Producer vs Consumer Viewpoints on the News Business
It’s true, of course, that the people complaining that Google is somehow “stealing” revenue from newspapers are being deeply dishonest or deeply uninformed. There is literally nothing stopping any news organization on the planet from taking its material off Google. Nor, indeed, is there anything stopping anyone from making online material only readable by paid subscribers. The problem most news producers have is simply that they don’t do that stuff because they couldn’t make money that way and they know it.
That said, I don’t think it helps anyone to pretend that the source of the complaints is completely mysterious. The intuition driving them is that if news aggregation websites disappeared from the planet, there would still be newspaper websites and people would still read them. But if the news organizations all vanished, there would be know news aggregation sites. Therefore it seems “unfair” that Google, essentially the world’s most successful aggregator, is making all the money. To a newspaperman, this is as if the paper boy were getting all the credit for the reporting happening in his town.
The trouble is that when journalists talk about journalism, they talk about it from the producer point of view. What Google does, from the media-as-production point of view really isn’t much better than what the paper boy does. But from the consumer point of view, having a paper boy who will fetch any paper you want in the world, for free, at any time, and open the paper to the page you were looking for is a massive improvement. For example, from a producer point of view essentially every newspaper in the United States has gotten worse at covering European news. Foreign bureaus have been closing, and resources have been redirected to the Middle East. But as a consumer, suppose I want to follow up on my notion that Jan Peter Balkenende would be a good candidate for the new office of EU President?
Thanks to Google, I read in the Guardian that the main alternatives to Tony Blair are considered Balkenende from the center-right and Finland’s Paavo Lipponen from the center-left. But Balkenende is thought to have a better chance than Lipponen in part because the new head of NATO is from the Nordic region and in part because there are more center-right governments in Europe. The Independent says Angela Merkel prefers Balkenende to Blair. And a Balkenende candidacy is popular among Dutch voters. We also learn in the Telegraph that there’s a political controversy in the Netherlands over the Crown Prince’s plan to build a lavish villa in Mozambique and “almost 50 per cent of people want Jan Peter Balkenende, the Dutch prime minister, to demand that the Prince withdraw from the project.”
Without Google, I never would have seen any of that. There’s been basically no coverage of this issue in the American press. And, fine, most Americans aren’t interested in it. But I am interested, and thanks to Google it’s easy for me to follow the issue.
I think it’s interesting that journalists seem to have no problem following this dynamic when it comes to the car industry. This has been a terrible 12 months to be in the business of building cars, either as a worker or an owner or a manager. But it’s been a fine time to buy a car. There’s no car shortage. And there’s not going to be a car shortage. Drivers are in great shape. And it’s about the same with the news. Has there ever been a better time to be a news junkie?
29 Responses to “Producer vs Consumer Viewpoints on the News Business”
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October 11th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
Paperboy! Good times.
October 11th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
This has been a terrible 12 months to be in the business of building cars, either as a worker or an owner or a manager. But it’s been a fine time to buy a car. There’s no car shortage. And there’s not going to be a car shortage. Drivers are in great shape. And it’s about the same with the news. Has there ever been a better time to be a news junkie?
You are so right! Plus, oil prices are at a five-year low. Has there ever been a better time to be buying gas? Also, housing prices are far cheaper than they were a few years ago. Has there ever been a better time to be a home buyer?
As Henry Ford was said to have said in 1932, “These are really good times, but only a few know it.”
October 11th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
Of course, a point that most people forget, or simply fail to understand, is that the ultimate goal of any and all economic activity is consumption, not production.
October 11th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
Worth pointing out that Google has also made the process of producing journalism quite a bit easier for the journalists and the fact checkers.
October 11th, 2009 at 5:50 pm
Without aggregators it is pretty difficult to find any continuous coverage of developments in foreign countries, including those old stand-bys located in Western Europe. I’m a longtime reader of the New York Times — supposedly “the paper of record” — but its coverage of Europe has slipped to the point to which it is almost worthless to hope for any sustained coverage of events there. Just try to find anything about Scandinavia — other than when someone steals a Munch painting. If the printed press is concerned about Google, it should first take a hard look at what’s inside their own pages.
October 11th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
If Murdoch or whoever doesn’t want Google to index their content, there is a good solution for that. They can simply tell Google’s web crawler to go away and stop indexing their content with a simple change to their robots.txt file. Problem solved.
The whole argument is ludicrous. Google is delivering customer right to their electronic doorstep. If there were no Google, these sites would get fewer visitors and less ad revenue. They don’t want to give that up, they just want a cut of Google’s end of the business too.
