This week, dear reader, that fat, drunk girl is The Associated Press.
The Associated Press thinks it knows why it’s upset. Professional journalists are travelling the world reporting the news on its behalf only for nasty bloggers to immediately paste vast chunks of it straight onto their sites. That’s why, this week, the AP is sitting on the stairs, bawling its eyes out at those bloggers – and at Google for encouraging them – while its friend (let’s call her Rupert) wipes its eyes with her Top Shop dress. Together, they’re vowing revenge.
But, if it weren’t so drunk, the Associated Press might realise that Google and the bloggers are not why it’s upset. Not really. For a start Google doesn’t reproduce whole stories on its Google News site but rather links directly to the original source – ticking just about every “fair use” or “fair dealing” box it’s possible to tick. Sure, its search algorithm doesn’t always put a story from the New York Times piece above a blogger quoting that same article, but it does in most cases, as Eric Schmidt has pointed out. And anyway, the AP has a long-standing business relationship to supply content to Google, as incidentally do several of the major blogs.
Meanwhile, some of the AP’s supporters – and a fair number of its enemies – are framing the drama as a debate over the future of the newspaper. Except of course, that doesn’t make sense either. The newspaper – that daily product of mashed tree, passed through wet and dry rollers, shipped across the country and splurged with ink – is dead. So too is its more costly cousin, the printed book.
They’re dead, in the same way that each of us – you, me, our children and eventually our grandchildren – are dead. In the next 100 years or so, as age or illness or accident will do for us, so too will the internet, the Kindle and whatever comes next do for print. Some publishers argue that the feel of paper will never be replaced by something so clinical as a flat screen, but those people are betting against the future, and when you bet against the future you always lose. That’s a simple fact, borne out by every technological advance there’s ever been from the horseless carriage to the iPod. No sense crying about it.
And yet, while the AP bawls at progress and while the rest of us point and laugh at them for doing so, almost no one on either side is engaging properly with the most important question of all. The question of how the hell serious, paid-for news journalism can possibly survive the the death of the printed word.
That’s the question that’s been occupying my mind for the past couple of days, and that’s the question that I actually want to try to give an answer to. Not because I have the first clue if my idea would work – they rarely do – but rather because it might focus the debate a bit, or at least take it out of the hands of extremists and idiots.
Ah, yes, let’s start with the idiots. If you read the words “paid-for news journalism” above and your first thought was “who cares? we’re all journalists now!” then I need you to do me a favour. Take a quick moment to visit any current affairs blog that doesn’t crib from the professional media for its facts. Have a look at the quality of actual, day to day, reporting – factoring in the comments, too. After all, we’re all journalists now! Done that? Good. Now ask yourself, do I trust these people to be the only source of my news? You do? Awesome! Now click here – you’re an idiot and you don’t have a place in this debate.
Most intelligent people realise that actual, honest-to-God holding-power-to-account journalism is one of the most vital things we have as a society. And equally most of us are smart enough to know that the people doing that journalism need to be paid to do it full time, even if, traditionally, that pay has been pathetic considering the hours they put in, and the dangers many face.
Of course there’s an odd mushy middle: the professional blogs. The Techcrunchs and Huffington Posts of the world. Where do they sit? Techcrunch was particularly brutal this week in its assessment of the future of the newspaper industry, but then again it can afford to be. Specialist blogs – with low editorial costs and skeleton staff – will continue to thrive, much like professional newsletters and political magazines always have, by selling ultra-targeted advertising to a precise constituency. They (generally) do a great job in their niche and yet their lack of resources and narrow focus, also means they’re unlikely to bring down the next Nixon, or humiliate the next Clinton (the latter, lest we forget, was down to Newsweek, not Matt Drudge).
Which leaves the question of how to ensure the survival of the kind of mainstream day to day journalism and investigative reporting that the traditional newspaper industry specialises in? The up to the minute reporting that frequently sets the agenda for every other news outlet, from cable news to radio to online, while also framing the political debates of the day? And, after a great deal of thought, my answer to the majority of the newspaper industry, is this …
… you can’t.
