Why newspapers don’t need government handouts

Jeff Jarvis has an excellent post at BuzzMachine explaining, point by point, why newspapers and their lawyers are wrong to lobby the government for tax breaks, changes in copyright law and antitrust exemption. Here’s a taste of his must-read piece, on the issue of tax subsidies:

We out here don’t actually need such a subsidy because we’ve been smart enough to take advantage of the new, free press and we are not saddled with the costs of an old press. Why should we then have to subsidize the market failure and anti-strategic stubbornness of the owners of those old presses? “Congress,” they write, “could provide incentives for placing ads with content creators (not with Craigslist).” That’s just plain payola.

Wall Street Journal to launch micropayments service

The Wall Street Journal plans to start a micropayments service for individual articles this fall. Let the echo-chamber pooh-poohing begin! (Quote below is from Jeff Jarvis; emphasis is mine):

So if the Journal brings on micropayment, I fear for them that they’ll lose doubly. They’ll lose my subscription. They’ll lose my even occasional readership and the ad revenue that can come with that. They will, in a cruel irony, replace digital dollars with micro pennies.

Or, conversely, WSJ could increase readership by allowing the purchase of individual articles without the need for a yearly online subscription. Time will tell.

Rethinking the newsroom and journalism

I’m sharing a few quotes I’ve excerpted from Gina Chen’s excellent post, “Journalists must change thinking to change industry.” Chen was inspired by Jeff Jarvis’s recent blog entry about the need for journalists to add value in their newsrooms. And while Chen frequently cites Jarvis’ What Would Google Do?, her own observations are equally compelling:

• In my experience, the hurried newsroom culture doesn’t encourage deep thinking.

Indeed it doesn’t. To give but one example: Journalists on a beat are forced to quickly write stories both large and small, with no time to step back and consider, “Is my daily routine serving my readers in the way they would — and should — expect?”

• We forget that we’re a service industry: We’re in the business of helping readers make sense of their world, not of selling them news.

And yet how many times have we read articles that are little more than notebook-dumps of information? Journalists, in the rush to make deadline, have little time but to toss half-baked, confusing stories upon their readers — readers who need knowledge, and don’t care whether we’ve included a minimum of three sources, or have written an award-worthy nut graf.

Jeff Jarvis’s make-believe testimony to John Kerry

Google-lover Jeff Jarvis hasn’t been asked to speak (yet) before Sen. John Kerry’s hearing on failed newspapers. But if he were, he would say some very Jeff Jarvis-y things like:

• Newspapers and their proprietors – and, in many cases, their professionals – have had a generation to reinvent themselves and bring journalism forward into the next age: 20 years since the start of the web, 15 since the introduction of the commercial browser and craigslist, 10 since the invention of blogs and founding of Google.

• I would like to see our government follow the leads of the U.K. and Australian governments in making ubiquitous and open broadband connectivity a priority and a promise.

And, of course:

• Newspapers are going to die.

Michael Kinsley writes, Jeff Jarvis applauds

The interweb was abuzz today over Michael Kinsley’s Washington Post op-ed, “Life After Newspapers.” And perhaps no one was buzzing with more buzzy glee than the BuzzMachinist himself, Jeff Jarvis.

Jarvis’ post “Kinsley nails it again” (as in another nail in the newspaper industry coffin?) praises the Slate cofounder for his dismissal of government subsidies as a solution to the industry’s woes.

Jarvis, if you didn’t already know, is no fan of dead-tree media. Among his pronouncements:

Responses to Newspaper Revitalization Act

The blogosphere is swift and merciless. Behold the responses to Sen. Ben Cardin’s introduction of a bill that would allow newspapers to operate as nonprofits (which some already do, but never mind):

Jeff Jarvis (BuzzMachine):

The obvious danger is government certifying what is and isn’t news and who does and doesn’t do it. Should my blog get to be a tax-free, not-for-profit enterprise? Who gets certified? Further, Cardin’s proposal also would forbid papers as charities from endorsing political candidates. That takes more voices out of the democracy. Not good.

Tim Windsor (Nieman Journalism Lab):

If the government (the government!) starts getting in the business of propping up the fading part of journalism’s business model, forget the ethical and constitutional issues, it’ll effectively cut off oxygen to the parts of the business that are trying to innovate.

Newspapers and the world of tomorrow

There is no one business model newspapers can turn to, writes Clay Shirky, citing historical precedence, revolutions and spooky “wait for it, wait for it” pronouncements of dramatic import:

Round and round this goes, with the people committed to saving newspapers demanding to know “If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?” To which the answer is: Nothing. Nothing will work. There is no general model for newspapers to replace the one the internet just broke.

Good going, Mr. Internet. Real smooth.

Nothing will work, but everything might. Now is the time for experiments, lots and lots of experiments, each of which will seem as minor at launch as craigslist did, as Wikipedia did, as octavo volumes did.

So nothing will work, but everything might. The future is wrapped in a Zen Koan. Jeff Jarvis (of course) nods in agreement:

Jeff Jarvis on the future of newspapers and the new economy

Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine has a long, thoughtful post on the restructuring of the economy. Here are a few points journalists and other media types will want to take note of:

* Newspapers will vanish. Magazines are in worse shape than I would have guessed and many will go. Books‘ channels of manufacturing, distribution, and sales will go through upheaval.

* Broadcast media will become meaningless, replaced by digital delivery.

Newsosaur roars at the BuzzMachine

Alan Mutter clearly thought he had Jeff Jarvis right where he wanted him. In a recent post on Reflections of a Newsosaur, Mutter all but accused Jarvis of being a hypocrite.

Jarvis, as you might know, has long advocated for finding ways to monetize online news content apart from directly charging for it. Recently on his BuzzMachine blog, he  ridiculed David Carr’s iTunes for newspapers proposal, stating:

Newspapers aren’t dead, part 2

Ah, much food for thought today. In his ongoing look at the transition from print to digital, Alan Mutter points out that traffic to newspaper sites is derived largely from readers of the print product:

One of the biggest reasons to question the potential for standalone newspaper sites has been identified by Greg Harmon of Belden Interactive, who since 2001 has polled 300,000 newspaper website users in 250 markets across the country.

In his work, Harmon has discovered quite consistently that fully two-thirds of the visitors to newspaper sites say they visited the site because they are readers of the print newspaper.

Jeff Jarvis — BuzzMachine guru, noted “Blog Daddy” and author of What Would Google Do? — thanks Mutter for doing the math, but offers this counterpoint:

Some papers simply cannot afford the cost of print now and so they’d better figure out life post-print or there won’t be any.

Not entirely irreconcilable positions, both with something important to say about the state of media today. Let’s revisit one of Steve Yelvington’s assertions, which inspired this post: