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| This Week in Review: False equivalence in shutdown coverage, and a paywall backtrack Posted: 04 Oct 2013 08:00 AM PDT False equivalence and the shutdown: The U.S. federal government’s shutdown has dominated the news this week, and it’s had tangential impacts on some areas of the media as well. Several government websites crucial to data journalists, particularly the U.S. Census site, have been shuttered, as Poynter reported. On the other hand, the government’s news programs broadcasted to foreign countries, such as Voice of America, are remaining open. News coverage of the shutdown followed some familiar tropes, none more vexing to observers than the devotion to “both sides are responsible” equivalence. Dan Froomkin at Al Jazeera America called out false symmetry most forcefully: “the political media’s aversion to doing anything that might be seen as taking sides — combined with its obsession with process — led them to actively obscure the truth in their coverage of the votes.” NYU’s Jay Rosen identified the same problem, but said this type of reporting’s prominence is slowly fading, writing that “with the critique of ‘false equivalence’ now a part of the journalist's daily life and the rise of point-of-view reporting to normal status online, the artifice is shakier than ever.” NPR’s David Folkenflik talked to journalists about how they’re dealing with the false-equivalence problem. Poynter’s Kelly McBride approached the issue from an ethical perspective, asserting that journalists have an obligation to use the clearest language possible to describe political action and reiterating PolitiFact founder Bill Adair’s recommendation to use specificity to counter false equivalence. In pair of posts (one from last week), the Columbia Journalism Review called for journalists to go past the bipartisan rhetoric by covering the shutdown at a local level. On a different front, the Lab’s Caroline O’Donovan looked at Quartz’s use of a single-serving site to monitor the government shutdown in a tongue-in-cheek way.
One newspaper tears down its paywall: The overall trend in newspapers has been to embrace paid-content plans online, but The Dallas Morning News became the second major American newspaper to drop its paywall in recent months with its announcement this week that it will make all of its content available for free. It will continue to charge, though, for a “more visual experience” — a different design for the same content. The premium version will be $11.96 a month and free to subscribers. The Lab’s Justin Ellis wrote a thorough analysis of the site, noting that unlike the two-site free/paid strategies at papers like The Boston Globe and San Francisco Chronicle, the Morning News’ sites differ only in presentation, not content. He also talked to publisher Jim Moroney about the paper’s plans to shift away from getting digital-only subscriptions (which weren’t growing as they’d hoped) and toward using the premium site as a supplement to the print product, with events and other perks as part of subscribership. At Poynter, Andrew Beaujon came away with a similar impression from Morning News executives. He focused on the paper’s use of its digital product as a throw-in with print rather than a standalone product that people would be expected to pay for by itself. Ad Age, meanwhile, looked at the Morning News’ plans to center advertising on the free site, with less on the premium one. Ryan Chittum of the Columbia Journalism Review said the Morning News’ dismantling its paywall isn’t an indictment of paywalls in general, but simply the product of faulty paywall design. When the paper set its paywall up in early 2011, Chittum said, it should have used the more porous metered model pioneered by The New York Times, rather than a hard paywall that limits traffic and advertising revenue. “Only the most essential news providers can pull that off, and the News is not the powerhouse paper it was 10 years ago,” Chittum said of the hard-paywall model.
Twitter is also providing that kind of data to TV executives and advertisers, but Facebook is pitching its data as deeper and more representative than Twitter’s. TechCrunch’s Sarah Perez wasn’t buying it, though, as she argued that the likes included in Facebook’s data aren’t as meaningful as the tweets that Twitter measures. The Next Web’s Jon Russell also concluded that Twitter is the superior venue for real-time TV discussion because of its simplicity and the accessibility of its information. The New York Times’ Vindu Goel and Brian Stelter laid out the stakes and strategies in this struggle over the online conversation (and ad dollars) surrounding TV, noting each side’s strengths: Twitter has the upper hand in instant discussion about live TV, but Facebook has more information about its users that advertisers can use to make more finely honed and individually targeted appeals. Forbes’ Tim Worstall said this conversational arms race should work out great for Facebook, Twitter, and advertisers, but the networks look like the losers, as they fall behind in the competition for advertisers. Facebook also expanded its Graph Search to include posts and status updates, rather than just people, interests, and photos. As TechCrunch’s Josh Constine pointed out, this should help push Facebook toward that real-time water-cooler status around big events that Twitter currently enjoys, but it also ends the “privacy by obscurity” of many users’ old posts. Forbes’ Robert Hof contended that while the new Graph Search has troubling implications for privacy, it’s unlikely to spark the protests that past Facebook changes have. And Alastair Reid of Journalism.co.uk explained how Graph Search might be useful for journalists. Twitter opens its books: Twitter also filed its long-awaited S-1, the public document registering for an initial public offering, on Thursday. The New York Times has a good overview of the filing, and Quartz has a quick rundown of the notable details and figures: Twitter lost $79.4 million on $317 million revenue (that’s $0.55 per user this quarter, compared with Facebook’s $1.41 over the same period), it gets 85% percent of its revenue from ads and the other 15% from data, and it has 218 million active monthly users, of which 49 million are in the U.S. A few other details from the filing: Twitter is issuing only one class of shares (unlike Facebook), it revealed some new information about its major shareholders, and it focused on the need for international growth, as its revenue per user is much higher there. As PandoDaily’s Erin Griffith noted, Twitter’s S-1 was clearly meant to position the company as the anti-Facebook, emphasizing its openness and its orientation to news and real-time events. BuzzFeed’s Matthew Zeitlin also broke down Twitter’s pitch to advertisers compared with Facebook. But as Tom Simonite of MIT Technology Review and Ryan Tate of Wired argued, Twitter isn’t in nearly as good of shape as Facebook was at its IPO: It’s growth is slowing, it’s getting less revenue per user, and it’s losing money. Tate put the difference most starkly: “One is a reliable profit gusher while the other is an anemic mess.” Reading roundup: A few updates on ongoing stories this week, as well as thoughtful pieces to give a read: — The U.S. National Security Agency revelations keep coming: It’s gathering detailed information mapping Americans’ social networks, and it’s storing web browsing metadata for a broad range of people whom it doesn’t consider people of interest. The New Yorker’s Ken Auletta profiled the paper that’s been at the center of these revelations, The Guardian, and its indefatigable editor, Alan Rusbridger. The story included and prompted some sniping back and forth between The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald and The New York Times’ Bill Keller, and Greenwald and Guardian editor Janine Gibson talked to Redditors about their NSA reporting. Meanwhile, recently unsealed documents told the story of how the email encryption service Lavabit resisted government efforts to track NSA leaker Edward Snowden, as Wired and The New York Times reported. — Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos officially closed his $250 million purchase of The Washington Post this week. The Post published an in-depth examination of the forces that led up to the Graham family’s sale of the paper, which Ryan Chittum aptly analyzed at the Columbia Journalism Review. The Post also looked at the future of The Washington Post Co. without the paper. — A few leftover pieces from last week’s debate over comments: The New York Times looked at how comments are being handled on science sites, and science educator Marie-Claire Shanahan took issue with Popular Science’s rationale for its decision to do away with comments, as the Columbia Journalism Review’s Alexis Sobel Fitts. Longtime editor Howard Weaver proposed allowing users to rank and filter comments themselves. — A couple of useful pieces for those in journalism: Paul Bradshaw defined journalistic curation and provided a guide to numerous curational tools, and the Knight Digital Media Center’s Michele McLellan published a pair of posts highlighting results of a survey of local online news startups, illustrating their strategies and challenges. — Finally, a couple of thoughtful pieces to reflect on: Reporter (and former Lab staffer) Adrienne LaFrance wrote a candid reflection on the gender inequity in her own reporting and the reasons for it, and The New York Times’ Derek Willis urged young journalists and students who consider themselves digitally savvy to push themselves to learn about how to make things on the web, not just use them. Image of The Dallas Morning News building by Al Bakker used under a Creative Commons license. Photo of protestor at Sen. Ted Cruz’ San Antonio office by AP/Eric Gay. |