Forget about it. Give up. Walk away. You’ve lost that battle, so stop fighting it. Some chump with Twitter or a camera phone will always have the plane crash story first, and some two bit TV network will run it, un-fact-checked with a vacuous talking head, before you’ve had chance to pick up the phone to Deep Throat. Bloggers will reblog, tweeters will retweet and the world will spiral ever onwards towards the oblivion of ignorance, with only a few well-funded institutions like the BBC and the more reliable TV news networks left to carry the breaking news flag. It’s a hideous reality, but it’s a reality you shouldn’t get angry about, not least because it forms the basis of what you should do …
What you should do is realise that your strengths are no longer speed, but rather skill, craft and accuracy. Having realised that, you should stop updating minute-ly, hourly or even daily. Instead you should follow the lead of the likes of Newsweek and the Economist and publish weekly.
Yes, weekly – and not as an online free-for-all either, but as one single, self-contained, tangible, paid for issue, possibly in print but preferably published electronically on devices like the Kindle or behind a subscription wall on the web. The medium doesn’t really matter, what matters is that the daily pressure is off, and that you’re producing a complete paid for product. By leaving hourly “breaking news” and showbiz bullshit to cable and the bloggers, you can plough all of your resources into reporting the whole story, properly, professionally and fact-checked to the hilt. The blogs have speed, you have quality – and, given what they’ve had to put up with all week, that’s something your readers will be more than willing to pay for. There’s a reason why the Economist’s circulationkeeps rising, while daily newspapers keep on falling.
I wrote two weeks ago that for content to sell successfully online, it needs to tick three boxes: it needs to be unavailable for free elsewhere, there needs to be an easy path to purchase and it needs to be downloadable or otherwise “ownable” so that buyers feel like they’re getting something for their money. Distributing a high quality packaged product either in in print by subscription or to the Kindle ticks all of these boxes.
But a switch to weekly is just the start. Once you’ve changed to a mindset of selling a quality product rather than news as a commodity, other profitable areas start becoming more obvious. A return to investigative journalism doesn’t just have to mean three page articles, but also full length books – a pool into which newspapers have barely dipped a toe. The Guardian already has a books division, as do various others, either directly or via their corporate owners. As e-reader ownership increases, the logistics of putting out a book a month – available individually or by subscription – become ever more straightforward. Ask yourself how many people read about the Watergate scandal when it was reported in the Washington Post, versus how many have subsequently bought Woodward and Bernstein’s book, or watched the Pakula / Goldman film adaptation. Do the maths: in a downturn, book sales and cinema attendance generally stay stable – both are cheaper than a holiday or even a meal at a decent restaurant – and with your journalists being encouraged to do proper reporting rather than vomiting a constant stream of words at a screen, the opportunity for finding suitably meaty subjects to turn into book or film spin-offs increases massively.
And there’s still one final benefit to switching to this model: not only can blogs not compete with you, but they can actually help you. Give a free subscription to key bloggers, with strict rules on fair use and attribution, and watch them spend the week blogging and reblogging the contents, as the smaller bloggers reblog and the Twitterers retweet, all the time promoting your product. You can use digital watermarking and the iron fist of the law to protect your copyright but offer bloggers a commission for every new subscriber they refer and you’ll find most will soon get the hang of fair use and attribution. Play fair with them in return, though: when you use a picture from a blog or from Flickr, pay the photographer and credit them – and if you find a blogger who writes like a dream, hire them. You can afford it.
Of course, all of the above only works if you actually deliver quality. If you’re the owner of a tabloid rag that simply recycles AP wire stories about celebrities then Perez Hilton is still going to cream you (ew…). And, come to think of it, if you’re the management of the AP, you’re still pretty screwed as well. But your journalists and editors aren’t; in fact, if they’re good at what they do, then their new jobs with the new breed of newspapers will be even more stable than ever.
And rightly so; after all, it wasn’t them who refused to adapt to the changing media reality or who are now shouting and screaming at Google. They weren’t the greedy ones, gobbling up all the money when the going was good, while still paying journalists dick all. And now – with that particular party well and truly over – it isn’t them who will end up sitting fat and alone. Crying on the stairs, with only Rupert to wipe away their tears.
