Apparently some people actually enjoy ignorance. They say newspapers are obsolete, but then most of the news they read online "for free," assuming they even bother, comes from that very source. And please, don't try to tell me that cable news is a substitute for written journalism, because then I will know beyond a doubt that you enjoy ignorance. Cable news cultivates ignorance.
What is obsolete is the method of delivery of newspapers. Newsprint on the driveway is nearly over. I hope the newspapers find a formula that works for the 21st century, so at least those of us who'd prefer not to wallow in ignorance will have something better than the shouted headlines of cable news. If it's done right, I will gladly pay. Ignorance is just too expensive.
Sorry, but you have it backwards. Newspapers have been gleaning their information from online sources for several years now, not the other way around. Think I'm wrong? Just go read a morning or afternoon news story on any influential news website or blog, and then watch cable news tonight. Same stories, just several hours later. Then go pick up your local daily paper and flip to the U.S./World section the next morning. Same stories, now a day later. Repeat ad infinitum. The only reason papers like the NYT still thrive is due to opinion editorials and reviews, not news. Newspapers ceased being front-running new sources years ago.
That said, $30 per month for an e-subscription is waaaay too much. They must be out of their minds. Sure, that's $1 per day, but just like with digital music, the costs associated with distributing digital print are less than their hard form counterparts. At $30, that's $360 per yer, per subscription. That's outrageous in my opinion. Not to mention, it would probably hinder the adoption rate of the iPad if publishers start charging hard copy prices for their digital versions. But I think $10 sounds about right, maybe even in the $6~$8 range. I've never really cared for the NYT, particularly their editorials and opinions section, so I won't be one of their subscribers either way.
Let's see, I can have unlimited access to the internet and all it's vast stores of information for about $30 per month on high speed... or the opinions (let's be honest, it is not news) of some editors in New York for $30... which has more value?
Indeed you don't, but with the exception of something like the BBC, which is paid for via a sort of tax, you pay for radio and TV news in the form of slanted journalism that has to meet the requirements of key advertisers.
Most newspapers have a worse slant than radio and TV. NYT is one of the worst offenders. They're just Fox News for lefties.
Well, many of you have already said it, but at $30/month, I certainly won't be subscribing to the NYT on the iPad. Maybe at $10/month, but then I'd rather upgrade my broadband to a higher speed with the money. The truth is, if the publishers can create high-quality iBook versions (or whatever form they're gonna take), then I'll happily pay the printed price that I already pay for my magazine subscriptions. Any more than that would simply be ridiculous.
Personally I would pay for e-newspapers with no adverts but to pay for ads is frankly stupid (IMO).
I'm sure there are lots of people who are willing to pay for the NYT but this article is just tracking the decline of the newspaper business and shows how the major papers, in the mists of change, have stepped off the path (and they will probably never find it again).
Newspapers are less and less relevant to people's lives. With so many ways to get information you can still wait half a day for "breaking news" to be syndicated (and diluted and misquoted and re-cycled by the cut-n-paste brigade) and still get news that's fresher than a newspaper.
Basically they are stuck. No business model will work that will retain the huge profits of the past and I expect many newspapers will be subsumed in to TV outfits before they too become less and less relevant.
Like the old union controlled print shops of the 80s, I expect journos will become increasingly unemployable and less and less valued.
I had a paper route as a kid. But those were more innocent times. Liability, subscription management, billing, sales tax, etc. among other issues has turned driveway delivery into a high school drop out occupation.
Back then our family also read the paper and discussed the news of the day. Average people today just don't read that much. They get their news from the MSN home page and the television.
That is going to be the big challenge for the the newspapers going forward even on the iPad. The iPad may be a big hit as a family computing device but I doubt it will save the newspapers.
Journalism is so fragmented today. The business model of world news, politics, finance, sports, classifieds, and local interest is difficult to house under one roof any longer. We are in an age of specialization and newspapers have to adapt to that trend as well. The NYT is quickly becoming a dinosaur.
I do still get the WSJ delivered to my office but I rarely find time to read it. Of course most of the time they toss it in the bushes or across the way on the neighbor's walkway.
Tell me about it. I've had more than a few soggy newspapers and retrieved more than my share out of the shrubbery. I certainly don't treasure this part of the newspaper reading experience.
