I found out that Slate just opened a French site at slate.fr, and I’ve been like a kid in a candy store. The op-ed articles bring fresh perspectives and address little-talked about issues of the day. They’ve reminded me of why I used to buy Le Figaro, and why I don’t anymore.
More importantly, the attitude of the editors has been very refreshing. In the first couple weeks of existence, the editors clearly insisted on wanting to get letters to the editor and feedback from readers. And the amazing thing is, they actually responded to feedback and discussed future directions with readers. This is where, it seems to me the traditional press is lagging. See, I stopped reading Le Monde and severely decreasing consumption of Le Figaro because of the inaccuracies in the articles. On numerous occasions, I wrote both to the journalists and the ombudsman in order to point out inaccuracies and suggest corrections (e.g, no, the New York Red Sox did not just win the Super Hockey Bowl – and this is barely an exaggeration). But the journalists and the ombudsman never replied, neither did they ever correct the articles in the online version of the paper, which would have been so easy to do.
This is where there may be a generational and cultural gap between a declining newspaper industry and a growing net industry. We are told that the newspapers are not read by youth anymore, because there is no adequacy between what they youth wants and what the newspapers produce. Newspapers may need to immerse themselves in net culture in order to answer new needs of their readers. Maybe it’s not enough to upload the paper online to really be “online.” It’s useless to have an electronic feedback system, if the journalists and the editors and the ombudsmen are autistic. Newspapers have a great opportunity to re-invent themselves and become even better. But it seems to me they also need to accept the fact that old culture put online does not create adequacy. The world is changing, so should the papers.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
It’s not the technology, it’s what you do with it
I loved Daysha’s post RE: reading the paper on a computer, circa 1981. It just so happens that the French rolled a similar system into production in the early 80s, called the Minitel. The stuff was so great, it reached an incredibly high penetration rate in France, with about 9 million terminals for 55 million inhabitants by 1992. Here, you can see a video of a news report on the launch of system, circa 1982 (enjoy the clothing and hair style). Here's another video, likely from the early nineties, where broadcast television M6 suggest you connect to their Minitel site to decide which video clip will be played during the morning show.
Newpapers and other content providers loved the network because they made so much money out of it. See, to connect to the Minitel network, you had to dial up a centralized server, ran by the government. The government (through the Post and Telecommunications Ministry), would bill you by the minute. There was a price scale, but the most expensive services cost about 1 dollar a minute. We’re talking early-eighties dollars, too. The invoice would show up as part as your phone bill. The, the gov would rebate a large part of the fee to the content provider. Very effective pricing model. I believe the most successful of the news services where those where timing is everything, e.g. financial information.
The bottom line, with the right pricing model, information distribution over computer networks made the news industry significant money. So why is the Internet different, and why is the Internet blamed by newspapers? Could it be that the issue is not with the network, but with the culture that emerged from the community of network users? Tim mentioned hating Craig Newmark. That’s a step in the good direction - the direction of finding the “culprit”, that is. The Internet could revolve around a profit model. In fact, it does, in a lot of ways. I understand a number of journalists would prefer living in AOL’s gated community. But you should blame John Perry Barlow, Craig Newmark, et al, for the situation you find unpleasant. Not the network.
Newpapers and other content providers loved the network because they made so much money out of it. See, to connect to the Minitel network, you had to dial up a centralized server, ran by the government. The government (through the Post and Telecommunications Ministry), would bill you by the minute. There was a price scale, but the most expensive services cost about 1 dollar a minute. We’re talking early-eighties dollars, too. The invoice would show up as part as your phone bill. The, the gov would rebate a large part of the fee to the content provider. Very effective pricing model. I believe the most successful of the news services where those where timing is everything, e.g. financial information.
The bottom line, with the right pricing model, information distribution over computer networks made the news industry significant money. So why is the Internet different, and why is the Internet blamed by newspapers? Could it be that the issue is not with the network, but with the culture that emerged from the community of network users? Tim mentioned hating Craig Newmark. That’s a step in the good direction - the direction of finding the “culprit”, that is. The Internet could revolve around a profit model. In fact, it does, in a lot of ways. I understand a number of journalists would prefer living in AOL’s gated community. But you should blame John Perry Barlow, Craig Newmark, et al, for the situation you find unpleasant. Not the network.
One apple, one glass of wine, and one newspaper a day keep the doctor away
One apple a day keeps the doctor away, says the well-known proverb. And what parent hasn’t repeated it, day in and day out to his kids, in the hope that they would get the point. “Drill, baby, drill,” to quote ever-entertaining Gov Palin. Well, Amber (COMM 599 Amber) will probably agree that what holds true for apples may also hold true for newspapers. Train kids to read the paper early, they might well keep the habit once grown up. At least that France’s strategy.
As someone mentioned last week (not sure whether I should quote David or Michael Schudson on this), French President Sarkozy recently presented a series of measures he wants to pass in order to support a fledgling industry. While most measures are fiscal aids, one sticks out for it is reminiscent of the apples proverb: each kid, during the year where she’s 18, should get a free subscription to a daily paper. The hope, of course, is that said kid would get hooked and then get her own subscription upon turning 19.
While most discussions about the future of papers in the digital age revolve around developing viable online business models for news, this measure revolves around sustaining the print paper itself – which is a pretty good idea given new technologies such as radio, the phonograph, and TV, only seem to create a shift in the economic models of the previous industries instead of plain destroying them.
Back to the measure: it would be financed half by the paper picked by the 18-year old, and half by the government. This technique actually isn’t new in France. When I was in high school, we were able to get heavily discounted subscriptions to magazines, courtesy of the magazine industry and of the gov.
Another thing I remember: when I was in college in Paris, daily Le Figaro (which was still then an outstanding paper) would drop piles of its financial edition at the school, so students could get their free copy and get hooked. I did in fact get hooked. Is this something that would be feasible in the US? How about the LA Times starts dumping a bunch of free copies for Trojans and baby bruins to read? I have no idea what the cost of this would be, or what the return would be. But this is something worth looking into it.
As someone mentioned last week (not sure whether I should quote David or Michael Schudson on this), French President Sarkozy recently presented a series of measures he wants to pass in order to support a fledgling industry. While most measures are fiscal aids, one sticks out for it is reminiscent of the apples proverb: each kid, during the year where she’s 18, should get a free subscription to a daily paper. The hope, of course, is that said kid would get hooked and then get her own subscription upon turning 19.
While most discussions about the future of papers in the digital age revolve around developing viable online business models for news, this measure revolves around sustaining the print paper itself – which is a pretty good idea given new technologies such as radio, the phonograph, and TV, only seem to create a shift in the economic models of the previous industries instead of plain destroying them.
Back to the measure: it would be financed half by the paper picked by the 18-year old, and half by the government. This technique actually isn’t new in France. When I was in high school, we were able to get heavily discounted subscriptions to magazines, courtesy of the magazine industry and of the gov.
Another thing I remember: when I was in college in Paris, daily Le Figaro (which was still then an outstanding paper) would drop piles of its financial edition at the school, so students could get their free copy and get hooked. I did in fact get hooked. Is this something that would be feasible in the US? How about the LA Times starts dumping a bunch of free copies for Trojans and baby bruins to read? I have no idea what the cost of this would be, or what the return would be. But this is something worth looking into it.
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