The Future of Journalism or The Death of Journalism

Written by  – 26.02.10

The Future of Journalism: Is Journalism Dead?

Death of Journalism

The recent BrightonSEO event was a great opportunity to hear more about the booming SEO industry, an industry often talked about but rarely in the public arena - let alone in a Brighton city centre pub! Want to learn more about SEO? See our Social Media & SEO training courses in Brighton, Sussex.

Many have noticed how online media such as Twitter and Facebook are the first to break news events, and we even wrote a recent blog post on this which received some interesting reader comments. Newspapers are already attempting to harness the power of social media, such as the New Zealand Herald, but how viable is this in the long-term? Doesn’t it simply reinforce the growing dominance of social media and the attraction of real-time news?

Newspapers now need to defend what they stand for – news that is unique, substantial and stimulating. Whatever standpoint we take it’s clear that they need to do something differently.

Why the newspapers are struggling against Google?

“Both the national Chicago papers don’t exist, the Evening Standard went from a million to half a million and now has to give itself away…” – Jeremy Spiller, WhiteHat Media, BrightonSEO.

Until recently the newspaper model was based on CPM.  That model is now broken

Propellernet’s Jack Hubbard says: “The print costs are going up, the cost to hire a decent journalist is still there and [newspapers] are really struggling to find a business model that’s going to be sustainable. Google – new kid on the block – blindsided them by basically analysing all their links and drawing conclusions as to who should be promoted to the top or the bottom… [So the newspapers are] losing all their advertising revenue to Google AdWords”.

160 newspapers in the US and the UK went under last year, meaning newspapers need to look at other ways to make money. Many feel that Google and the SEO industry need to start giving the newspapers something back.

How the newspapers are changing their business model

The newspaper industry is already making some very drastic changes to adapt its business model. And the truth is it needs to - even Rupert Murdoch’s losing money, and he’ll be the first to test a new model when on May Day News International (The Times, The Sun, The News of the World) goes behind a paywall. We’ve all got very used to free content and until recently it was assumed that paying for online content was just not going to happen. But the newspapers are desperate and things are changing - consumers are changing - check out my earlier post on the iPad Age; as the book and music markets reveal, people are investing more and more in online content.

For News International to succeed they’ll need to provide unique, competitive content that people will pay for; this is good news for the consumer who’s fed up with the magnitude of  low quality content and poor quality free newspapers such as the Metro - distributed on public transport. Even the free papers have seen their revenues slump in the last couple of years, and many are taking this as a sign for the approaching return to paid news.

In late October 2009, Newsday, the US Long Island paper (that was bought for $650 million) put its web site, newsday.com, behind a pay wall. It was one of the first non-business newspapers to take the pay wall plunge. Three months later, how many people signed up to pay $5 a week, or $260 a year for access to newsday.com?

The answer: 35 people. Maybe we are just not ready for payed news. Maybe it will only work for big national papers.

The newspaper industry is in a situation where it now needs to fight for its own survival.

The Content Factory: the death of journalism?

Demand Media are an existing company specialising in selling content on demand – in the region of thousands of articles and videos every day. They pay hundreds of freelance writers, editors and filmmakers around $20 for a video clip and $15 for an article of a few hundred words. This is peanuts to the aspiring a writer and a fraction of what newspapers have paid in the past -  as many are complaining, this is no route to encouraging quality content.

This model is highly profitable, but highly depressing for the writer or filmmaker who wants to spend time on their work and knows that quality is dependent on this. As noted in a recent Guardian article, Demand Media and similar companies are going from strength to strength; this is terrifying stuff for journalists. Rather than try sell ads to support content that costs a particular amount, the company has slashed production costs to make advertising more affordable.

Demand employs 7,000 freelance writers, editors, and videographers, and it produces a staggering 4,500 pieces of original content per day—most of it housed on such websites as eHow.com and tailored to pop up in response to almost every conceivable Google search. Steven Kydd, Demand Media’s executive vice president in charge of content, wants to partner up with magazines.

Demand’s approach is similar to what newspapers and other publishers have done before, creating content attractive to advertisers like a gardening or homes section that they know advertisers will pay well to be in. News organizations looking to generate revenue from content on the Web can see that Demand Media’s model does make money. News companies could learn from Demand’s approach, not for mainstream news, but for niche sites that are focused on reader demand and generating revenue. But this is content creation, not journalism; journalists create things that editors believe readers want or need to know about, some of which will be attractive to advertisers, some of which will not.

Newpapers could employ a strategy like Demand’s, using advertising to support other news efforts (just like they do with bridal sections). Niche sites would have to focus on topics such as travel or gardening, which would be attractive to advertisers.

At the Brighton SEO event Jeremy Spiller recalled the example of The Daily Telegraph: “they’re evolving into different revenue streams… they’ve got things like registration so therefore they own data… they’re profiling people, they’re setting up business clubs and gardening clubs…. They’re profiling people… [and] that’s an asset in itself, because then you can sell that on to travel companies etc etc“. Newspapers are already busy adapting their business models, and it’s still to be seen where this will lead.”

Beating Google

In a recent incident Google was attacked for its “parasitical nature”, causing Google’s Marissa Mayer to jump in defense. However, blaming Google is taking the easy option – newspapers need to fight back.

There’s no question that good content costs money, and don’t people crave quality more and more in a world of consumables? Poor journalists aside, this is an exciting time for the news consumer.

