Nieman Journalism Lab |
Posted: 09 Jan 2012 11:45 AM PST  We’ve reached the point in journalism where we barely bat an eye when two news organizations say they’re joining forces. Anything less than a merger is just not an earth mover these days, when egos, brands, unique audiences — all of the guarded, proprietary stuff that kept news companies at opposite ends of the sword — seem to matter less in the face of an uncertain journalism marketplace. In that way the new partnership between NBC News and Newsweek/The Daily Beast to cover the 2012 election shouldn’t be too surprising. It’s a classic partnership of two organizations looking for a Doublemint effect: Double the resources, double the coverage, double the audience. The plan calls for campaign trail reporting from NBC (and a healthy dose of video) to appear in the pages of Newsweek and online at The Daily Beast. [UPDATE: See correction below.] Call it NBCWeekBeast. (NBeastCWeek?) But there’s something about politics in particular that seems to bring out the hugging and sharing in news organizations. A presidential election brings out the heavy news artillery, and that means a flurry of scooplets coming from all directions — from the networks, from newspapers national and local, from blogs, from campaigns, and everywhere else. All that firepower pointed in the same direction makes the urge to team up more tempting than ever. (Take for example The New York Times’ Election 2012 iPhone app, which is built more on linking and aggregation than any Times product before it — this, despite the fact that the Times devotes enormous resources to its own coverage.) History backs this instinct. After all, for years outlets — like the Times and CBS News or ABC News and The Washington Post — have linked up for the purposes of polling. At the same time debates, from the local legislative races up to the president level, have long been collaborations across media, whether it’s the local newspaper and public media, or CNN, Politico, and The Los Angeles Times. What’s interesting is how many of these partnerships derive from cross-media competitors. Pre-web, The New York Times and CBS News had reporters chasing the same stories — but a broadcast nightly news show and a morning newspaper could comfortably share an audience without excluding either. With everyone competing on the same platforms these days — the web, your smartphone — the calculus is different. And it’s unclear how far these partnerships will extend beyond election season — a beat that is both extended (the presidential election will last a lot longer than mega-events like the Oscars or the Super Bowl) and predictable (that once-every-four-years scheduling means there’s time to align up multiple outlets’ interests). As indicated by the number of media outlets launching (or relaunching) their politics offerings, we also know it’s an area that can spike pageviews and draw a reliable audience. (The New Yorker’s the latest, just today.) Readers are on the hunt for their election coverage earlier than ever, be it tracking polls, candidate gaffes, new endorsements, or daily overviews, and news organizations are jockeying for position. And it doesn’t hurt that once you have a politics vertical it’s that much easier to take advantage of the spending on political ads. But that underlying tension between the journalist’s desire for exclusivity and the brand’s desire to aggregate content will be something to keep watching from here to election day. Correction: This piece originally said the sharing would go both ways, from Newsbeast to NBC and from NBC to Newsbeast. In fact, it’s only the latter — NBC content flowing to Newsweek and The Daily Beast. Sorry. Image by Jiheffe used under a Creative Commons license. |
Posted: 09 Jan 2012 06:00 AM PST  Piano Media, the company that introduced a unified paywall for all major media in Slovakia last year, is expanding to Slovenia. Eight Slovene media companies are participating — a group that includes nearly all of the nation’s major daily newspapers, a car magazine, a sports daily, two regional publications, and even a free city newspaper. A subscription to all of the content will cost €4.89 ($6.21) per month, two euros more expensive than the package in Slovakia. Users can opt to pay weekly (€1.99) or yearly (€48.90), but that’s as complex as the pricing gets.  Publishers get to choose what content goes behind the paywall and what remains free. They can also elect to make users pay for premium features, such as commenting, access to archives, or ad-free browsing.The Slovak paywall generated more than €40,000 in its debut month of May 2011, the company said, which was split with publishers 70/30, Apple-style. We playfully dubbed it “the new Iron Curtain” — and the metaphor seems to hold up now, as Piano expects to reach three more European markets by year’s end. The company says it is negotiating with publishers in 11 countries. Like Slovakia, Slovenia is a relatively small, monolingual country. The company estimates 1.3 million Slovenes, or 65 percent of the population, are online; about half of those read news on the web. It will be interesting to see how a national paywall might work in much larger European countries with more media choices. Would the non-participating media siphon users who don’t want to pay? When we talked last year, Piano CEO Tomas Bella told me he hoped to change the attitudes of consumers accustomed to years of free riding. The company offered the simplicity of a single login and a single monthly bill. As he told me then: “We don't think it's a problem of people refusing to pay — we don't think it's a problem of money. It's a problem of convenience.” Photo of Slovenia’s Julian Alps by Christian Mehlführer used under a Creative Commons license. |
