How to Save an Industry

So, I was just watching the Daily Show, and as the guest they had on the show one Walter Isaacson, who wrote the cover story on this month’s Time Magazine. It’s about how print journalism is dying because everyone gets their news for free on the web (if you want to read this article, you can easily find it for free on the web). In it, he lays out that the problem is that people have come to expect free news, and that internet advertising no longer is a viable business plan. And what is the solution? According to Mr. Isaacson, it’s that most hated of business models, micropayments.

Here’s the thing about micropayments. Even though they seem to actually work, this is largely because they’re the only game in town for digital distribution. Nobody actually like buying songs one at a time on Itunes, but that’s the only legal way to buy digital music. And besides that, it’s a completely different industry. Mr. Isaacson, you cannot simply steal an idea from another field and call it innovation, it doesn’t work that way. A song at least is a complete product; could you imagine someone selling individual pages from a magazine or newspaper? And how much do you charge for a single story? A newspaper costs 50 cents, so how much does that make one story worth? Some fraction of a cent? Do you have to pay one penny for every three stories you access? In that case, can’t you just keep creating new accounts every two stories and never have to pay for your super-premium content? And perhaps the biggest question of all: why would I bother with any of this when there will always be people willing to provide your service for free?

You see, Mr. Isaacson, the problem isn’t people’s browsing habits, or flashy new business schemes. As a journalist, you would think that you would already know what matters the most in this business: content. Ever heard the saying, “content is king?” If you can provide something people can’t get elsewhere, then people will be willing to pay for it. If you can’t get people to subscribe, that says more about your publication than it does about the general public. If you were at a bake sale, and someone was selling bags of dog shit marked “candy,” and another stand was giving away free muffins, and they were delicious, which one would you give your patronage to? The fact is, the internet is providing better coverage, better journalism than you, and they’re doing it all for free.

The problem is the print journalism industry itself. These days most publications just take a few stories off the Associated Press, change a few words, and if they can be bothered make a couple phone calls for some pull quotes. It’s become tired and bored, and much like the recording industry instead of trying to provide a more meaningful service when its very existence becomes called into question, it instead seeks to railroad the people who care enough about their profession to take their passion directly to the people. Instead of complaining or grasping at straws, why not reinvigorate yourselves? You have more resources than the bloggers do, you could very easily do a better job than them. That they are reporting circles around you with no press passes or foreign correspondents is absolutely pathetic.

Mr. Isaacson, while bringing up your article, I was subjected to no less than six spaces reserved for advertising, and a very large pop-up, as well as four separate links to subscribe to the print version of the magazine. Also, the article is cleverly split into four parts, so every page turn pulls up a new set of ads. Of the entire page that your article appears on, about 30% of it is content. Not that I am complaining, this is the price we pay for free journalism (though in Time’s case, it is a bit ridiculous), but if you can’t make money with 28 separate revenue streams per article, per reader, plus the cost of print subscriptions, then you have no business running a company. You probably shouldn’t even be running a lemonade stand, because you would be spending six million dollars for every lemon you squeeze. You say that online publishing cannot be supported by advertising dollars, yet the people who are driving you out of business don’t seem to have any trouble doing so.

In your article, you mention how the Wall Street Journal has been successful with an online subscription model. This is because the Wall Street Journal actually has content. Which is exactly my point. In fact, it’s kind of odd that you bother to mention it since its success flies in the face of the argument you are trying to make. The Wall Street Journal is absolutely essential to people in business. They use their resources to find facts and figures that most people don’t have access to, and they provide worthwhile expert analysis. Publications that can’t manage to stay relevant will die off. Sorry, but it’s a competitive industry.

So, to Walter Isaacson and every one else trying to defend the print industry by whining and stamping your foot, please shut the hell up. Pull yourselves together, you work in the single most important field in the world, the one that the founders of the United States of America thought so essential that they guaranteed it as the first enumerated freedom of our Constitution. You have an incredible responsibility to the public, and the fact that someone snatched the torch away from you means that you weren’t fulfilling our expectations. Stop acting like children, and start acting like fucking journalists.