I agree, the iPad is unlikely to save the newspapers, at least as we know them -- and certainly not as we knew them. It's a way forward, though, which they haven't really had before. It will be a major challenge for them to fit into this new medium. They've already been burned by the internet so I can understand why pricing for e-delivery is resulting in a major debate over pricing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by reliason
You know what. I wrote a long fairly reasoned response. And deleted it. There is no point. You are either too emotionally or financially invested in the current state of journalism to realize that the model is dying.
As for your assertion that 'newspapers = journalism = democracy' is false. The free exchange of information, opinions and ideas is important to democracy. The world of controlled editorial bias enforced on news rooms by the OWNERS of those newspaper is patently not part of democracy.
Ah, so you had a "long and reasoned" response, but instead opted for a prattling insult? That's a lot more telling than you intended.
Newspaper and magazine people need to wake up. You are taking your production and distribution costs down to ZERO in this medium. You can cut prices like crazy and you *should*.
The problem for publishers is that this is fundamentally not true. Newspaper publishers make most of their money on print advertising; they make money on paid print circulation, but not even enough to cover the hard costs.
A print subscription to the Times costs about $50 a month, and the Times has paid circulation of about 1.4M. So assume circulation revenue of $840M a year. If the Times converted 50% of its paid circulation to a web-based subscription at $25 a month, the circulation revenue would drop by $210M a year, i.e, $25 a month on half its subscriber base.
But they've also reduced their major source of revenue -- print ad revenue -- by half. New York Times Co. does not break out print ad revenue for the Times, but assume another $840M, or $50 per month per subscriber at 1.4M subscribers, which is conservative.
And we already know that newspapers do not make up their ad revenue dollar-for-dollar when a reader jumps from a print subscription to an online subscription, so assume the Times will lose $25 in ad revenue per subscriber that goes to an online subscription.
So the print ad base drops from $840M to $420M, and the Times only makes half of that back in ad revenue for the online subscription, which works out to losing another $25 a month for every subscriber who cancels his print subscription and picks up an online subscription.
Using all of that math, every print subscriber who drops their $50-month print subscription and picks up a $25-a month print subscription costs the Times $50 a month ($25 in lost circulation revenue and another $25 in lost ad revenue), or about $600 a year.
Your argument is that, by "taking your production and distribution costs down to ZERO in this medium," the Times will break even on its subscribers. For that to be true, and using this conservative math, the Times would have to recoup $600 per subscriber in cost savings to break even.
First, the Times does not reduce its production and distribution costs to zero as long at it prints and distributes a newspaper, which, at the moment, is where almost all of its revenue comes from. Reducing the distribution by 50% will not reduce the hard costs by 50% because the Times would lose half of the scale economies that allow it to circulate to 1.4M subscribers now. Reducing the circulation will actually increase the cost to print and deliver to each subscriber until the Times stops printing and delivering a newspaper, which, again, they can't do today because almost all of the paper's revenue comes from print ads and print circulation.
Second, roughly $200M of the Times' annual operating cost is the newsroom, and the Times would have some additional hard costs -- IT employees, server space, marketing costs, etc. -- that would cost another, say, $20M a year to distribute an online edition even if the Times dropped its print product today.
All of that is not to say that the Times could not eventually be a profitable company that generates most of its revenue from digital editions, but saying an iPad product has no production costs is both wrong (because it does) and misleading (because it will result in dramatically reduced revenue per subscriber for the foreseeable future).
Third, the Times would make only 70% of the iPad subscription revenue if Apple agrees to the same model for print as it has already announced for book publishers, so a $25-a-month iPad subscription would result in only $18 a month in revenue to the Times.
I do think the future business model for newspapers will be paid digital distribution (web, mobile devices, etc.), or free digital distribution with a much better ad-supported model than anyone has been able to do yet -- and no print edition at all -- but that's going to be an expensive and difficult transition.
For the Times to break even online with, say, $220M in hard costs and no print edition, it would need about 900k digital subscribers paying $10 a month (or more if the Times is sharing revenue) and generating another $10 per month in ad revenue. I think that's do-able if the Times can move a critical mass of its print subscribers to digital subscriptions, shut down the print edition, pick up a lot of national and international subscriptions from people who read the Times free online right now, and not topple over during the transition.
I would actually like to see Apple buy a mid-major newspaper and figure this out for the rest of the industry. Apple is much likelier to get this right than newspaper companies who don't understand digital.
