Falling circulation? Let’s jack up the price
Am I the only person who thinks this does not make sense? (Read the background here and hear it here, via RealPlayer, if you have it: Today, BBC Radio 4, Aug. 25.)
Fewer people are buying your product. So what should you do? Apparently, some are saying you should raise the price. I suppose the logic is that the loyal readers need to chip in more to support the product they enjoy.
All I can think of is a young journalism student — who I heard on a panel at a Florida journalism conference in June — who got a little choked up as he told a room full of publishers and top editors that journalism is too important to the world for it to be hidden behind a paid firewall.
I know we must find a way to pay the reporters and everyone else. I know journalism is not produced for free. But the gist of the student’s statement is correct.
Nonprofit journalism — the idea seems better and better. The profit seekers can keep the entertainment and sports and gossip. The kind of journalism that creates and buoys an informed public, however, might not survive without a “nonmarket” solution.
I’ve been reading a new book, The Wealth of Networks. Maybe that’s why I can’t get this idea out of my head. Author Yochai Benkler writes about how the production and distribution of information, culture and knowledge have changed because of digital formats and networks. He ties in the idea of open source software — hundreds of people with no boss, no corporation and no profit motive contribute and collaborate to develop and improve an information product — in the case of the Linux operating system, a product that some say will challenge the position of Microsoft.
If one day your operating system is free, will journalism also be free?
Technorati tags: journalism | business | newspapers | democracy
I don’t believe newspaper are destined for the trash bin of history that most industry “experts” have predicted. I do believe newspapers have changed content and print over the past 5 years but are still rudimentarily the same, and still provide a good investment in a vibrant industry.
But technology has changed the printing, format, and importance of newspapers in America. The internet and weblogs have cut into the reliance of newspapers but has not lessened their importance. If anything the internet and blogs have increrased the necessity of newspapers while at the same time decreased their circulation.
I am not going to suspend my disblief in the societial necessity for newspapers, and I do have hope for actual increases in circulation of that medium in the next decade or so. Just wait for the Generation Xers reach their 40s and those small eye straining screens become impossible to see. The only cure eyeglasses and newspapers.
Danny L. McDaniel
September 3, 2006 at 1:58 pmLafayette, Indiana
Thanks for the comment, Danny. I think every democratic society needs journalism, but I question whether that journalism needs to be in a print newspaper.
Especially with the economics of newspaper publishing today (cost of presses, cost of distribution), the whole enterprise must focus on a mass audience. That translates into bland and non-controversial content.
The bigger the audience, the worse the product.
September 4, 2006 at 1:19 pm