Welcome to the third and last part of the article on paid content, remotely late, but as it tends to life happened and got in my way. Last – at least for now, though I’m sure this discussion is to carry on. The big step has already been taken, the dialogue shifted from mourning over the death of the old models to the consideration of new ones. Much more exciting, if you ask me. So here I am, jumping into the circus with my own three pennies. Starting from the postulate that the notion of content needs rethinking.
The discussion about content still revolves around the notion of ownership and authorship as it was understood pre-Internet. It’s not only the distribution of news that changed, but also who authors it. There’s a very good article about aggregation on The Hot Blog, and I maintain it’s good even though I only agree with half of it. “And the problem with news as a commodity… as much work as can go into getting it, it really doesn’t belong to anyone. Information IS free. And as immoral as theft may be, trying to keep “the news” to yourself is not only impossible, but also kinda immoral.” Well… exactly. The profit in media industry is still based on the notion of right to authorship which equals the right to profit (from reporting the information). What I argue is that the proliferation of news via new channels cannot be stopped. Not by a pay wall, not by anything. DRM is a rather sad attempt to stop proliferation of digital music and even that cannot be applied to news. This proliferation will only be faster and faster and soon it will become instant – and all over the shop.
Let go of it.
Let go of the authorship and start thinking about something completely new. Let go of google and aggregation and who earns on the piece of news. Soon it all won’t matter.
The value of news is how it’s turned into content. The value of content is probably in 50% in the way it is delivered. And what I mean that is not form (functionality), thought that too.
Let me explain. Why do we read certain commentators or blogs – be it online or off? Why, for instance, do I chose to follow film news on The Hot blog or /film?
- I agree with their views most of the times (they have similar tastes in films, so I relay on their opinion)
- They are interested in the same things (they chose topics that are of interest to me)
- I enjoy the style in which they deliver their content
Sometimes they do have ‘exclusive’ material, and that is great, but that is not specifically why I follow them – especially that anything exclusive will be all over the web within two hours. Whereas their tastes, expertise and opinion is subjective and the combination of these things is unique. I don’t have the time to read 10 film blogs everyday. I want 2 or 3 bloggers that are essentially like me, only smarter and better informed. This is actually return of the authorship in its purest form. I chose the author that is interesting in the totality of their production. We’re similar, or polar opposite, but it’s them that is interesting. Their choice of news to cover, their commentary. And to deliver what they deliver they have to be on it full time (yes, I dig for film news but not to this extent, I don’t have the time – or the knowledge). They will find and know what I don’t have the time for – and for that I would pay.
There are two problems with this model: the culture of getting everything for free online and the middle man. I entitled my recent piece for the Polish Businessman “who will feed the journalists?” – because that is fundamentally the problem. We read the blog, we look at the page and presumably the author can monetize in form of adverts. Well, they cannot – not enough (see the first part of this article). If Murdoch cannot, the rest is pretty much doomed, unless they have a devoted or rich (or both) audience that will pay even though they don’t have to. Radiohead tested that with In Rainbows, which was available to download for whatever price one was willing to pay. But in came the middleman, or more like – the top man. Even though they earned handsome amount of money they somehow backed out of this model. I have a sneaky suspicion that the distributors (shops, ituneses and amazons of this world) vetoed that sort of democracy.
And that, I agree, is the problem. If the news can be delivered by social media users, if they can be turned into valuable content by independent bloggers (on their own or in groups) cutting out the costs of publishing and physical distribution – what will happen to the army of people who live off of the collection of news stories and the distribution of media outlets?
There might not be enough space in the new media for every one. The again print laid off hand scribers en masse and then became an industry employing many, many more.