Sorry, but you have it backwards. Newspapers have been gleaning their information from online sources for several years now, not the other way around. Think I'm wrong? Just go read a morning or afternoon news story on any influential news website or blog, and then watch cable news tonight. Same stories, just several hours later. Then go pick up your local daily paper and flip to the U.S./World section the next morning. Same stories, now a day later. Repeat ad infinitum. The only reason papers like the NYT still thrive is due to opinion editorials and reviews, not news. Newspapers ceased being front-running new sources years ago.
That said, $30 per month for an e-subscription is waaaay too much. They must be out of their minds. Sure, that's $1 per day, but just like with digital music, the costs associated with distributing digital print are less than their hard form counterparts. At $30, that's $360 per yer, per subscription. That's outrageous in my opinion. Not to mention, it would probably hinder the adoption rate of the iPad if publishers start charging hard copy prices for their digital versions. But I think $10 sounds about right, maybe even in the $6~$8 range. I've never really cared for the NYT, particularly their editorials and opinions section, so I won't be one of their subscribers either way.
Yes, I think you're wrong. You are mistaking the news cycles for gleaning. Newspapers are on a daily news cycle and the internet and cable are on a 24-hour news cycle. But if you read the newspaper websites many of them run stories as they are completed, often the day before they appear in newsprint. Further, you seem to be speaking only of stories about events. Sources with 24-hour cycles are bound to be faster at reporting those. But these stories are also thin and repetitive because they rely on the same pool reporters or stringers. They do little to no follow up or investigation. The real difference comes out in local and regional stories which don't get covered on the net, and very poorly on TV -- and of course, investigative journalism. The importance of the latter, apparently many don't understand.
I don't see $30 as being outrageous, though I can certainly hope it ends up being less. But then, I'm already a newspaper reader.
You sir, are my hero :-) (I'm a Computer Technology professional and economics enthusiast).
You have hit the nail on the head. I respect good journalism when I find it. The lack of good journalism has made me a news grazer - going from source to source to try and distill the truth out of misconception, misinformation and editorial bias.
IMO - this is not about 'free vs. paid'. This is about the evolution of the information 'market'. In the beginning, Newspapers had a near monopoly, then the market began to fragment with news magazines, radio, television and now the internet all threatening the market incumbent. The Newsprint segment needs to either embrace and adapt to new distribution channels, or they will suffer the fate of all industries that do not adjust to changing market conditions.
Currently, I pay for the distribution channel (my internet connection). I would gladly pay for thoughtful, insightful, and trustworthy content.
Yeah, I basically agree. We are in a messy time between the death of one model for producing and distributing news and the birth of a new model. I believe that there really is a demand for high quality news and analysis, but that nobody has quite figured out how to meet that demand yet. Eventually things will settle down, and products like the iPad are a part of the market searching for a new solution.
I like to think of markets as evolutionary search algorithms. In the long run, they are very robust and will eventually figure out the right answer. But in the short run, they can take wrong turns and follow a lot of false leads.
The problem for publishers is that this is fundamentally not true. Newspaper publishers make most of their money on print advertising; they make money on paid print circulation, but not even enough to cover the hard costs.
...
A truly excellent analysis. Thanks for going to so much trouble to think this through. The numbers may be estimates, but the point is very well taken.
There is an underlying issue on this subject about NYT subscriptions that is more serious than how much people will, or will not pay for the news. The issue is honesty. How can we believe a story posted on some online blog that quotes anonymous sources about unnamed individuals at the NYT expressing concern about the cost of subscriptions on the iPad? Think deeper people. This is not about the NYT or subscription rates or anything but undermining the iPad and Apple.
Yes, I am sure that there is a lot of "sturm and drang" going on at the Times. There is wailing and gnashing of teeth at EVERY newspaper and magazine being published. Printed material, especially news-related, is on a downhill skid. So what better screen to put up about "publishers being concerned about the impact of the iPad on online literature and bookselling." Makes a good cover story.
I didn't see one damned article about Amazon's e-books being the demise of physical book printing. No, but the minute Steve Jobs says that the iPad will have an e-reader function for the likes of NYT and the iBook store, the storm of venom started to flow. I have been reading a lot of blogs on tech sites in the past few months and I see interesting trends.