| The newsonomics of 2014 for the German press Posted: 04 Oct 2013 04:30 AM PDT See also part one of Ken’s report from Germany. HAMBURG — In 2011, a German regional media group sponsored the World After Advertising conference in Dusseldorf, at which I spoke. The title seemed a little odd back then. Now, it seems prophetic. With print ad revenues declining faster in Germany than in the U.S., publishers are pulling out the stops on reader revenue — variations of all-access and digital-only subscriptions. But they are also starting to talk about that very world after advertising. In Germany, advertising now contributes a little more than one-third of newspaper revenues, on average. With advertising in decline and paywalls going up rapidly, that share will only shrink. So the post-advertising conversation has gotten more public. In his Spiegel piece — “Extra, Extra: Newspaper Crisis Hits Germany” — writer Cordt Schnibben cites a meeting of industry leaders last spring. There, a large ad agency head told publishers: “Get used to the fact that newspapers will have to make do without advertising revenues in the future.” The money, he said, would go elsewhere. It’s doing so, quickly. German newspapers and magazines are losing as much or more as 10 percent of their remaining advertising revenue this year, after seeing the same result in 2012. If they are losing almost half of what they had in less than a decade, will they lose another half — or more — in the next few years? Layoffs, the closure of papers and the shocking sale by Axel Springer of its two regional dailies in Hamburg and Berlin (“The newsonomics of the German press’ tipping year”) have all followed. Consolidation — on the rise in the wake of the Springer sale and partnership with Funke Mediengruppe — just got another boost today. The Hanover-based Madsack announced it will centralize the national and international coverage of its major regional papers (Lübecker Nachrichten, Märkische Allgemeine Potsdam, Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung, and more). One central newsroom in Hanover will serve all. Think of it as Thunderdome East. Marketing, sales, and logistics will also be centralized. As with Funke's consolidation plans, expect significant layoffs. That sobering realization about ad revenue now guides the construction of paywalls throughout the country, and even new thinking about ad-free premium products. “We are starting to ask the question about a paper without ads,” says Thomas Schultz-Homberg, the head of the digital media business at FAZ, or Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, one of the nation’s two leading business dailies, with a daily circulation of 320,000. “What should this cost to run it profitably? What we are thinking is that it is 80 or 90 euro a month. Maybe there will be an audience that is still addicted to the paper.” That’s a novel idea in its purity. How much would readers — themselves — have to pay to sustain a daily newspaper, without advertising? It’s a question, amazingly, that is starting to be asked in Germany, and maybe soon in the U.S. This week, The Dallas Morning News, in its new approach to digital reader revenue, announced it will offer a digital experience with fewer ads. In the shorter term, FAZ is plowing ahead with a print/digital subscription scheme similar to those in the U.S. When it debuts its new system in the beginning of 2014, it will offer up a hybrid, metered/hard-wall model. The 30 percent or so of its content that is available in some form elsewhere will be metered content. Seventy percent — its largely proprietary content — will be behind a hard wall. Why? Germany’s privacy protections offer a unique challenge to metered paywalls. Blocking cookies is far easier in Germany — more like a default — than it is elsewhere. Consequently, 30 to 50 percent of news readers’ reading can’t be easily metered by contemporary paywall systems. As FAZ goes forward with its plan, it will be joined by major publishers, including Munich-based Süddeutsche Zeitung and national business news company Handelsblatt. That means most major cities will see digital access restricted in 2014, joining Bild, Axel Springer’s leading German daily pioneered that approach this year with a twist, offering soccer highlights bundled with a subscription. While there is risk in the moves, publishers note, there’s also comfort in the company: “We’ll all go over the line together,” says Schultz-Homberg. For FAZ, digital-only subs will cost somewhere between 31 and 35 euros, and give readers access to the website, mobile apps, and a daily e-edition. The iPad e-edition, now a standalone paid product, has proven popular. FAZ has signed up 20,000 e-paper subs, up from 15,000 just three months ago, and expects 40,000 such subscribers before the new paywall launches. Print subscriptions will move up about 10 percent in price — a pricing action consistent with the U.S. experience — to about 50 euro a month. Want it