October 11th, 2009 at 6:59 pm
[...] Let me first associate myself with Matt Yglesias’s remarks here: [...]
October 11th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
But if the news organizations all vanished, there would be know [sic] news aggregation sites.
Since Matt can’t be bothered to read over his own posts or his comments I’ll treat this in the same cursory fashion:
1) First off, at least newspapers have copy-editors! Big sigh . . . .
On now to the more significant.
2) Indeed, it’s a good time to be a “news junkie” if you’re single, college, educated, doing great, in your early twenties and, oh, want to read ‘The Guardian’ on EU affairs. Alas, it’s not such a good time if you live in Philadelphia or another city that may have no newspapers soon and want to read about issues vital to your community (as, yeah, opposed to fun things to discuss over microbrews.) Nor is it so great for the daily life of your city if no one is covering things ripe for corruption, How are The Guardian, the BBC and the New York Times on local schoolboard issues, unions, local politics and municipal corruption in Philadelphia, Denver, Portland, etc.?
An argument could be made that if you’re an American interested in your local community and said community is not London, Washington, D.C. or NYC it’s a pretty lousy time in fact. Newspapers have drastically cut staff and there’s thus less actual reporting. (Reporting – that’s when “journalists” go outside and find things out, rather than, you know, just travel on paid-for junkets, republish charts put out by foundations or link to blog posts from impassioned 22-year-olds on Feministing. Matt’s not a big fan of “reporting”, but, hey, some of us really like it.)
Just because Matt can read The Guardian online or Google multiple newspaper reviews of the latest Raveonettes Cd (hint: it’s a lame rip-off of Jesus and the Mary Chain, just like all the others) doesn’t mean it’s a great time for news!
Matt is confusing a time when it’s possible to get tons of information online that’s of interest to Matthew Yglesias with a great time for news in general. Big mistake. Yes, it’s fantastic that he can get stuff from multiple newspapers, but: a) it’s a phenomena that’s not going to last if most papers die out b) there’s all sorts of stuff that counts as “news” (local issues and problems, schools, city governments, etc.) and it’s actually not that great a time for that at all. Coverage is shrinking, staffs are being let go. And it may get much, much worse.
3) The car analogy is way strained. Actually a lot of dealerships will be closing so that will make buying a car harder for people in rural places. Getting your car serviced will be harder for many people too. And parts for people who own Saturns or other discontinued brands will be scarce and pricey. Finally, prices may go up for new models when there’s less competition. (And, jeez, certainly it’s not a good time to be someone who makes cars. Matt, who can be very strong on some things, has to constantly be reminded that, oh yeah, progressive politics isn’t just about bike-trails and foreign affairs. Here goes: dude, it’s actually not a good time to buy a car –if, say, you live in Michigan and have no job.)
4) When a place is going out of a business you can get a lot of stuff cheap, sure. But then the place closes and – guess what? – there’s no more stuff to get. That may be happening now with newspapers. Enjoy the fire sale. They may not be here next week.
October 11th, 2009 at 8:13 pm
The comparison between a world without news aggregators and one without journalism is silly, though, because the relevant thing is the marginal value of Google’s service as opposed to, say, that of the Washington Post’s national news coverage – the former is very valuable while the latter is redundant with the national coverage of hundreds of newspapers across the country.
Which is the actual way Google and the rise of the internet in general harm journalists – they allow a small number of newspapers to do the work that was previously done by a morass of newspapers with local readerships. (this applies to national and international news only, of course, as local news media are still important for covering local stories) Like many innovations which vastly decreased labour needs in production, this is harmful to journalists, but provides a great deal of net benefit to society as a whole. (and the opposition from workers in the field is nothing new too – the original luddite movement is basically the same story)
October 11th, 2009 at 8:48 pm
Does Yglesias actually think it is a fine time to buy a car for anyone not in the upper quartile?
October 11th, 2009 at 9:48 pm
As producers, news producers keep trying to justify the shitty products they want us consumers to by by attempting to explain the rich complexities of their production process, and how it forces them to be shitty.
As consumers, we have apparently grown more tired of the producers’ excuses for trying to sell us shitty products.
October 11th, 2009 at 9:53 pm
As producers, news producers keep trying to justify the shitty products they want us consumers to by by attempting to explain the rich complexities of their production process, and how it forces them to be shitty.
Don’t forget, Cid…newspapers provide many invaluable and irreplaceable services that many critics forget about, simply because they’re the first areas to get cut once the papers face any sort of budgetary constraints.
October 12th, 2009 at 1:33 am
Fixt.
