Nick Carr: Who will pay for the news?

As someone who dearly loves reading The Wall Street Journal every day, it was gratifying to see Nick Carr blast a hole in the "everything will be free" utopian arguments from Clay Shirky and others that suggest newspapers are dead.

While the newspaper industry is certainly reeling, Carr's suggestion that a lower supply of news will translate into a greater ability to monetize it rings true:

Shirky claims we're "in a media environment with low barriers to entry for competition." But that's an illusion born of the current supply-demand imbalance.

The capital requirements for an online news operation are certainly lower than for a print one, but the labor costs remain high...It's a fantasy to believe that the production of all the kinds of news that people value, particularly hard news, can be shifted over to amateurs or journeymen working for peanuts or some newfangled journo-syndicalist communes...Whatever the Internet dreamers might tell you, [newspapers] ain't going to a purely social production model...Once you radically reduce supply in the industry, the demand picture changes radically as well. Ad inventory goes down, and ad rates go up.

And things that seem unthinkable now--online subscription fees--suddenly become feasible. We also, at that point, get disabused of the fantasy that there's no such thing as news consumers. We see that providing fodder for "conversations" is not the primary value of the news; it's an important value, but it's a secondary value.

Amen. I do believe that how newspapers structure their operations, including how they charge for their services, will change, but it seems like a gullible fantasy to believe that the Web will magically create quality content via a ready pool of amateurs.

I'm one of those amateurs. I think I'm capable of writing great commentary, but I'm not the one out there doing real journalism. That's what CNET and other news organizations create.

I'm confident that the Web will reset the way in which media gets created and consumed. It already has. But the idea that content will get created in the absence of effective payment models for that content is absurd. While the creative destruction of the newspaper industry continues apace, let's be sure to focus on the "creative" and not revel in the "destruction."

Follow me on Twitter at mjasay.

[SmpCtryPhys]

I was struck by the logic of the statement that included "can be shifted over to amateurs or journeymen working for peanuts or some newfangled journo-syndicalist communes." In particular I should offer that in a craft where there is no demand for masters then there will be neither apprentices nor journeymen. Humans are not inclined to insentiently pursuing paths that are detrimental to survival however much we may laud implicit altruism these days. One of the things we have learned (again) in recent months is that our social models do indeed have cusps in their state surfaces, that catastrophes do occur. The financial arena reeducated us on that. That such behavior should not also be found in the media environment needs be demonstrated, not ignored until the catastrophe occurs.

[pentest]

Daily newspapers are bleeding red. Weekly, independent local papers are thriving in all market sizes. These papers are given away free.

The daily papers offer little of substance. They are easily replaced by people online. They are dinosaurs, it is just that Mr. Carr hasn't realized it yet.

Matt: You owe me a new keyboard and monitor because I spit cherry coke like I was Bender when I read this:

"I think I'm capable of writing great commentary"

Then I spit more when you claimed that CNET is a company that produces Journalism.

Please, I beg you, before writing such stuff put in a warning.

The bill for the hardware will be sent shortly. :)

[meh130]

The problem is "professional", "hard news" journalists does not guarantee quality. Drudge eloquently covered this in his June 1998 speech at the National Press Club. That was after Dateline NBC and CNN's Operation Tailwind but before the Killian documents and Reuters "fauxtography". While the Dateline NBC scandal had to be uncovered the old fashioned way, the Killian documents fraud was uncovered in minutes via the wisdom of the crowd, as were the Reuters fauxtographs.

American journalism has killed itself. The days of expert journalists, such as the bow-tied economics reporter Irving R. Levine, or science reporter Jules Bergman are gone. Now the guiding principals of American journalists are not subject matter excellence, but personal ideology.

I never saw a 60 Minutes segment with Mike Wallace pounding on Mary Mapes' door demanding "answers". I never have seen one American investigative journalist investigate anyone else in the brotherhood of journalism. They protect each other.

[NoFreeNews]

I am an ardent supporter of newspapers...especially local newspapers. While I am interested in what is going on in the world, I need to know what is going on in my city and my state.

Now, I can certainly track down all the information I read in my newspaper.

As long as I am willing to invest the time to attend every city council meeting, every school board meeting, call my legislative representatives on a regular basis to find out what the lawmakers are considering, go to the police department to find out what crimes were committed and what I should be concerned about, go to the stores and find out what specials they are running, call all the civic organizations to find out who is performing where and when, call all the nonprofits to find out what they need and how I can help, call the theaters to find out what movies are playing, call the convention & visitors bureaus to find out what is going on in the city, go to the bookstores each week to find new releases, or..... do you get the picture?

Do you understand what the newspaper is doing for you? Yes, you can certainly get all this information yourself, but the newspaper gives you all of it in a concise easy-to-read format. Even as readily available as this information is on the internet, it would take hours online to obtain the variety of information you find in the paper. The newspaper gives you back your time. It may not cover everything, but it can point you in the direction you need to go to find out more.

As for converting print newspapers to online? A print newspaper is considerably more "green" than anything electronic. Once you are done reading the newspaper, you can share it with others, use it in your garden for mulch/weed protection, use it as stuffing for mailing packages, use it to clean your windows, line your bird cage, use it for packing breakables when moving, etc. It breaks down in the landfill and regenerates itself (paper comes from trees, trees can be replanted and regrown). And it doesn't cost you anything to recyle it!!!

I have a room in my office FILLED with outdated electronics - computers, monitors, cell phones, printers, etc. - that I can't get rid of without paying a small fortune to have someone haul it away. None of it can be recycled and none of it can go into a landfill. Putting a newspaper online only tranfers the "environmental" production costs & processes from printing the newspaper to the manufacturing costs & processes of electronics.

What will we lose if we lose the newspapers? More than we understand.