Thanks for everyone's comments so far, and for voting in the poll about The Baltimore Sun's redesign. It is important that your comments (that is, your compliments and criticisms) get directed to Sun management, so don't just comment on this blog -- register your opinions here.Otherwise, your comments got me thinking about the next poll question, which is:
Would you pay for online local news (at the Baltimore Sun or wherever)? Vote in the poll to the right.
Right now, we hear lots of anecdotes of people giving up the print edition and just consuming the news online, where it is free.
But we all know nothing is ever free. Harvesting the news costs a lot of money, though the promise of an Internet-only news site means a publisher doesn't have to worry about operating a costly printing press and buying pricey paper and ink by the ton.
Take an imaginary walk with me: Imagine us in the year 2018. Newspapers are gone and have been gone for about five years and 2/3 of U.S. adults are reading the news on their iPhone 12G networked phone. You're scouring the Internet for local news and you're also looking more stories about the still-ongoing war in Iraq beyond the one Associated Press article that is informing the world that day. But you're frustrated: In a world where news and information is free and a serious business model for serious journalism hasn't been worked out, you're finding that you just can't find hard facts that you trust about the news of the day.
So would you pay for an online subscription to get a little better coverage and more distinctive, original reporting? Or would you be happy with the free information that leaves you still hungry for more at the end of the day?
Vote in the poll in the right column, but let's discuss amongst ourselves in the comments below.
P.S. Full disclosure: In addition to our Sun print subscription, my wife and I pay for an online-only subscription to the Wall Street Journal, whose Website is chock full of goodies every day.
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8 comments:
Unfortunately, I would not pay for online news for the same reasons I don't have cable, have only a dial-up internet connection and may simply turn my antenna television off come the new year. Can't afford it. Can't justify it. I'll be reading more books and periodicals. And buying The Washington Post, New York Times and Wall Street Journal more often than I do now. But I guess they won't exist either so I'll be visiting the library more.
Yes, I'll be in the dark when it comes to local news and timely national news, but I'll still have radio. Having first read newstories on a VDT in 1984, I'm perfectly fine with it when it's my job. But I can't stand reading on-line, from websites, whether we're talking newspaper sites or blogs or even e-mail. I do it, though, because I have to; yet it gives me a headache and screws with the wiring in my brain as much as it enlightens me.
So maybe it will just be goodbye to all that.
Sheesh. Judging by the way the latest poll (would you pay for online local news?) is going on this blog right now, a lot more of us are gonna be outta jobs in a few years or less if the trends don't start reversing.
Each day I read the WSJ, the WaPo, the NYTimes, and the Sun. If I lived in New York I would pay to read the Times online. If I lived in Washington I would pay to read the Post online.
I would not pay to read the Sun online because it has become a pathetic shell of its former self. The lesson of the past 20 years is: never, never, never, never let your paper get bought up by some big corporation, or some out-of-town dumbass who can't tell the difference between a big city daily and a local weekly advertiser.
Outside of sports coverage, the Sun rarely has more than three or four stories I want to read each day. The writing is increasingly bad, the coverage increasingly shallow, and more and more of the content comes from wire services -- which I can get anywhere.
I read the Sun out of habit; out of a desire to know what's happening locally; I read it even though I know that reading it will just depress me, because it has become utter schlock.
Zell has no interest in running the paper, and he'll never be able to service the debt. The Sun can be a profitable, quality publication. But it can't produce ever-increasing profits of sufficient size to keep a venture capitalist happy. Sell the paper to local, private ownership, who will be content with comfortable, constant profits. Rebuild the newsroom. Maybe then, in 2018, the Sun might be worth the paper it's written on.
Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?
I'm not as interested in local news as I am national and world news. But occasionally I do check out the Sun online to see what's happening in the area. There are other online sources for local news so I think a paid online subscription would drive readers elsewhere.
My wife and I are considering subscribing to the Sunday print edition.
The question puts the cart before the horse. The question is, can you show me an online news site that's worth subscribing to, that has information I can't get anywhere else -- such as free sites?
But if "free" sites do an adequate or better job and survive on ad and sponsor revenue (or any source other than subscriptions), the answer to the original question is "Daddy, what's a subscription?"
Well, JD. The sites may be free but your connection to the Internet is not free. So right now, you're paying for the access to information, but not for the information (news) itself. Hmmmm.
Wonder if Verizon and Comcast will ever get into the news business if traditional journalism companies falter. Even Google is seriously troubled by the slide of newspapers.
And a followup thought, JD. (You make a great point, btw) What's troubled me for the past 3-4 years is that many newspapers have stripped away their capacity to generate a truly unique online product -- that capacity is/was dependent on the size of their staffs. The great American newspapers for the past 20 years were, by and large, great because they attracted top notch talent and had hundreds of reporters in their ranks. That's no longer the case, except for a top few.
Yet now, the demands of the Web are greater than ever, even as many newspaper staffs have endured an incredible period of contraction for the past 3-4 years. And they're feeding two masters: print and web.
I think you've hit the nail on the head. I would pay for local news, particularly news focused on the City, but the Sun isn't actually doing good, in-depth local reporting. Instead of that, they just keep feeding us more cheesy, meaningless features that are often transparently advertiser driven. Talk about something that can easily be had for free....
I'm not even talking about particularly long, complex investigative pieces. Those are great, but publishing an interesting series every few months doesn't make up for not doing the basic everyday city desk stuff that used to be the lifeblood of a metropolitan daily.
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