The Line explains why every journalist is getting laid off, and why it's not because they cut your favourite theatre critic or pay a columnist too much.
I wrote back to tote up how much I was supporting journalism with. Mostly in Canada, I'm dropping over $220 Cdn/year on Canadaland, $50 on The Line, $60 on the Tyee, another $60 on National Observer, and $20 on Maclean's. Then there's $60 for The Guardian, and $20 for the Washington Post (dropped the NYT, and would drop the Post if it weren't that cheap; I'm so sick of American news.)
It's all over $500/year, and if one million Canadian households could be so supportive, that would be $500M per year, or about enough to pay 7000 salaries of $60K, with enough left over to run dozens of servers, which is about the only remaining publishing expense.
It strikes me as *possible* for it to work, and all I can do is be supportive of these sites, and hope it works. Also, I evangelize...like this.
Like Roy Brander, I am trying toi support journalism. I pay $50/month to get the Globe six days a week at my door step, I also subscribe to the The Walrus, Macleans Rolling Stone and I recently subcribed to The Line last month at $50/year. That works out to about $700 annually. I agree that if more Canadian househods subscribed to multiple outlets, the industry might just survive.
The amount of revenue earned from classified was about equal to the cost of operating a newsroom. The amount of revenue earned through subscriptions and single copy sales was about equal to the cost of delivering the papers. Mass audiences were less fragmented. Local supper time news drew 50% more viewers 25 years ago. And here’s the big disappointment for journalists: Most people bought the paper for reasons other than news - for TV guides, horoscopes, crosswords, entertainment listings, the Canadian Tire flyer, the obits and yes the Classifieds themselves. Hate to break it to ya folks but them’s the facts.
Business models are indeed changing in a number of industries - mainly due to technology. Proper journalism is more important now than ever given the global impact of the world we now occupy. Tech is also problematic as it allows access to all - as it should - however that invites the 'local coffee shop' gossip where everyone is a 'creator' rather than 'news' journalist because of the ability to make $$ and likely more $$$ delivering even more bizarre stories/content.
Like readers have commented here already, I too subscribe to a number of online publications in Canada and a couple in the US to satisfy my interest in critical thinking. Still too much bias (in my reading from many publications) rather than a more focussed review of the issues being written about. Humans have always been talented at story-telling, however that has also historically led to tribalism and strife. We tend to keep travelling this same path - only faster now because of tech.
I came across this from ARK Invest on the imminent demise of linear TV: "We believe that as cord-cutting accelerates during the next five years, linear TV ad spend is likely to drop more than 50%, from $70 billion to roughly $34 billion, an abrupt shift analogous to print media’s demise during the Global Financial Crisis in 2008-2009. After levitating for years in the face of declines in readership, print advertising suffered years of double-digit declines." Huh. Just like you said, and a clear fact for those who closely follow these trends.
I arrived late at the conclusion that paying for journalism is the future. "Free" sources of information involve selling a piece of yourself through data harvesting, or wading though social media garbage that is sorted by its ability to generate impressions. Someone will eventually land on the right business model. The tech giants should have to share revenue with the content providers that enable the likes of Google, Facebook etc. to harvest media consumer data to target advertisers. That should involve direct licensing rather than some arbitrary big tech tax distributed to government sanctioned creatives using government conjured formulae that also weigh other politically motivated factors. I look to models like micro-stock: If someone wants to use a photographer's work on a website or in an app, for example, they license it via some aggregation site that offers standardized terms and easy payment. If a search engine wishes to link to a creative's content, they must license through an aggregator, who in turn pass revenue on to the creative. Some creatives may wish to sign on with aggregators on a salaried basis.
Now, truth also is, God doesn't know (or, if She does, She isn't telling me) what to do about this situation.
My suspicion is that what you are doing (i.e. a start up on less than a shoe string) is the future and there will be a vast number of failures along the way. But, but, but, I do not see any alternative.
For those who decry the absence of the "old" model, it seems to me that if you go back about 100 - 125 years you see a vastly competitive newspaper market where our definition of news, journalism and journalistic ethics would seem out of place. So, all things considered, I refer you to that fine phrase, plus ca change, plus ca meme chose. [My apologies for any typos and lack of accents in my phrasing.]
Best and most simplest explanation I heard was this. Newspapers delivered audiences to advertisers. Now we have unlimited content but a limited audience (or words to that effect). The second thing is that not only is opinion cheap to produce but it tends to drive more engagement!
