra revenue other than yearly raises. Our department's been at the same number of employees for 7 years. Until I can definitively tell these mom&pops WHO visits our site (at the very least what zip codes frequent our site) they're not going to bite, and I'm going to fail in my job.
I'm sure our little paper isn't the exception to the rule, either. I'm running out of fight.
I'm staying anonymous because there is somebody at work who prints out anything s/he finds that I write about work and reports it to my uppers. Seriously. I have no idea who this is...but I'm not taking chances.
A good solution is to use cookies to identify returning users, and then each time they return ask them one question. Such as "how old are you?" and add that to a profile. If you do it in a way that isn't too intrusive then you can collect information for your advertisers without forcing people into a drawn out registration process.
TiVo for the Web? We already have ad-blocking software (hell Firefox has an extension for it) so that model is already a reality.
Having recently been on the receiving end of a shafting by the traditional media (not directly but by implication) I'm beginning to understand why they are becoming increasingly worried by "us".
To really put the heebeejeebies up them the news focussed bloggers should be setting up a reuters style network. Sourcing their OWN information, cutting out the traditional media.
THEN what Mr. Journalist?