Bring together a bunch of journalists and the talk will inevitably come round to the state of the industry, how the young don’t buy newspapers, how no one wants to pay for news anymore and the like.
This is a familiar litany of complaints but it overlooks a fundamental issue in the business of journalism. News has always been pretty much free to consumers. As Chris Anderson points out in his article on free in Wired:
In the traditional media model, a publisher provides a product free (or nearly free) to consumers, and advertisers pay to ride along. Radio is “free to air,” and so is much of television. Likewise, newspaper and magazine publishers don’t charge readers anything close to the actual cost of creating, printing, and distributing their products. They’re not selling papers and magazines to readers, they’re selling readers to advertisers. It’s a three-way market.
The issue for the news business is less to do with people getting news for free and more to do with delivering audiences to advertisers.
Once upon a time, when newspapers had an effective monopoly on news, they were able to provide advertisers access to consumers within a defined geographical area. Print was a great platform to reach these consumers, and as such, offered tremendous value to advertisers.
But that audience has been fragmenting for decades and the Internet has accelerated this process. The web has also allowed for the rise of niche news services and sites, offering alternatives for advertisers seeking to reach a specific group of people.
The dilemma for big news outlets is whether to continue to try to deliver a large, general audience, or to consider ways of building up niche products for niche consumers. This is not an either-or question.
The Internet allows news organisations to do both, by maintaining its current one-size fits all product while at the same time, develop new news products based on existing journalistic strengths to reach new consumers.
It is something the Newspaper Next project has been encouraging newspapers to do.
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