The trends are that non-Apple writers (i.e.: those who haven't used an Apple product since the Apple IIe in grade school,) are now suddenly Apple and Mac experts and know EXACTLY what is wrong with the iPad. One techinoblogger actually was stupid enough to make the statement that "the iPad is destined to fail because it cannot run Windows 7." WTF???
That is like saying the reason GM is struggling financially is because they can't use Ford motor parts. It is insane. But I see dozens of articles each day with a subtle underlying message... "Apple will fail" "Steve Jobs is a monster" "iPhones are of the devil." None of this true but the writers keep singing the negative song about all things Apple. Even some of the writers on this so-called Apple insider site write with such venom towards everything that Apple says, or does not say. If Apple doesn't say what these critics want to hear, they say there must be something Apple and the evil Jobs are hiding. And then they quote some unnamed source on some obscure blog, or some inside source close to one of the manufacturing partners in China to verify their point.
But the point is simple. If something is printed online or in print that is not verified by a credible, named source, it is a LIE. Hearsay, innuendo, half truths and myths are not allowed in legal proceedings but they can be sprayed all over so-called journalism. The NYT and all other publications need to worry more about credibility, and not whether people will pay $6, $15 or $30 a month for what they write. Right now, much of what is being written is not worth two cents.
Just for the hell of it, go out and read "news" articles about Apple and the iPad on five different information sources. Look for the facts, and who supposedly stated them. You will find that many of these articles are built on a presupposition, supported by vague projections of half-truths. Many of them have no facts at all nor do they point to real, traceable news sources.
I an not an Apple fan boy but I do think they make superior products to the Wintel computers and smartphones. But if real criticism of Apple and its products is going to be raised, base it on facts and sound philosophy. That is what real journalism is supposed to be. All the rest is just mindless raving.
I couldn't agree more. Although the internet is, for the most part, a wonderful thing it does allow anyone with a hidden agenda or a personal bias to create a "smear campaign" against any company while hiding behind a cloak of anonymity. It also allows any competitor with deep pockets and an inferior product/service to pay an army of posters to do that work, if they were so inclined. Such is the complex world we live in. \
I couldn't agree more. Although the internet is, for the most part, a wonderful thing it does allow anyone with a hidden agenda or a personal bias to create a "smear campaign" against any company while hiding behind a cloak of anonymity. It also allows any competitor with deep pockets and an inferior product/service to pay an army of posters to do that work, if they were so inclined. Such is the complex world we live in. \
The net is a great echo chamber. If you do a lot of research on the net you'll pretty quickly discover how much of what is called "factual" on the net is actually cross-sourced repetition of the same poorly sourced (or completely unsourced) information. Certainly traditional journalists make mistakes, but when they do, they generally have to take responsibility for those mistakes. A lot of the criticism we hear of the NY Times is a result of them actually admitting to an error, which is something the beloved "free news" providers on the net rarely do. The net means never having to say you're sorry.
A couple of years ago on Jaywalking, it was asked, 'what is so special about today, i.e., June 14th. When they had to be told what Day it was, nobody could say what, where, when or how it came to be so special. Everyone that is, except a girl from Vancouver, Canada. Apparently, she had read it in one of the Canadian newspapers on her flight down to LA.
Aww, she probably knew the answer even without reading it ... after all. ... she is from Vancouver, BC. ...
Apparently some people actually enjoy ignorance. They say newspapers are obsolete, but then most of the news they read online "for free," assuming they even bother, comes from that very source. And please, don't try to tell me that cable news is a substitute for written journalism, because then I will know beyond a doubt that you enjoy ignorance. Cable news cultivates ignorance.
The sad fact is that reductions in newsrooms staff means that newspapers rely on news services for many of their articles.
As an example, in the 80's less than half of the Chicago Tribune's articles on world news was from their own correspondents [1]. By now, with the staff reductions even at the NYT there's even more stories that come from the news services as opposed to from the newspaper itself. The number of newspaper journalists dropped 5% in 2008 alone [2].
Your (later) statement that Reuters or other news services produces more shallow articles than a daily is amusing given the amount of news service content in most dailies and the fact that the major suriving dailies like the NYT and Washington Post have their own news service arms (well, their owning companies do): the NYT News Service and the Washington Post News Service with Bloomberg News.