I wrote back to tote up how much I was supporting journalism with. Mostly in Canada, I'm dropping over $220 Cdn/year on Canadaland, $50 on The Line, $60 on the Tyee, another $60 on National Observer, and $20 on Maclean's. Then there's $60 for The Guardian, and $20 for the Washington Post (dropped the NYT, and would drop the Post if it weren't that cheap; I'm so sick of American news.)
It's all over $500/year, and if one million Canadian households could be so supportive, that would be $500M per year, or about enough to pay 7000 salaries of $60K, with enough left over to run dozens of servers, which is about the only remaining publishing expense.
It strikes me as *possible* for it to work, and all I can do is be supportive of these sites, and hope it works. Also, I evangelize...like this.
Like Roy Brander, I am trying toi support journalism. I pay $50/month to get the Globe six days a week at my door step, I also subscribe to the The Walrus, Macleans Rolling Stone and I recently subcribed to The Line last month at $50/year. That works out to about $700 annually. I agree that if more Canadian househods subscribed to multiple outlets, the industry might just survive.
The amount of revenue earned from classified was about equal to the cost of operating a newsroom. The amount of revenue earned through subscriptions and single copy sales was about equal to the cost of delivering the papers. Mass audiences were less fragmented. Local supper time news drew 50% more viewers 25 years ago. And here’s the big disappointment for journalists: Most people bought the paper for reasons other than news - for TV guides, horoscopes, crosswords, entertainment listings, the Canadian Tire flyer, the obits and yes the Classifieds themselves. Hate to break it to ya folks but them’s the facts.
Business models are indeed changing in a number of industries - mainly due to technology. Proper journalism is more important now than ever given the global impact of the world we now occupy. Tech is also problematic as it allows access to all - as it should - however that invites the 'local coffee shop' gossip where everyone is a 'creator' rather than 'news' journalist because of the ability to make $$ and likely more $$$ delivering even more bizarre stories/content.
Like readers have commented here already, I too subscribe to a number of online publications in Canada and a couple in the US to satisfy my interest in critical thinking. Still too much bias (in my reading from many publications) rather than a more focussed review of the issues being written about. Humans have always been talented at story-telling, however that has also historically led to tribalism and strife. We tend to keep travelling this same path - only faster now because of tech.
I came across this from ARK Invest on the imminent demise of linear TV: "We believe that as cord-cutting accelerates during the next five years, linear TV ad spend is likely to drop more than 50%, from $70 billion to roughly $34 billion, an abrupt shift analogous to print media’s demise during the Global Financial Crisis in 2008-2009. After levitating for years in the face of declines in readership, print advertising suffered years of double-digit declines." Huh. Just like you said, and a clear fact for those who closely follow these trends.
I arrived late at the conclusion that paying for journalism is the future. "Free" sources of information involve selling a piece of yourself through data harvesting, or wading though social media garbage that is sorted by its ability to generate impressions. Someone will eventually land on the right business model. The tech giants should have to share revenue with the content providers that enable the likes of Google, Facebook etc. to harvest media consumer data to target advertisers. That should involve direct licensing rather than some arbitrary big tech tax distributed to government sanctioned creatives using government conjured formulae that also weigh other politically motivated factors. I look to models like micro-stock: If someone wants to use a photographer's work on a website or in an app, for example, they license it via some aggregation site that offers standardized terms and easy payment. If a search engine wishes to link to a creative's content, they must license through an aggregator, who in turn pass revenue on to the creative. Some creatives may wish to sign on with aggregators on a salaried basis.
Truth is, none of this is new.
Now, truth also is, God doesn't know (or, if She does, She isn't telling me) what to do about this situation.
My suspicion is that what you are doing (i.e. a start up on less than a shoe string) is the future and there will be a vast number of failures along the way. But, but, but, I do not see any alternative.
For those who decry the absence of the "old" model, it seems to me that if you go back about 100 - 125 years you see a vastly competitive newspaper market where our definition of news, journalism and journalistic ethics would seem out of place. So, all things considered, I refer you to that fine phrase, plus ca change, plus ca meme chose. [My apologies for any typos and lack of accents in my phrasing.]
Spot On!
Best and most simplest explanation I heard was this. Newspapers delivered audiences to advertisers. Now we have unlimited content but a limited audience (or words to that effect). The second thing is that not only is opinion cheap to produce but it tends to drive more engagement!
There is no easy answer