Welcome back to Pacific Media, Sir Gimp.
Sir Gimp:
Well, Amy thank you. It’s really something special to be on your show.
Amy:
That was quite a wake you held. It was a sad day indeed, mourning the death of the New York Times. I hear you received quite a lot of comments on your blog about the wake.
SG:
That’s right. It stirred up some good thinking. I like that. I held the wake because it was the right thing to do. In it’s silent, sorrowful way, it was a both a recognition and a protest. A recognition that a once great newspaper had finally bit the dust. And it was also a protest, wishing that somehow we could slow or halt that demise.
Amy:
Something good may come of it. There’s this interesting bit of news from Editor and Publisher. It reads:
Is Maureen Dowd boycotting the new pay-for-play TimesSelect plan at The New York Times? Despite promises from the newspaper that its high-profile columnists--now hidden behind a pay wall on the Web--would provide bonus content and services at the site, Dowd so far has offered nothing original, beyond her twice-weekly print column.
This stands in stark contrast to her colleagues, Frank Rich, Bob Herbert, Thomas Friedman, David Brooks, Paul Krugman, Nicholas Kristof, and John Tierney.
Others, for example, provide a list of “What I'm Reading.” Special video interviews with many of them are available on their pages. Many have posted favorite Web sites, ranging from Juancole to Drudge. But nothing from Dowd, who is rumored to be against the pay plan, which severely limits online audience. Columnists once dominated the Web site's "most e-mailed" list, but no longer.
Many of the bloggers seem to think that this is the dying gasp of a very desperate newspaper. What’s your response?
SG:
They are desperate. And they are dying. As a poet once said, “he not busy being born, is busy dying.”
Amy:
That’s Bob Dylan, isn’t it?
SG:
‘It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)’. Yeah a really really great song. Not very well known, but great just the same.
Amy:
So why are they not busy being born?
SG:
They have lost the ability to regenerate themselves. They have lost much of their much vaunted ‘moral integrity’. Why they think that putting their columnists in a ‘lock box’ is going to increase either their readership or relevancy is beyond me. They used to aspire to be the voice of the nation. Now they’re just the voice of the corporate bean counters. And they’re ain’t much pizazz in bean counter land.
If Ms. Dowd is protesting the TimesSelect lock box by not making videos and giving out her favorite recipes, or favorite movies, I think that’s just great. But if she’s really protesting the TimesSelect program, why doesn’t she just go all the way and cancel her contract and write for a paper that won’t lock out thirty per cent of her readers? Now that would be a real protest.
Amy:
Aside from holding the wake, did you have anything to do with her protest?
SG: Not really. I found out about it the same way you did, from a newspaper. But, she was the only TimesSelect writer to whom I sent an email asking how she felt writing in a ‘lock box’. Who knows? Maybe I got through to her.
Amy:
Maybe you did Sir Gimp. Maybe you did. Well folks. That’s all we have time for today. This is Amy Goodbar from Pacific Media saying goodnight and wishing you a pleasant tomorrow.
2 comments:
I think the newspapers are in trouble, and bound to be looking at their revenue streams, but a subscription for online access is probably not going to be the best solution. First, I still don't think advertizers are as enthusiastic about the web as they are about the printed papers (just think of the Sunday edition with its ten pounds of advertizing supplements folded in). Second, the newspapers are facing the same peer-to-peer issue that piqued the record industry. For every person who visits the paper's web site, there must ten thousand who receive copies of articles via email and blogs from individuals and organizations that act as a clipping service. Maybe a "royalty" model would work better. I wouldn't subscribe to every paper I wanted to read, but I might be able to accept getting dinged 10 cents for every article someone sends me.
It occurs to me a deeper problem is not how news is distributed, but how it gets produced. Who is going to pay journalists and investigative reporters? The newspapers have been cutting back, for both political and financial reasons. Many journalists once published in papers are now bloggers, and some have their own web sites -- for which they ask a subscription! I get most of my news on NPR and Pacifica, and I'm a Pacifica subscriber.
I would agree that newspaper circulation is down not just because of the web, but because of the lower quality of the news. Perhaps the paper's corporate owners don't care. It's not the great masses their advertizers are trying to reach. A smaller, more elite, more conservative readership composed of people with higher incomes may be acceptable to them.
Like many people, I don't know where this is going, but it seems to be going somewhere... bad!
Since Sir Gimp told me about the New York Times change, I have avoided the web site.
The company may make a bit of money, yet clearly they must already be seeing their readership decline.
I sent the paper this letter:
hello New York Times
You have one of the most respected newspapers in the world;
you have millions of readers, and millions of dollars in revenue.
So why (after at least ten years of an open, public web site) do you need to charge a subscription to your web site?
Few other newspapers do, including some that are as excellent as the New York Times, such as the Boston Globe and the Washington Post.
I think your plan is greedy and unnecessary.
It is also defeating: you may make a little money, but your readership will decline.
Surely you must already be noticing this phenomenon.
I have deleted your newspaper from my bookmarks and will avoid reading any of your pages until you return to an open, public format.
Doon
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