Greed pure greed, seriously, no more print, no more shipping, no more carriers! I presently pay $145 per year for my former?. now non local paper. (discount'd if you make a single yearly payment) I?d pay $75 to $80 per year or $35 to $40 for 6 months. But $10 to $30 per month forget it. Wake up and get your heads out of the old brick and mortar business model. With a lower price you could easily million subscriptions. IMHO
Call it greed if you must, but all businesses (the successful ones, anyway) are all about maximizing profits. If the NY Times believes they can maximize their profits by selling $6 monthly subscriptions, then that's what they will do. But I doubt it.
Comments
If they are better educated, why would they read the Times?
Walt Mossberg and David Pouge
Apparently some people actually enjoy ignorance. They say newspapers are obsolete, but then most of the news they read online "for free," assuming they even bother, comes from that very source. And please, don't try to tell me that cable news is a substitute for written journalism, because then I will know beyond a doubt that you enjoy ignorance. Cable news cultivates ignorance.
What is obsolete is the method of delivery of newspapers. Newsprint on the driveway is nearly over. I hope the newspapers find a formula that works for the 21st century, so at least those of us who'd prefer not to wallow in ignorance will have something better than the shouted headlines of cable news. If it's done right, I will gladly pay. Ignorance is just too expensive.
Sorry, but you have it backwards. Newspapers have been gleaning their information from online sources for several years now, not the other way around. Think I'm wrong? Just go read a morning or afternoon news story on any influential news website or blog, and then watch cable news tonight. Same stories, just several hours later. Then go pick up your local daily paper and flip to the U.S./World section the next morning. Same stories, now a day later. Repeat ad infinitum. The only reason papers like the NYT still thrive is due to opinion editorials and reviews, not news. Newspapers ceased being front-running new sources years ago.
That said, $30 per month for an e-subscription is waaaay too much. They must be out of their minds. Sure, that's $1 per day, but just like with digital music, the costs associated with distributing digital print are less than their hard form counterparts. At $30, that's $360 per yer, per subscription. That's outrageous in my opinion. Not to mention, it would probably hinder the adoption rate of the iPad if publishers start charging hard copy prices for their digital versions. But I think $10 sounds about right, maybe even in the $6~$8 range. I've never really cared for the NYT, particularly their editorials and opinions section, so I won't be one of their subscribers either way.
Indeed you don't, but with the exception of something like the BBC, which is paid for via a sort of tax, you pay for radio and TV news in the form of slanted journalism that has to meet the requirements of key advertisers.
Most newspapers have a worse slant than radio and TV. NYT is one of the worst offenders. They're just Fox News for lefties.
Walt Mossberg and David Pouge
David Pouge yes, Walt writes for the WSJ.
I'm sure there are lots of people who are willing to pay for the NYT but this article is just tracking the decline of the newspaper business and shows how the major papers, in the mists of change, have stepped off the path (and they will probably never find it again).
Newspapers are less and less relevant to people's lives. With so many ways to get information you can still wait half a day for "breaking news" to be syndicated (and diluted and misquoted and re-cycled by the cut-n-paste brigade) and still get news that's fresher than a newspaper.
Basically they are stuck. No business model will work that will retain the huge profits of the past and I expect many newspapers will be subsumed in to TV outfits before they too become less and less relevant.
Like the old union controlled print shops of the 80s, I expect journos will become increasingly unemployable and less and less valued.
Perhaps that's a good thing...
I had a paper route as a kid. But those were more innocent times. Liability, subscription management, billing, sales tax, etc. among other issues has turned driveway delivery into a high school drop out occupation.
Back then our family also read the paper and discussed the news of the day. Average people today just don't read that much. They get their news from the MSN home page and the television.
That is going to be the big challenge for the the newspapers going forward even on the iPad. The iPad may be a big hit as a family computing device but I doubt it will save the newspapers.
Journalism is so fragmented today. The business model of world news, politics, finance, sports, classifieds, and local interest is difficult to house under one roof any longer. We are in an age of specialization and newspapers have to adapt to that trend as well. The NYT is quickly becoming a dinosaur.
I do still get the WSJ delivered to my office but I rarely find time to read it. Of course most of the time they toss it in the bushes or across the way on the neighbor's walkway.
Tell me about it. I've had more than a few soggy newspapers and retrieved more than my share out of the shrubbery. I certainly don't treasure this part of the newspaper reading experience.
I agree, the iPad is unlikely to save the newspapers, at least as we know them -- and certainly not as we knew them. It's a way forward, though, which they haven't really had before. It will be a major challenge for them to fit into this new medium. They've already been burned by the internet so I can understand why pricing for e-delivery is resulting in a major debate over pricing.