October 12th, 2009 at 3:03 am
Imagine how exciting it’ll be to follow the British elections from your Google when all those groovy London newspapers go the route of their American cousins and fold from lack of advertising. But don’t worry; if that happens I’m sure Google will set up its own reliable, experienced London news bureau.
And as a journalist myself, I must thank El Cid for his discovery that the reason newspapers are failing is because they don’t do enough quality investigative reporting. Boy, I’ll bet all those publishers of failing newspapers are gong to be embarrassed!
October 12th, 2009 at 5:09 am
QFT.
California never had much of a political press, but now it’s down to practically nothing.
Major political events happen and no one even hears about them unless they happen to follow the local blogs, and even then you’re only getting a few fragments of what’s going on.
Local TV and radio stations used to be able to just piggyback on whatever was printed in the newspaper. So the collapse of newspapers have a negative effect on the whole media.
October 12th, 2009 at 8:07 am
It’s not just that they don’t do enough quality investigative reporting.
It’s that the major exemplars of journalism in this country failed in every major way in every major issue over the last decade, including choosing to bury or ignore their own investigative journalism when it conflicted either with right wing / neo-marketeering dogma on economics or or right wing war-mongering.
The few reporters they employ whom they allow and support in quality investigative reporting just are barely enough to encourage consumers burned by the newspapers’ shitty records to look back again in hope.
You want to talk about journalism as a business? Fine. But don’t forget there are two sides to this game, and as a consumer I’m sick and tired of hearing that I need to shut up and buy this paper 90% full of shit or which is going to fail and go along with a calamitous right wing agenda every time it really matters, because there’s an occasional nugget of good investigation.
October 12th, 2009 at 8:19 am
> 1) First off, at least newspapers have copy-editors!
> Big sigh . . . .
Over the last five years I have noticed a complete failure of proofreading at all the major newspapers (with the possible exceptions of the NYT and USA Today {although I don’t read the WSJ any more so I can’t comment there}). Spelling mistakes, wrong word choices, unclear antecedents, complete failure to use who/whom correct (or to avoid whom completely where unsure), etc – all very common now in the major papers if you read closely.
Cranky
October 12th, 2009 at 9:58 am
Google has only the barest thread of a connection with the decline of newspapers.
The immediate threat newspapers face is mostly financing. A lot of newspapers have recently been sold under over-leveraged terms. With less financial optimism strong papers are being encouraged to cannibalize themselves to make payments. The internet will inexorably gut newspapers, but that has little to do with their current woes.
Google’s threat as an aggragator is minuscule. It’s primary impact is more to expose the weakness of most news reporting. For thirty years newspapers could outsource their national newsrooms to UPI and AP. The internet now makes it obvious how little real reporting goes on in most news operations.
The internet **will** gut newspapers in the long run. The internet is simply a far superior medium. Newspapers no longer make much economic or social sense.
Newspapers can coast a long time on current models though (something that short term financing issues obscure). The biggest threat newspapers currently face is Craigs List. Google barely even registers as a threat. It does have the advantage of deep pockets, which I’m sure drives a lot of the newsland ire.
Clay Shirky writes quite insightfully
Finally, I find it amusing that #8 essentially argues a social utility argument while at the same time peppering his writing with snarks against feminista. I’m sorry, but I consider feminista, and most well done blogs, to have more social utility then 80% of the newspapers in this country. In my early twenties I read the “Sioux City Journal”. It was dreck then (well before the internet). I will not mourn it’s passing.
October 12th, 2009 at 10:26 am
“The internet is simply a far superior medium.”
Unless you count the number of people able to make a living through it. How many local bloggers pay their bills from their site vs. how many local newspaper/TV/radio journalists pay their bills by working their jobs? In some ways the internet is like Wal-Mart, squeezing producers for the benefit of the new middle-men and consumers.
Mike
October 12th, 2009 at 10:52 am
Well, no, if you value quantity over quality. The origins of the demise of the news business are straightforward –most people see its output as of low value. This is for one simple reason –it IS of low value.
There is a business stratgy which is based on buying a brand, and making a cheaper and inferior product, hoping the public won’t notice. WaPO, with its dishonedt OpEd page and its
“pay for play” front page article on industry funded health care research today is a grand example.
I used to read WaPo religiously. Now I rarely glance at it. The percentage of lies and trash is far too high. This is the case with most people and most news outlets.
You, who are paid to read the newspaper, may see things differently.
October 12th, 2009 at 11:04 am
Really, Matt, maybe if you’re reading shit like the WSJ and the Times and the WaPo, but the business about Blair/Balkenende has been covered extensively by the FT and the Economist, though I admit, the villa fracas I had not heard about yet.
