The fate of Newspapers

It used to be true that establishment and solidity was required to make a newspaper. Where the finance world has Wall Street - the news world had Fleet Street far longer.

Major newspapers are making huge losses. Due entirely to the online availability of fresher competition?

Rupert Murdoch started the Fox News Network - the most powerful news medium he has and one of the most influential in recent American political destiny making.

The rise of the blog - the Huffington Post is in the ascendant - it is taking ground from the liberal voices in the American media. The problem for newspapers is that the way they make 95% of their revenue is the chain about their necks - a declining market for print journalism means their destiny is manifest.

The way for newspapers to make money is to invert their thinking. Their brand is the voice of the journalist and that was lost before the world erupted with inconsequential viral memes.

Value Proposition

What exactly do newspapers make that is of value? Political mediation? How is that valued by taxpayers? It is not. We value the opinions we hold and expect read the journalists we agree with. I prefer to read journalists I disagree with as it inspires thinking. Discussions full of insults are useless.

People never really wanted to think, they have to be bribed, cajoled and tricked into it. Politics requires friction to excite discussion. We need opponents to compete with at the height of our powers and the media is there to stimulate thought by exposing controversy.

We pay the media for making us mad. Of course we do. I am as mad as hell and can't wait to read the morning paper. But we are fed on the soft stuff of television news and the insipid thinking presented by "in depth" reportage that is frankly less than surface level mush that attempts to excite prejudice.

The media is led around by its hunger. It is trying to play the same game in the vapid world of internet communication as it does on paper. The rules are so different. Establishment and fixity are not helpful in the age of broken attention spans.

The problem is that there is an inverted value equation at work here. The better the online version is, the less need there is for the paper version. It is a question of market aging. Like inflation, this is a slow process, a slippery slope. It will be harder to fix next year.

Companies who have not embraced the obviousness nature of this equation will fritter away their assets.

And some of the more established and most successful Newspaper websites (NY Times, Guardian) still "lose money". These criticisms do not apply - they have some of the most well read and intellectually stimulating journalists around. Is there a way to make money from the journalistic art?

Do we prefer to be herded by an increasingly unbelieved democratic choice or would we prefer to keep an active and vigilant press? We choose to be sheep.

Purposeful Enterprise

Some enterprises are simply not there to make money today, but to enrich the future. Like education. These are the focus of a progressive agenda. If objectivity is not present in our world, it is not just as damaging as closing down schools?

There is a future for good journalism, because it is necessary. But it needs to be a different product and not a subset of the print edition. The real enemy online is not the bloggers. It is sites like craigslist - it devalues online advertising past the point of commodity. It is deconstructive - and perhaps governments should define the playing field for information a little more intelligently. There is no value if the potential for trade is obliterated.

Free == Gimmick

It is a mistake to think that "free" is a term of trade. It is always a gimmick or a trick. It is also where progress points. And newspapers that can not outsmart college kid projects may not survive. They call this "disruptive media" - its sole purpose seems the undo-ing of the establishment. The establishment mimics this with its own free services but they have costs. Therefore Murdoch's equation seems simple. Focus on a smaller audience for paid content.

Would you pay for his content? No? But someone who wants it may, because it embraces a point of view, loudly. Online media can be too "objective". The common wisdom is "brand". His successful brands are market focused brands.

Old school journalism loved the big printed edition, the authority, the centralised economics that make one big brand. A masthead. It has to be balanced, show all views in proportion for its broad reach audience.

Online the dynamics are entirely different. It is crowds of people agreeing with a point of view and opposing others. It is unbalanced. The opportunity for a media organisation is huge and untapped. By splitting the "balanced media" into many unbalanced media faces that actively oppose one another, by building lots of brands they can engage more readers.

Creating a symbiosis with a future based on the democratic values of news, instead of hunger for the same advertising dollars requires online news departments to employ their own journalists and more locally. Then they would develop their own brands/audiences and increase their cachet of value. And that is simply their audience.

The Fruits of Obliteration

Frankly, I have had enough of it. Constant star in the news, this long dark night of financial destitution hanging over the world. What a stupid mess we humans go and create. People's life of saving for nothing.

Republicanism used to be an ideal. Now it is avoiding taxation. But our complex world requires it to continue with the progress machine without which we would still be feudal farmers and serfs.

Money is the friction between the relative actions of different humans. Animals are not familiar with it. Objects are exchanged for it, including living things, dead things and things that rush about for us.

Money is that token of one's power that is vacuumed up by everyone else. Money is always wanted, and it seems the more you have of it, the closer you want to protect it. It is like protecting the village from the flames. The closer they get the more you risk by protecting it.

Insurance is a huge business, one that is challenged to inspect those making claims with an eye to detect fraud. Of course. But in so doing, they avert their gaze from their own mistakes. Clearly you can not be an insurer of risk and take risks with the mountains of capital collected for payout in cases of extreme emergency.

Clearly you can not promote high priced products to an audience wondering how it will feed its children. The value of paper can not sustain the multi million dollar spends on a single campaign. The UK give money to the very poor as the government knows they have to spend it. The middle class will silently tuck it away, giving the bank more relief when the tax payer has already forked out grandly.

Advertising is the next aspect of the media that has to adopt a new face to work in the new acoustic economy of regulations and limits. The compulsive gamblers are still ranting about how letting the bad banks fail is the way back to a climbing market. That is like saying the way to solve the common cold is to imprison everyone with a symptom for two weeks. The few survivors will be extremely immune and soon enough the common cold will have less and less to infect. It may work but only due to complete collapse of the world from which rebuilding can start in earnest.

Our world is one we are made aware of by the very astute people in the media. So let us respect their value to the world. It requires a leap of faith.

Someone is going to start charging for online news and information will again have a value. The future of advertising is in the balance. Next read about its terminal destination.