You know what. I wrote a long fairly reasoned response. And deleted it. There is no point. You are either too emotionally or financially invested in the current state of journalism to realize that the model is dying.
As for your assertion that 'newspapers = journalism = democracy' is false. The free exchange of information, opinions and ideas is important to democracy. The world of controlled editorial bias enforced on news rooms by the OWNERS of those newspaper is patently not part of democracy.
Ah, so you had a "long and reasoned" response, but instead opted for a prattling insult? That's a lot more telling than you intended.
Consider, just for a moment, that he might be right.
Think what you're asking, man! A forum poster that considers someone else's views is truly the rarest breed.
Newspaper and magazine people need to wake up. You are taking your production and distribution costs down to ZERO in this medium. You can cut prices like crazy and you *should*.
The problem for publishers is that this is fundamentally not true. Newspaper publishers make most of their money on print advertising; they make money on paid print circulation, but not even enough to cover the hard costs.
A print subscription to the Times costs about $50 a month, and the Times has paid circulation of about 1.4M. So assume circulation revenue of $840M a year. If the Times converted 50% of its paid circulation to a web-based subscription at $25 a month, the circulation revenue would drop by $210M a year, i.e, $25 a month on half its subscriber base.
But they've also reduced their major source of revenue -- print ad revenue -- by half. New York Times Co. does not break out print ad revenue for the Times, but assume another $840M, or $50 per month per subscriber at 1.4M subscribers, which is conservative.
And we already know that newspapers do not make up their ad revenue dollar-for-dollar when a reader jumps from a print subscription to an online subscription, so assume the Times will lose $25 in ad revenue per subscriber that goes to an online subscription.
So the print ad base drops from $840M to $420M, and the Times only makes half of that back in ad revenue for the online subscription, which works out to losing another $25 a month for every subscriber who cancels his print subscription and picks up an online subscription.
Using all of that math, every print subscriber who drops their $50-month print subscription and picks up a $25-a month print subscription costs the Times $50 a month ($25 in lost circulation revenue and another $25 in lost ad revenue), or about $600 a year.
Your argument is that, by "taking your production and distribution costs down to ZERO in this medium," the Times will break even on its subscribers. For that to be true, and using this conservative math, the Times would have to recoup $600 per subscriber in cost savings to break even.
First, the Times does not reduce its production and distribution costs to zero as long at it prints and distributes a newspaper, which, at the moment, is where almost all of its revenue comes from. Reducing the distribution by 50% will not reduce the hard costs by 50% because the Times would lose half of the scale economies that allow it to circulate to 1.4M subscribers now. Reducing the circulation will actually increase the cost to print and deliver to each subscriber until the Times stops printing and delivering a newspaper, which, again, they can't do today because almost all of the paper's revenue comes from print ads and print circulation.
Second, roughly $200M of the Times' annual operating cost is the newsroom, and the Times would have some additional hard costs -- IT employees, server space, marketing costs, etc. -- that would cost another, say, $20M a year to distribute an online edition even if the Times dropped its print product today.
All of that is not to say that the Times could not eventually be a profitable company that generates most of its revenue from digital editions, but saying an iPad product has no production costs is both wrong (because it does) and misleading (because it will result in dramatically reduced revenue per subscriber for the foreseeable future).
Third, the Times would make only 70% of the iPad subscription revenue if Apple agrees to the same model for print as it has already announced for book publishers, so a $25-a-month iPad subscription would result in only $18 a month in revenue to the Times.
I do think the future business model for newspapers will be paid digital distribution (web, mobile devices, etc.), or free digital distribution with a much better ad-supported model than anyone has been able to do yet -- and no print edition at all -- but that's going to be an expensive and difficult transition.
For the Times to break even online with, say, $220M in hard costs and no print edition, it would need about 900k digital subscribers paying $10 a month (or more if the Times is sharing revenue) and generating another $10 per month in ad revenue. I think that's do-able if the Times can move a critical mass of its print subscribers to digital subscriptions, shut down the print edition, pick up a lot of national and international subscriptions from people who read the Times free online right now, and not topple over during the transition.
I would actually like to see Apple buy a mid-major newspaper and figure this out for the rest of the industry. Apple is much likelier to get this right than newspaper companies who don't understand digital.
Sorry, but you have it backwards. Newspapers have been gleaning their information from online sources for several years now, not the other way around. Think I'm wrong? Just go read a morning or afternoon news story on any influential news website or blog, and then watch cable news tonight. Same stories, just several hours later. Then go pick up your local daily paper and flip to the U.S./World section the next morning. Same stories, now a day later. Repeat ad infinitum. The only reason papers like the NYT still thrive is due to opinion editorials and reviews, not news. Newspapers ceased being front-running new sources years ago.
That said, $30 per month for an e-subscription is waaaay too much. They must be out of their minds. Sure, that's $1 per day, but just like with digital music, the costs associated with distributing digital print are less than their hard form counterparts. At $30, that's $360 per yer, per subscription. That's outrageous in my opinion. Not to mention, it would probably hinder the adoption rate of the iPad if publishers start charging hard copy prices for their digital versions. But I think $10 sounds about right, maybe even in the $6~$8 range. I've never really cared for the NYT, particularly their editorials and opinions section, so I won't be one of their subscribers either way.
Yes, I think you're wrong. You are mistaking the news cycles for gleaning. Newspapers are on a daily news cycle and the internet and cable are on a 24-hour news cycle. But if you read the newspaper websites many of them run stories as they are completed, often the day before they appear in newsprint. Further, you seem to be speaking only of stories about events. Sources with 24-hour cycles are bound to be faster at reporting those. But these stories are also thin and repetitive because they rely on the same pool reporters or stringers. They do little to no follow up or investigation. The real difference comes out in local and regional stories which don't get covered on the net, and very poorly on TV -- and of course, investigative journalism. The importance of the latter, apparently many don't understand.
I don't see $30 as being outrageous, though I can certainly hope it ends up being less. But then, I'm already a newspaper reader.
You sir, are my hero :-) (I'm a Computer Technology professional and economics enthusiast).
You have hit the nail on the head. I respect good journalism when I find it. The lack of good journalism has made me a news grazer - going from source to source to try and distill the truth out of misconception, misinformation and editorial bias.
IMO - this is not about 'free vs. paid'. This is about the evolution of the information 'market'. In the beginning, Newspapers had a near monopoly, then the market began to fragment with news magazines, radio, television and now the internet all threatening the market incumbent. The Newsprint segment needs to either embrace and adapt to new distribution channels, or they will suffer the fate of all industries that do not adjust to changing market conditions.
Currently, I pay for the distribution channel (my internet connection). I would gladly pay for thoughtful, insightful, and trustworthy content.
Yeah, I basically agree. We are in a messy time between the death of one model for producing and distributing news and the birth of a new model. I believe that there really is a demand for high quality news and analysis, but that nobody has quite figured out how to meet that demand yet. Eventually things will settle down, and products like the iPad are a part of the market searching for a new solution.
I like to think of markets as evolutionary search algorithms. In the long run, they are very robust and will eventually figure out the right answer. But in the short run, they can take wrong turns and follow a lot of false leads.
The problem for publishers is that this is fundamentally not true. Newspaper publishers make most of their money on print advertising; they make money on paid print circulation, but not even enough to cover the hard costs.
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A truly excellent analysis. Thanks for going to so much trouble to think this through. The numbers may be estimates, but the point is very well taken.
There is an underlying issue on this subject about NYT subscriptions that is more serious than how much people will, or will not pay for the news. The issue is honesty. How can we believe a story posted on some online blog that quotes anonymous sources about unnamed individuals at the NYT expressing concern about the cost of subscriptions on the iPad? Think deeper people. This is not about the NYT or subscription rates or anything but undermining the iPad and Apple.
Yes, I am sure that there is a lot of "sturm and drang" going on at the Times. There is wailing and gnashing of teeth at EVERY newspaper and magazine being published. Printed material, especially news-related, is on a downhill skid. So what better screen to put up about "publishers being concerned about the impact of the iPad on online literature and bookselling." Makes a good cover story.
I didn't see one damned article about Amazon's e-books being the demise of physical book printing. No, but the minute Steve Jobs says that the iPad will have an e-reader function for the likes of NYT and the iBook store, the storm of venom started to flow. I have been reading a lot of blogs on tech sites in the past few months and I see interesting trends.
