Re-Value Content (And Redefine Publishing)

Should content be free or should readers have to pay for what they read and see and listen to? This question has been asked more frequently over the past two months as Steven Brill, the founder of Journalism Online and a proponent of the idea that not all content should be free, has been engaging audiences around the country to promote his new pay for play model called the Reader Revenue Platform (he launched in April ’09). Zach Seward at Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab has an excellent breakdown of what the model offers. As far as I can tell, media sites can choose from a variety of options, but ideally a good chunk of the revenue will come from committed readers — those who visit the site on a regular basis.

Brill’s PR effort to get the word out about RRP has included a stop at the Paley Center for Media, where he and a dozen other industry experts, including NPR’s Vivian Schiller, debated the subject, and a one-on-one discussion moderated by McKinsey between Brill and Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody.

These discussions come, of course, among the continuing forced realignment of the media industry. Three weeks ago, the New York Times laid off 100 people out of their newsroom, including 32 reporters — this after media conglomerate Time Inc announced that it was laying off 540 people company wide. Two weeks ago, the magazine giant Conde Nast reported that the number of ad pages in its publications had dropped more than 30 percent in a year. Just over a week ago, Newsweek, the 75-year-old weekly news magazine owned by the Washington Post Company, announced more layoffs.

Contrast these numbers with the growing Internet and social media population. Facebook members now total more than 300 million, an increase of 50 million members in the last three months. And according to a recent report by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, about a fifth of everyone who now uses the Internet updates their status using Twitter or some form of social media.

So while Brill seems to be getting a lot of media attention for suggesting that online content should no longer be free — and indeed while some newspapers and online sites start to consider setting up pay walls (Newsday.com, the site of 70-year old Long Island based newspaper owned by Cablevision, was one of the more high profile papers to switch to the subscription only model) — it occurs to me that the “to pay or not to pay” question is short sighted. It’s just a patch for the larger question of how to value content — and how to do it sustainably for the long term.

A subscription model or advertising dollars will continue to be part of the discussion, but what do we make of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other social media companies? It seems that kind of content is valued differently, even though at times content generated on those sites is used, to greater affect, than news sites (see the Neda cell phone video from Iran early this past summer, and the Twitter feeds breaking the news on the Hudson River plane crash). It’s clear that “social currency” has value. What isn’t clear is how to translate that into cash. Then again, maybe cash isn’t the goal. I’m not suggesting that reporters on the beat get paid in “friends” or “follwers” — journalists ought to be paid well — but I do think it’s time for publishers and content producers to reframe the concept of “what is valuable?”

Brill and others promoting pay walls and locked content are betting on the notion that customers will pay for information from a trusted source. The problem is that most every type of information, from investing advice and real estate insights to news coverage and art reviews, is repeated ad nausea across the Internet. As the economist Umair Haque said recently in a podcast on HarvardBusiness.org, “If I’m reading the business page in one newspaper, it’s likely not all that different from the business page in another newspaper.” Information is cheap.

To be successful, media outlets need to provide more than just information. They need to provide the following three things:

1. Customized content targeted to niche audiences.
2. Exclusive relationships or affiliations.
3. Meaningful engagement in Things That Matter.

If customers knew they were getting these things, instead of just the news, then Brill’s or anyone else’s pay model might work. Unfortunately, newspapers have long defined themselves as clearing houses for every subject under the sun. Some, like the Washington Post have wanted to become a national paper like the Times, but having just announced that they’re closing all their remaining bureaus to refocus on Washington DC, they seem to have admitted that they can’t cover it all. The local papers long ago began relying on “national” papers like the Post and the Times to fill up their pages, effectively giving up the one thing that makes them useful: local (niche) interest.

In fact, something interesting is going on now as some big names in content experiment with the localizing of content — let’s call it “content microlizing.” Both ESPN.com and the New York Times have created microlized editions of their brands (the Times puts out a Bay Area print and online “report” on Fridays and Sundays and ESPN now features ESPN Chicago, ESPN Boston, and ESPN Dallas. Even the Huffington Post has a Chicago edition.

These tailored editions of big name brands supports the strategy of having both custom content and important relationships (in this case, the relationship is with themselves, but it’s still important). The question local users should have next for ESPN, the Times, and the Huffington Post is, what are you doing to make a difference? What’s your local social strategy? What do you care about? With that they would have quite a valuable package deal.