The News Biz
The business of sourcing and reporting news is in trouble. Its financial model is broken. The question to be addressed is what comes next. Is there any light at the end of the proverbial tunnel? I think there might be.
The major networks used to run large news organizations that hired lots of talent, had lots of foreign bureaus, and lost lots of money. The networks, a triopoly, were happy to pick up the tab because they were very profitable; the news divisions added a patina of gravitas to their work product; and “public interest” content kept the regulators/politicians off their back. The big three networks no longer make much money and their news organizations are shadows of their former selves.
For a hundred plus years, Americans bought newspapers delivered to their door, out of kiosks, or from wandering youth. In 1952, I sold the afternoon paper, for a nickle, at a major intersection, wandering among the cars stopped at a lengthy signal. The price paid for the paper covered only a small portion of the overhead. Most of the revenue came from classified ads and product ads. Pius newspaper types used to deplore their dependence on those grubby advertisers. Caigslist and Facebook stole that revenue. Those deplorables are now sorely missed. Layoffs, restructuring, downsizing and bankruptcies are the order of the day. My local paper is half its former size and continuing to shrink. I think the horoscope writer was fired. The situation is so dire that the New Jersey legislature, facing a truly massive pension shortfall, allocated $5 million to support the reporting of local news. Let’s see . . . government providing support for newspapers, which are supposed to report on government operations. What could possibly go wrong?
Freedom of the press isn’t free. Somebody has to pay if news is to be gathered and disseminated. Is there somebody out there willing to do that? Hopefully, we can come up with a better answer than the New Jersey legislature.
I subscribe to a service called Geopolitical Futures. Every day, I get a few paragraphs about three international issues they think are the most important events/trends of the day, and a sentence or two on a number of issues they deem less important. Periodically, they send out a 1,000 word think piece on a country or region with some geographical, historical and natural resource context. Their third offering is short reviews of the books the staff is reading. Their orientation is very transparent. They believe that foreign policy is dictated by geography, history and national interest. They think personalities are secondary; that the options of leaders are hemmed in by realities beyond their control. In foreign policy terms, they are realists, as opposed to neocons or Wilsonians or isolationists. I believe this represents a viable model for news reporting. I am happy with the value I get for my money, and I believe the provider makes a good living. Quality journalism transmitted electronically need not have advertising to survive, because the journalists don’t need an office building, printing presses, distributors, vendors, paper throwers or a unionized work force.
There are lots of variations on this model that could work. I would be happy to supplant the New Jersey taxpayers as a source of revenue if I could find a service that covered local politics in depth. I would be happy to support a band of hard core investigative reporters who dug out corruption along the lines 60 Minutes did in its hay day. The Kardashians make millions sending out celebrity whatever; news organizations can find a constituency willing to pay, if they produce content some folks want to consume. The beauty of this model is the efficiency of overhead allocation. Almost all the revenue could be devoted to paying reporters and editors. It could be done with virtually no physical plant. Laptops and a cloud account are the only requirements. Meetings could be held at Starbucks. Financial planning would be easy if the product generated a loyal following, because the revenue stream would be constant and predictable, requiring no billing/collection overhead.
Even a cursory look at U tube will reveal a tornado of content out there in etherland. I am willing to bet that there is a constituency willing to pay a few bucks a month to be able to look at something besides kitten videos, painful pranks and a rat dragging a piece of pizza. I did, however, really like that rat.