The trends are that non-Apple writers (i.e.: those who haven't used an Apple product since the Apple IIe in grade school,) are now suddenly Apple and Mac experts and know EXACTLY what is wrong with the iPad. One techinoblogger actually was stupid enough to make the statement that "the iPad is destined to fail because it cannot run Windows 7." WTF???
That is like saying the reason GM is struggling financially is because they can't use Ford motor parts. It is insane. But I see dozens of articles each day with a subtle underlying message... "Apple will fail" "Steve Jobs is a monster" "iPhones are of the devil." None of this true but the writers keep singing the negative song about all things Apple. Even some of the writers on this so-called Apple insider site write with such venom towards everything that Apple says, or does not say. If Apple doesn't say what these critics want to hear, they say there must be something Apple and the evil Jobs are hiding. And then they quote some unnamed source on some obscure blog, or some inside source close to one of the manufacturing partners in China to verify their point.
But the point is simple. If something is printed online or in print that is not verified by a credible, named source, it is a LIE. Hearsay, innuendo, half truths and myths are not allowed in legal proceedings but they can be sprayed all over so-called journalism. The NYT and all other publications need to worry more about credibility, and not whether people will pay $6, $15 or $30 a month for what they write. Right now, much of what is being written is not worth two cents.
Just for the hell of it, go out and read "news" articles about Apple and the iPad on five different information sources. Look for the facts, and who supposedly stated them. You will find that many of these articles are built on a presupposition, supported by vague projections of half-truths. Many of them have no facts at all nor do they point to real, traceable news sources.
I an not an Apple fan boy but I do think they make superior products to the Wintel computers and smartphones. But if real criticism of Apple and its products is going to be raised, base it on facts and sound philosophy. That is what real journalism is supposed to be. All the rest is just mindless raving.
I couldn't agree more. Although the internet is, for the most part, a wonderful thing it does allow anyone with a hidden agenda or a personal bias to create a "smear campaign" against any company while hiding behind a cloak of anonymity. It also allows any competitor with deep pockets and an inferior product/service to pay an army of posters to do that work, if they were so inclined. Such is the complex world we live in.
I couldn't agree more. Although the internet is, for the most part, a wonderful thing it does allow anyone with a hidden agenda or a personal bias to create a "smear campaign" against any company while hiding behind a cloak of anonymity. It also allows any competitor with deep pockets and an inferior product/service to pay an army of posters to do that work, if they were so inclined. Such is the complex world we live in.
The net is a great echo chamber. If you do a lot of research on the net you'll pretty quickly discover how much of what is called "factual" on the net is actually cross-sourced repetition of the same poorly sourced (or completely unsourced) information. Certainly traditional journalists make mistakes, but when they do, they generally have to take responsibility for those mistakes. A lot of the criticism we hear of the NY Times is a result of them actually admitting to an error, which is something the beloved "free news" providers on the net rarely do. The net means never having to say you're sorry.
A couple of years ago on Jaywalking, it was asked, 'what is so special about today, i.e., June 14th. When they had to be told what Day it was, nobody could say what, where, when or how it came to be so special. Everyone that is, except a girl from Vancouver, Canada. Apparently, she had read it in one of the Canadian newspapers on her flight down to LA.
Aww, she probably knew the answer even without reading it ... after all. ... she is from Vancouver, BC. ...
Are you referring to Donald Trump's birthday?
Do they celebrate that in Canada?
Some of us do, only it's called "Misguided Ego" day! .... or "ME" for short.
Apparently some people actually enjoy ignorance. They say newspapers are obsolete, but then most of the news they read online "for free," assuming they even bother, comes from that very source. And please, don't try to tell me that cable news is a substitute for written journalism, because then I will know beyond a doubt that you enjoy ignorance. Cable news cultivates ignorance.
The sad fact is that reductions in newsrooms staff means that newspapers rely on news services for many of their articles.
As an example, in the 80's less than half of the Chicago Tribune's articles on world news was from their own correspondents [1]. By now, with the staff reductions even at the NYT there's even more stories that come from the news services as opposed to from the newspaper itself. The number of newspaper journalists dropped 5% in 2008 alone [2].
Your (later) statement that Reuters or other news services produces more shallow articles than a daily is amusing given the amount of news service content in most dailies and the fact that the major suriving dailies like the NYT and Washington Post have their own news service arms (well, their owning companies do): the NYT News Service and the Washington Post News Service with Bloomberg News.
[1] http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal...accno=ED204768
[2] http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=40882