all, print and digital: You’ll pay between 79 and 85 euro a month. The FAZ plan will be opt-in, meaning that subscribers will have to make an affirmative choice to take the wider package. Success could be in the 3 percent of monthly unique visitors range; that’s what The New York Times is getting closer to as it approaches the end of Year 3. FAZ’s base of e-paper subscribers gives it a good early foundation for all-digital or all-access conversion. FAZ’s move is noteworthy. Many European publishers have taken halfway gestures toward paid. Often, they charge for mobile apps or editions, but have left their websites open. Most have seen too small revenues driven by that strategy. The notion of closing the door on free digital — and making the reader/customer proposition clear — is one that seems to conform with the digital buying psychology of our times. Offer us expensive print and free digital, and we slowly move to free. Offer us paid products, smartly bundled and taking advantage of each platform, and we’re now willing to pay. The question is: How many of us are willing to pay? That’s a question that will be better answered in Germany in 2014, and in Years 2 and 3 of many paywalls in the U.S. and elsewhere. Press people, when they get together at such events as next week’s World Publishing Expo in Berlin, increasingly get the sense that they are in this together. It’s tough to say which press — U.S. or German — is under greater stress at this point. What’s clear is that two of largest free presses in the world are desperately looking for solutions. Looking forward, the German and U.S. presses share key similarities — and significant differences. What’s in common:
If the similarities are clear, so is one major difference. Most of the German press is still privately and family-owned. For the last decade, that ownership provided a bulwark against the intense newsroom staff cutting we’ve seen in the U.S, where now 30 percent of daily newsroom jobs have been lost. Will German newspapers stick with their traditionally strong funding of newsrooms, which runs as high as 30 percent of overall newspaper costs? Or will they borrow from U.S. models? The top U.S. newsrooms account for about 20 percent of their newspapers’ overall expense, with the average coming in at about 13 percent (“The newsonomics of paywalls, Pulitzers, and investing in newsrooms”). Currently, 13,000 journalists work in 330 daily newsrooms in Germany. That compares to 38,000 in 1,400 newspapers in the U.S. But the cascading woes of newspaper finances have begun to crack that firewall. What may have once been sacrosanct is now in play. While paywalls are a dominant theme, the early results of Funke Mediengruppe’s deal with Axel Springer will also draw strong attention. Funke will be cutting staffing, focusing on regionalizing and nationalizing their business and editorial functions. How deeply it cuts — and what results, financially and editorially, those cuts produce — will be widely watched. Will Funke succeed with its substantial cost-cutting, finding a new stability? Or will it, like many of its U.S. counterparts, find that deep cutting simply begets more deep cutting? As in the U.S., the question of the German press future is one of focus. The Germans have been the leading critics of Google dominance. They are properly concerned about Google’s monopolistic and privacy-depriving reach. In August of next year, the Springer-led new ancillary copyright law (Leistungsschutzrecht) will go into effect, trying to limit Google’s power in Germany. Yet the amount of resources and energy devoted to that battle have clearly diverted publishers from getting on with the digital transition. There’s been too much decrying of the loss of the old world and, so far, not enough creation of the new. Take this semi-tongue-in-cheek assertion from the Der Spiegel piece:
It’s a “them vs. us” view that’s anachronistic. Again, from Der Spiegel, the notion that it’s those selfish web people that are causing all the problems of the press:
Talking to younger journalists in Germany, you hear different sentiments. They’ll talk about their daily newspaper management “not getting it,” focusing too much on anti-Google legislation and too little on finding ways to engage with new readers and new markets. Speaking in Hamburg last week, I talked with a younger journalist eager to learn from American startup business models, the kind that have allowed small outfits like science-oriented Matter to larger operations like The Texas Tribune and the Center for Investigative Reporting to prosper. I asked him about his experience, and he smiled that so far he’d had bad luck. He’d joined FT Deutschland only to see it shut down — and then had the same experience with another publication. He now hoped to start up a small science-oriented news site. That kind of development is much rarer in Germany than the United States. Foundation funding of journalism — a vital if too small lifeline over the last several years in the U.S. — hardly exists in Germany. The kind of buying coop system that CIR’s developed among California TV, daily newspapers, and ethnic press is difficult to imagine developing in Germany. The two countries’ presses may have a lot in common, but there are still a lot of ideas that would be a foreign concept across the ocean. APN photo by Winfried Rothermel. |
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