SECOND THOUGHTS ON FREE ACCESS

"By Chris Daly


“Information wants to be free because it has become so cheap to distribute,
copy and recombine – too cheap to meter. It wants to be expensive because it
can be immeasurably valuable to the recipient. That tension will not go away.”
--Stewart Brand, “The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at MIT” (1987)



When the top brass at The New York Times announced last week that the paper was scrapping its experiment in posting a tollbooth on the information superhighway, there was a lot of cheering. Most commentators hailed the move as an acknowledgement of the new media realities. Dan Gillmor, for example, the estimable head of the Center for Citizen Media and an insightful former journalist, said:

"Glad to see that the Times is putting its great cast of columnists more firmly back into the public conversation than they’d been behind the pay-wall. That’s excellent news for the writers and the readers."

At first, I agreed with him (and others, like Doc Searls) and joined the cheering section. After all, who wants to be against freedom?

But in the past few days, I have felt troubled by some of the implications.

Originally, of course, the Times made a pretty straightforward business decision in setting up the TimesSelect pay wall. (It must have been a business decision, because it certainly made no sense from a journalistic, public-service, or historical point of view.)

The calculation was that the paper recognized that its celebrated and comprehensive news coverage was attracting a lot of what economists call "free riders," or what the rest of us call "free-loaders" -- people who wanted something for nothing. They were coming to the Times' website, reading to their heart's content, and contributing no revenue to the expense of running the paper. They were behaving in a way that is somewhere between window-shopping and shop-lifting. So, why not try to get some money out of them?

As someone who used to make my living as a journalist on the payroll of traditional news media, I have to say that I do not consider the idea of asking your customers to pay to be inherently evil. I know that many cyber-thinkers and bloggers think so, but I do not. I think that having squads of professional journalists doing original reporting is worthwhile, and it is certainly not free.

So, my question is this: If the readers won’t pay, who will?

And this brings me to what I find troubling about the Times’ decision to give away its news report for free: it makes the newspaper even more dependent on advertising revenue.

As I point out in my book, the news business has operated since at least the early 19th Century on a model that was based on a “dual revenue stream” – money coming in from subscribers and money coming in from advertisers. The exact proportion varied a bit from place to place and from time to time, but they were both important.

Now, obviously, the old business model is crumbling. The question is: what will replace it? A model that depends 100% on advertising is not self-evidently better. If there is no revenue coming in from readers, the news organization is entirely dependent on advertising revenue. History tells us that advertisers can have all kinds of bad influences. For one thing, ad revenue is fickle: it goes through an annual cycle of ups and downs, and it tends to shrink in recessions. Not only that, but advertisers have been trying to weasel their way into news and editorial decision-making since the earliest days, and there is no reason to believe they will ever stop.

If the news must depend on a single stream of revenue, I would rather see that stream made up of millions of readers trying to learn things than see it made up of a few hundred corporations trying to sell things.

NOW They Tell Us

New York Times coverage shows independence (at last)

By Chris Daly


THE MOST IMPORTANT THING about the special report on Page 1 of the Sunday New York Times (Sept. 9) was that it existed at all. Taking up the bulk of the space “above the fold,” the report was an effort to supply readers with a comprehensive assessment of the situation in Iraq, just ahead of the long-awaited report by Gen. David Petraeus.
What’s significant about the Times’ report is that it was the product of independent, on-the-ground reporting. It was not a summary of things that were said by experts or other people. It was first-hand.

Whether the report was correct in every particular is another question. Whether the conclusion is justified by the facts is open to dispute.

But isn't that the point? Those of us who cannot go to Baghdad and see for ourselves are entirely dependent on those who are there on the ground. In a time of war, what could be more valuable to those reader/citizens who must ultimately decide what to do in Iraq?

The story also reflects the institutional heft of The New York Times. The page 1 piece bears two bylines, but that fact barely suggests the commitment behind the story. Inside, there is an italicized “credit box” listing 16 other people who contributed to the report, including military affairs specialist Michael Gordon and quite a few whose names appear to be Iraqi. Add to that the number of artists, photographers, videographers, and cartographers who created the accompanying visual package. Add to that the teams of editors who doubtless pored over the whole thing. There were probably no less than 40 people involved.

And it was hardly a “day” story. That is, this piece was not a reaction to events that occurred on Saturday. It was the results of weeks of sustained reporting targeted toward this final result. It was undertaken at the newspaper’s initiative.

Still, the report raises questions:

Where was this kind of tough, skeptical, independent reporting before the war?

Or in the first couple of years?

After the passage of this much time, World War II was over.

NOW They Tell Us

New York Times coverage shows independence (at last)

By Chris Daly


THE MOST IMPORTANT THING about the special report on Page 1 of the Sunday New York Times (Sept. 9) was that it existed at all. Taking up the bulk of the front page space “above the fold,” the report was an effort to supply readers with a comprehensive assessment of the situation in Iraq, just ahead of the long-awaited report by Gen. David Patreus.
What’s significant about the Times’ report is that it was the product of independent, on-the-ground reporting. It was not a summary of things that were said by experts or other people. It was first-hand.

Whether the report was correct in every particular is another question. Whether the conclusion is justified by the facts is open to dispute.

But that is precisely the point. Those of us who cannot go to Baghdad and see for ourselves are entirely dependent on those who are there on the ground. In a time of war, what could be more valuable to those reader/citizens who must ultimately decide what to do in Iraq?

The story also reflects the institutional heft of The New York Times. The page 1 piece bears two bylines, but that fact barely suggests the commitment behind the story. Inside, there is an italicized “credit box” listing 16 other people who contributed to the report, including military affairs specialist Michael Gordon and quite a few whose names appear to be Iraqi. Add to that the number of artists, photographers, videographers, and cartographers who created the accompanying visual package. Add to that the teams of editors who doubtless pored over the whole thing. There were probably no fewer than 40 people involved.

And it was hardly a “day” story. That is, this piece was not a reaction to events that occurred on Saturday. It was the results of weeks of sustained reporting targeted toward this final result. It was undertaken at the newspaper’s initiative.

Still, the report raises a question: Where was this kind of tough, skeptical, independent reporting before the war?
Or in the first couple of years of the invasion and occupation of Iraq?
After the passage of this much time, World War II was over.

Readers as Owners?

By Chris Daly

A few months ago, I posted a comment here suggesting that the solution to the problem of ownership of America's flagship newspapers like the NYTimes and the Wall Street Journal might lie in their reader bases.

The idea prompted several comments, and it has shown up elsewhere. Now comes a thoughtful essay by Jon Garfunkel on the untapped power of the audience.

Is there a new business model out there?