Similar posts you may like

  1. Optimising Your Website for Google Caffeine – 5 top tips
  2. Black Hat versus White Hat
  3. Social Media in a Recession
  4. Microsoft Attacks Google with News Corp Deal
  5. Google PageRank Update April 2010

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Share This Post

Bookmark and Share

This entry was posted by Andy Trainer on Friday, February 26th, 2010 at 3:22 pm and is filed under Sales & Marketing, SEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

7 Responses to “The Future of Journalism or The Death of Journalism”

seobro says:

I put an ad in a paper. They use to have links, but now they rip them out. WHY? Because Google told them they could not sell links. They did not want to be delisted by the giant search engine. Well, my ad is worthless without a link. I depend on people clicking. Google is telling people how to run their business. I was buying and selling links back in the early 90′s before goog even existed and I do it for traffic generation.

27. 2. 2010 at 10:01 pm

Rick Thomason says:

I’m going to weigh in with some thoughts that hopefully will make some sense as a group:
(1) Newspapers did not get into the financial shape they’re in today because of Google. That seems to be a popular sentiment as it is easier to blame someone else for your own demise, but putting all the fault at Google’s feet is simplistic at best.
(2) What I will buy is that technology has been a major contributor to the downfall of newspapers and newspaper companies. And therein lies the problem. For too long, newspaper companies kept thinking of themselves as, well, ‘newspaper’ companies. Sure, many of them jumped onto the internet early with web pages full of copy and/or links to copy. But how many devoted the time and resources to truly innovate? Very few. Instead they fancied themselves as innovators when they were merely riding the successes of others.
(3) Newspapers as an industry made a mistake when they decided (again, largely as an industry) that they couldn’t charge for content. What a huge mistake. SOME of us argued that if customers were paying for the print edition, they should also pay for our hard work on the Internet. Could they pay less for reduced production costs? Absolutely. Top brass caved to the notion that people wouldn’t possibly pay for content on the Internet. What bunk that was!
Today some of those same people have now decided, “Hey! Joe Consumer should be paying for what we produce!” The argument has been made time and again in hundreds of venues: That horse left the stable 20 years ago and it’s not coming back.
Top brass didn’t listen 20 years ago, and it isn’t listening today. Pay walls are being constructed at a feverish pace. They will collapse just as quickly because information companies (what ‘newspaper’ companies should have become long ago) gave away content for so long that it conditioned consumers to think ‘free’, no matter the content.
To get information/news consumers to pay these days will mean posting “gotta have” material behind the pay wall. That begs this question: With almost every newsroom in the country — maybe worldwide — considerably smaller than it was 24 months ago, can the industry report that kind of compelling material? Would they do it at the expense of meat-and-potato (courts, schools, city council) reporting just to make a buck? With depleted newsrooms struggling to keep their collective heads wrapped around the basics of their communities, I contend it can be one or the other, but most not both…at least not with the structures currently in place.
(4) I am intrigued by the notion posed in the title of this question…that link-selling may be the savior or the death of journalism.
Journalism will survive with or without link selling, because journalism is far more than newspapers. I am writing on the assumption (I know…dangerous…) that you are wondering if it will save the newspaper industry, or be the death of it.
Running on that premise, I honestly don’t believe it will have a great impact either way on content, nor will it enforce the dominance of Google.
If it does impact content, it will because top management completely and without remorse sold it’s soul. When that happens — and it will at some company — it will be crystal clear to consumers. At that point, the short-term gains will turn to long-term losses as viewers flee. Consumers are smarter than most care to acknowledge. On the Internet, they vote with clicks of their mouses.
Again, Google didn’t kill the newspaper industry and it won’t save it. Newspapers had the same opportunities to hire (or in same cases keep) some of the early web innovators. Instead they chose to hold on to the past.
They pay the price today. Too late? I don’t think so. But I do think there’s going to be more pain before new business models emerge. And there’s interesting work going on out there!

1. 3. 2010 at 1:57 pm

Fred Slocombe says:

Newspapers and broadcasters once upon a time didn’t need to worry about whether or not the material transmitted was relevant to the lives of the audience. The audience had too few choices for what, seventy five years give or take?

The old media collectively believed that what they transmitted would become popular by virtue of the absence of alternative media.

Now that people can search freely for what they need, irrelevant content can be completely ignored. Does this irrelevance factor figure into the status of a newspaper?

2. 3. 2010 at 4:40 pm

Jstock says:

The newspaper industry is dwindling, yes, but we are to blame. With all the new technology of Facebook, Twitter and online newspapers, no wonder newspapers are disappearing fast. But it is also the fault of the newspaper companies by trying to keep up with technology by putting their newspapers online for free. They need to charge people the same amount for printed and online newspapers. Then maybe there won’t be the death of newspapers or journalism.

10. 3. 2010 at 3:47 pm

three months SEO training says:

Yope, Google told them they could not sell links. They did not want to be delisted by the giant search engine. Well, any ad is worthless without a link.

24. 3. 2010 at 11:51 am

How Social Media is changing the job market « Silicon Beach Training Blog says:

[...] Many traditional jobs are being re-written thanks to social media and real-time; take the blogger/tweeter versus the journalist or the direct mail marketer versus the social networker. However, I don’t believe it’s a case of jobs being lost; for example, the desire for quality news is never going to die. [...]

26. 3. 2010 at 12:17 pm

Can selling links save newspapers? | Richard Hartley says:

[...] will be recognised, and the linked-to page will be easier to find. In Stone's summary of the session in an interesting blogpost, several people considered the following idea was relevant: Paul's basic argument was backed up by [...]

6. 10. 2011 at 12:55 am

Leave a Reply

 

Follow Silicon Beach Training

Join uson

Training Grants

Training Grants

Categories

Upcoming courses

See all course dates »

Home | Sitemap | Print |