The FT and Economist both have their faults, but they’re a. widely available in the US and b. better than the dreck put out by American papers.
Oh, and c. they’re not in any danger of bankruptcy, unlike pretty much all of their American competitors.
October 12th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
re #19 (mbunge)
This is an indictment of the primacy capitalism. If we cannot re-work the social arrangement to accommodate writers, it’s in issue with us. The internet is merely a trigger.
I do not know what form this might take. One distant option is the democratization of production. In the classic Marxist utopian vision we all can create content, as we are not yoked to wage labor. As much as I’d like to see that vision come to pass, it’s probably a long, long way out. But there are many other ways to rework things.
I’m not so sure that the internet has actually hurt the chances for “people able to make a living through it.” The major (read real) news organizations (NYT, WSJ) will likely still exist, albeit their nature will change. We are already seeing a large variety of new entities flourish, and provide new forms of livelihood. I am not panglossian about this, it’s almost certainly going to cause dislocation and hardship. I just have little sympathy for blaming the internet for what is ultimately a social/utilitarian issue.
October 12th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
What will ten year old kids do for beer money?
When I was a paperboy you’d periodically get asked to do someone else’s route and almost without fail you’d end up with five papers left and ten houses to go.
I want my two dollars.
October 12th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
“…there would be know news aggregation sites..”
So now we know how Matt writes so fast: cheap voice recognition software!
October 12th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
Nobody’s “blaming” the Intertubes for newspapers collapsing. That’s progress. But right now, there’s no business model that pays for investigative reporting at newspapers, let alone good copy editors, foreign bureaus, costly ink and paper, etc. Classified ads are now all-Internet, and display ads are increasingly direct-mail, broadcast & online. Unless consumers start paying like $5 for their daily paper and $25 on Sundays, every single newspaper everywhere, the Times included, is doomed to die or shrink to uselessness. BTW, the shrinking Times is showing more typos and worse editing every year.
October 12th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
No business model, beejeez? NPR’s doing fine last I checked.
But yeah, losing local coverage will hurt bad. Saw a nice story in Newsday about outrageous compensation for Long Island school superintendents. Without Newsday, nobody’s looking into local government issues on LI, except for the NYT maybe doing a drive-by or two.
October 12th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
“An argument could be made that if you’re an American interested in your local community and said community is not London, Washington, D.C. or NYC it’s a pretty lousy time in fact. Newspapers have drastically cut staff and there’s thus less actual reporting. (Reporting – that’s when “journalists” go outside and find things out, rather than, you know, just travel on paid-for junkets, republish charts put out by foundations or link to blog posts from impassioned 22-year-olds on Feministing. Matt’s not a big fan of “reporting”, but, hey, some of us really like it.)”
The problem with your depictions is that this type of downsizing has been going on in journalism for more than 15 years now, back when Google’s founders were finishing up their bachelor’s degrees and Craig Newmark was some random aging nerd no one had ever heard of.
October 12th, 2009 at 8:27 pm
Here, here, Matt.
I would add the following point: the internet, via blogs, makes it very cheap and easy to get truly expert opinion. The beat reporter just isn’t worth it any longer. Why get your economic news from some dude with a bachelor of arts in Journalism who just happened to get stuck with the Business beat when he started at the Cleveland Plain Dealer and has no real training when you can read Mankiw, DeLong, Cowen, etc., hot off the press; turns out (surprise surprise) it’s just way more common for a trained economist to write as accessibly as a professional journalist than it is for a professional journalist to understand economics. This is even worse when it comes to political science. Comparing the coverage offered of the recent election by Nate Silver, Larry Bartel’s Princeton Blog, and Brendan Nyhan, for example, made the coverage in most of the popular press just laughably stupid.
And by the way, this also answers the ‘local news’ objections: almost every community has local bloggers who cover the happenings of the town even better than the newspapers have.
Basically, I think we are learning that journalism was an economically viable model less because journalists had any particularly valuable skills (call people, call some more people, write down what you find) and instead just because the industry had a monopoly on the means of distribution (a natural monopoly, of course, due to scale effects).
October 13th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
Imagine how exciting it’ll be to follow the British elections from your Google when all those groovy London newspapers go the route of their American cousins and fold from lack of advertising.
Given that the British national newspaper industry, which is based upon a very different model to that in the US, seems somewhat healthier than its US equivalent, your excitement may be premature.
I’ll note, tangentially, that I spent a dollar on the Sunday edition of the local paper this week — for the first time in perhaps a year — in order to stuff my wet hiking boots with crumpled newsprint.