Daily Archives: February 3, 2009

The Taxman

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Conor Friedersdorf at The American Scene has an interesting post up about the Daschle controversy over incorrect federal income tax payments (or lack thereof). In the article he writes:

I can’t say I mind that they’re all more likely to pay what they owe. But what about people less wealthy, or who don’t gear their whole adult life to serving in government? Is scrutiny of past taxes going to dissuade everyone but insiders from going through the confirmation process?

I hope not. I don’t plan on making a career in government, but on the off chance that the charismatic James Polous rises to the presidency as head of the new PomoCon Party, I’d like to preserve my chances of becoming ambassador to Spain.

It’s a good point, and one we should all keep in mind when holding politicians to such high standards.

A return to a NY Times pay wall

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After recently posting that newspapers need to find more creative ways of distributing digital content and making a profit off of it comes this article. It appears as though the New York Times is considering re-instituting some type of pay wall in order for readers to view the site’s full content. Executive Editor Bill Keller is quote in the article, which writes that:

Keller said the company was considering charging readers for each page they click on or making the newspaper available on a wider variety of portable electronic devices, as it is on Amazon.com Inc.’s Kindle.

“Some people are paying for the Times online,” the executive editor wrote. “Just not enough of them. So far.”

While I believe that charging for content delivery on devices like the Kindle or the iPhone would be a good business move I disagree that any system like the Times’ previous “Times Select” service is a good idea. The fact is that people have become accustomed to viewing and consuming content on the web for free. Companies like Flickr have created pretty successful business models by charging customers for some added features, but unless the dominant paradigm of the web changes people are not going to understand having to pay for the Times’ content on their basic site. They will continue to expect that the basic service of the Times as a news provider remain free.

I see the solution as creating a Times site that is more individualized for the end-user. The Times could offer integration with the Kindle, or even package a Kindle subscription with some other specialized content on the site, but for its own sake I hope it does not put its articles up behind a pay wall again.

A new Che film

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Somehow this slipped by me when it came out, but apparently there is a new movie about the life of Che Guevara in which Benicio Del Toro again plays Che. The movie weighs in at almost 4 and a half hours long (which could be a good thing in my eyes). Alas, it was only released in select theatres so I guess I’m left watching it when it comes out on DVD.

Read the New York Times review here.

The end of a street theatre

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New York City is known for the interesting characters that one encounters on the streets. In an article posted today on the New York Times one of these fixtures has come to an end. The article is about Joe Ades and is a fascinating read about a person who seems to have lived life in a way that just simply made him happy. From the article:

His was a particular kind of street theater in a city that delights in in-your-face characters who are, and are not, what they seem. For he was the sidewalk pitchman with the Upper East Side apartment. The sidewalk pitchman who was a regular at expensive East Side restaurants, where no one believed his answer to the “So what do you do?” question: “I sell potato peelers on the street.” Mr. Ades (pronounced AH-dess) died on Sunday at 75, said his daughter, Ruth Ades Laurent of Manhattan. She said he never talked about how many peelers he sold in a year, or how many carrots he had sliced up during demonstrations. She said he stashed his inventory in what had been the maid’s room of the apartment.

Anyway, the article is definitely worth a read and can be read in its entirety here.

Newspaper Propaganda

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I read this article today about a new group of newspaper executives that have banded together to combat what they see as the misrepresentation of the economic viability of newspapers. That article sums up the main message of this group (whose website can be found here) as:

– Newspapers are very much alive and growing when you consider the print and online audience together. And they talk to far more people than their radio, television and Internet competitors.

– Newspapers have earned the public’s trust because they employ professional journalists to verify news for truth, accuracy and context, and they are usually the first source of local news.

- Advertisers continue to invest in newspapers because they deliver results. They still move goods and services more reliably than other forms of promotion.

– Newspapers remain essential to our democratic system of government, serving as a watchdog against crime and corruption, and a guide dog for information that allows the public to make informed decisions on the issues of the day.

While the thoughts behind some of these points are probably on the right track I cannot help but read this website as a simple propaganda message by newspaper execs. A quick perusal of the groups website reveals headlines like “Let’s Invent an iTunes for News“, “Network television is fading fast“, and “Newspaper Web Site Audience Rises Twelve Percent In 2008“. While some of these articles focus on reinventing the newspaper industry a far greater portion of them focus on dispelling the notion that newspapers are in any sort of drastic decline.

I see many problems arising through this viewpoint of news and what needs to be done to revolutionize it. Instead of trying to summarize all of them I’d rather present what I see as necessary for a “news revolution.”

First, in my mind newspaper execs shouldn’t be putting their time into spreading the message that newspapers are doing well and that there shouldn’t be such worry. Instead, they ought to be focusing their attention and resources on creating and delivering content that actually spreads readership. If newspapers gain readership (either in print or digitally) then advertisers will listen. Don’t tell us that newspapers are doing fine, show us. Prove to the country and to advertisers that people are still interested in reading the New York Times.

Second, what I see as lacking is a mode of digital news consumption that can create significant revenue for large news institutions. I don’t see people as starting to pay for digital news content until they have a device that makes the consumption of this content indispensable or at least far easier than it currently is. Perhaps the Kindle, iPhone, and G1 are a start, and maybe there is a better device in the future, but ultimately newspapers will have to find a way to distribute content digitally through devices that already exist. With these devices that can seemingly do everything around people are not going to want to carry around yet another device to read their news on. Thus, the focus ought to be on newspapers banding together and creating apps for these pervasive devices that can distribute news from a broad base of sources as well as generate revenue. What I’m thinking here is an app with an interface similar to Classics for the iPhone, but one that places subtle and relevant ads among the content. This provides yet another form of advertising revenue for newspapers as well as an extendable and fluid form through which newspapers will be able to adapt to changing digital and economic conditions in the future.

Third, it’s time for newspapers to realize that a daily print distribution is just getting to be too costly. With this in mind their websites and portable modes of consumption need to create more revenue. On this note, the websites of newspapers should become more adaptable to the individual reader. This is partly being done through RSS feeds on many sites, but it’s not there yet. If I read headlines in my RSS reader or on my phone then I don’t really want to visit the sites homepage and see all of those same articles again. I realize that to individualize news to every user would be an immense effort both financially and technologically, but I think that we’ve reached a point with technology and content management systems that this is now possible and through creativity can be made feasible too.

Ultimately it may be that large newspapers like the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal are just simply too big to adapt to this new age. Perhaps as some have suggested it will be small start-ups and maybe even college newspapers that provide a successful model for digital news distribution. There’s some exciting stuff happening out there and it’s time that print newspapers stopped trying to convince people that their medium is secure and instead started working on spreading and capitalizing on their digital distribution.

Phew, you made it all the way to the end. Those are just my two cents (or almost 900 words…yikes). I’ll probably look back on this in a few months and reword it and wish I had made it a little more solid and clear, but for now those are my thoughts.