Head Tale

I recently came across two articles that propose radically different visions of the future of newspapers.  The two articles took specific interest in the New York Times which many consider the “newspaper of record” for the United States but which, like many newspapers, has been hemorrhaging money in recent years. 

In the first article, a former Baltimore Sun reporter who went on to produce “The Wire” TV show, proposes that the NYT and the Washington Post need to each build a pay wall for their respective content at the same time and with a unified front.  (this, via a MetaFilter post which also informs that the Times is already looking at $5/month subscriptions and the Associated Press is looking at using DRM for their content. )

In the other article, Michael Arrington of TechCrunch, proposes the “New New York Times“, a new media version of the Gray Lady that he thinks could become one of the most visited, profitable news sites online within five years  A telling line: “Journalism isn't dead; just the old business way of doing things is.” 

I'm a pretty big believer that print media is on the way out.  Just look at the chart of the financial performance of CanWest media (owner of most major news dailies in Canada as well as a variety of TV stations) for the past five years.  Not good. 

This is a pretty small sample size but here's another indicator – my dad reads the Leader Post every single day, pretty much cover-to-cover, and along with the CKCK TV news, these two outlets (along with coffeee row of course!) comprise his two main source of news about what's happening in the world. 

On the other hand, I maybe look at the Leader Post once a week, if that.  And when I do, it's rarely the dead tree version.  Instead, I get the majority of my information about what's happening in the world, both locally and beyond, from a much wider variety of online sources – not just the web sites of local traditional media companies like the Leader Post and CBC but also web sites connected to independent papers like the Prairie Dog and Sasquatch, blogs by local authors as well as numerous other web sites with a national and international focus. 

Again, it's only anecdotal evidence but the next generation is supposedly even more attuned to using the Internet for all of their information needs (heavy emphasis on “all”).  When you mix it with the “culture of free” that developed and continues to grow online, (Full disclosure: I'm currently reading “Free: The Future of a Radical Price” by Chris Anderson, editor of Wired magazine, which is another reason this subject is in the forefront of my brain), I think the inevitable is obvious. 

Companies, organizations and artists that find a way to give away something of value for free can make massive profits in other ways – whether it's Google's ad network subsidizing their various free services or Radiohead's donation model for their latest CD making them more profit than any of their traditionally released CD's.  (I'm not done it yet so maybe I'm wrong but one disappointing element of Anderons's book after a quick glance through the index is that there is no mention of libraries which I'd argue are the original free information oulet and have also done a lot to inform the “free” ethos of the Internet.  After all, how many of today's tech geeks spent their formative years in the safe confines of their local public library, among rows and rows of books and magazines that were literally free for the taking?)