Every time I talk to someone from the Rocky, indeed, every time I talk to someone from any newspaper who likes the Rocky, I float the idea of ditching the paper version, stripping out all the extraneous coverage, and going back to charging for their content.
The response would make crickets chirping sound like an oncoming tornado.
Maybe now that Walter Isaacson has proposed the same idea, it'll get another look. He lays out the case against an advertising-only model, while still preserving and charging for what local newspapers do best.
One of the most creative arguments against came from a reporter for the Grand Junction Sentinel, who argued that newspapers couldn't compete against local television. Two answers: 1) they did for 50 years, and 2) local TV can't compete with newspapers for actual content.
Look, I'd never pay for access to the news departments at Channels 4, 7, 9, and 31. I don't watch now for free, and I'm not sure how much they'd have to pay me to watch. But I'd pay, oh, $50 a year for the online Rocky, as long as I didn't get sued for quoting from its work.
In fact, such a product would be better than the printed paper. It could preserve the current forms and lengths, since those are what people are used to reading, and perhaps even what they have time for. But it could also allow for longer-format writing, which indulges what writers really like to do: write. So Lynn Bartels produces a 700-word piece on the legislature, and then a longer-form, 2000-word discussion of a particular bill that's caught her eye. Meanwhile, the Post, stuck with a paper edition, can only choke out 500 words that barely lets people know there is a story.
I think Isaacson (along with Littwin) too easily dismisses liberal bias as a source of decline. Yes, the papers have many hits online, but still look elsewhere for coverage of stories, and many of those people reading the Denver Post online then go to other sites for the analysis.
But liberal bias may be killing the papers in another way - a lack of entrepreneurial spirit which would save the industry, even in this economy. Reporters simply aren't interested in taking that kind of a chance, which requires a completely different way of thinking , risk-taking, and actual competition. Instead, they create sites like, "I Want My Rocky," that make people feel better and do absolutely nothing to preserve the paper or the brand. That's why they're reporters and not businessmen.
And that's also why their newspaper is about to disappear.
Comments
Joshua,
You're right about one thing -- I don't have an entrepreneurial bone in my body. Would never know how to be a businessman. Would never want to be one. And most reporters, I'd guess, are not much different. But you're missing on a few others. Your proposal re the Rocky is not the same as Isaacson's since you propose charging for the Rocky online while the competing Post online product would be free. Could never work. As for risk-taking, I'd guess you've never been a reporter covering a war, a wildfire, a riot wherein you put your life at risk to get the story, or one whose story challenges the most powerful people in the community or one whose opinions can be challenged, often rudely, by hundreds of thousands of readers. And as for actual knockdown competition, it's the lifeblood of every reporter.
Posted by: Mike Littwin | February 18, 2009 2:01 AM