• Paul Carr is author of Bringing Nothing To The Party: True Confessions of a New Media Whore. He blogs at paulcarr.com
THE HIT MAN FROM BARISAN BARADAN HAD ON CONTRACT ON ANWAR MUST FINISH HIM POLITICALLY AT ANY COST BEFORE MARCH 2009 THE MACHIAVELLIAN MACHINATION.THE POLITICAL CLIMATE IS CHANGING VERY FAST THIS IS RIGHT TIME FOR US TO UNITE TO TELL THEM WE ARE NOT THE TINEST OF THE MINORITY BUT ONE OF THE MAJORITY BLOCK . OF VOTER WHO CAN DETERMIND OUR OWN DESTINY. By Baradan Kuppusamy, The Star It was an exhilarating year for opposition leader and PKR adviser Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim who emerged from the political wilderness to come within a whisker of overthrowing his tormentor Umno and capturing state power. As in 1998 when he was one step away from becoming Prime Minister but ended up sacked and jailed, he is again one step away as the effective power behind the Pakatan Rakyat coalition and as opposition leader controlling 82 seats in parliament. Yet the final step eluded him despite a massive build-up to Sept 16, the date that Anwar claimed BN backbenchers would defect to his side to topple the government and finally enable him to become Prime Minister. Becoming Prime Minister has been his goal ever since he gave up a sterling career as a neutral, firebrand Islamist leader in 1982 for a meteoric career as an Umno leader. He was the man that then Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad picked to implement “Islam in-government” and he did a massively successfully job. By 1996 he was in a strong enough position to challenge Dr Mahathir and saw in the Asian financial crisis of 1997 the opportunity to unseat his boss. But all that is history. Today his once-feared fundamentalist Islamist leanings don’t cause a ripple among non-Muslims; instead he heads a growing multi-racial party that is the undisputed dominant component in the Pakatan Rakyat coalition. Anwar has successfully reinvented himself as a “new age” leader espousing multi-culturalism, racial equality and affirmative action for all Malaysians who need it, not just bumiputras. The Sept 16 gambit has dented his credibility and politically set him back but if ever there is an incorrigible optimist, it must be Anwar. His new target is to capture Sarawak and with its 31 MPs march into Putrajaya. If that fails, he will simply come up with another scheme. MY HUMBLE APPEAL TO ALL MALAYSIAN SEARCH YOUR SOUL AND . IT IS FOR OUR GRAND CHILDREN AND THE FUTURE GENERATION.DONT BE MISLEAD BY THE TINEST OF THE MINORITY To this racist minority, Umno hegemony is their game, never mind that the basis of BN is racial harmony. They couldn’t care less about muhibbah so long as their supremacist definition of the Malay is accepted by all.WHO HAVE VESTED INTERST TO RIDE ROUGHSHOT OVER THE MAJORITY, HOW DANGEROUSLY THEY TWISTED 
UMNO POLTICAL SANIWARA HAS BEGAN, PLAY ONE THE PRESENTATION OF SENI SILAT BY PALAWANUMNOPUTRAS .NAJIB HAS TOOK OUT his keris long time ago with his message. I was suprised by mr Wong Chun Wai the chief editor of the Star’s coment he said’We can take confort in the fact that Najib is a British trained economist,has vast experience and speaks perfact English . We can illafford a Sarah Pallin situation’. –ARE U Trying indirectly TO TELL US THAT SARAH BRAVELY FACED HER VOTER on her SCANDALS BUT NAJIB’S HIDDEHAND IN LOCKING UP RPK THE THE DISSAPEARANCE OF BALASUBRAMANIAM. WHY you did not mention his keris sandiwara to your people now you cowards always camoflage you cari makan hippocrites just goes with the flow and focuses on keeping his party men happy, he can be sure that a large swathe of Malaysians will continue to stay away from Barisan Nasional and give him the thumbs down..MR CHUN WAI YOU A DISGRACE TO YOUR RACE AND THE MALAYSIAN AT LARGE. Hishammuddin said: “It is better for leaders of BN component parties to join the Opposition if they want to continue questioning historical facts.’’Umno has deteriorated to a level where it no longer has the moral right to determine leaders of the nation. It has lost that “bestowed” qualification to choose leaders at all levels for this blessed nation. engulfed and overwhelmed by graft and the resulting across the board corrupt culture, it ceases to function as a democratically principled party. Where the corrupts are held with contempt in civil societies, in umno they are place on pedestals with reverence.Most of the component parties were founded onracialground.The leadership of these parties, from UMNO, MCA, MIC, Gerakan, PPP etc exist for one sole purpose, that is to articulate, promote and protect the interest of the race they came from. Otherwise, they will not be elected to the leadership. They are all together in BN, because they will not survive the election alone. For the sake of the future generation, it is good for the BN to split and to let each party find their standing and acceptance in the coming election. The future is not for racially or even religiously based parties. It is not even for loosely formed consortium, such as the Pakatan Rakyat. The future are for parties that does not propagate racially or religiously slanted agenda but instead always strive to give hope, promote enterprise and reward achievement for all Malaysian.
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