Print journalism is dying. Good riddance. Stacks of wasted paper and wasted ink are, like the yellow pages, remnants of an industry working to squeeze the last ounce of profit from a decaying, wasteful business model. Last one out is a rotten egg.
First one to build a paywall? That’s a different story. This weekend, the city’s only remaining printed daily paper — The Seattle Times — announced it was erecting a porous-style paywall for its online content designed to force payment from its heaviest users and to provide its biggest fans an avenue to support its shifting business. You can read the announcement and end up not quite sure if there is a subscription level that doesn’t require receiving the Sunday paper — there is, but it will cost you more than $200 a year.
This post is not really about judging the Times for its decision and timing. We’ll remain part of the paper’s loose “community partners” network that features our headlines along with other area partners on the Times homepage — guess that can be considered the “free” section now. We don’t have any clear insights into what kind of business structures, debts and ongoing costs the Times ownership is attempting to keep afloat. It’s not even the first paywall for a major news site in the city. Check out the Daily Journal of Commerce… trailblazer.
This post is an announcement that we see this change at the Times as being another in a long line that have pushed sites like CHS forward. We’re doing what we can to grow with the responsibility and opportunity. You’ve probably already noticed a few more posts about news from City Hall and Olympia in our daily mix. We’ll always focus on Capitol Hill but we also know our responsibility as an outlet for news requires greater breadth. We’ll work the balance out as things move forward. Same as ever.
We’re happy to have cohorts, examples and models joining in the effort. There is a healthy constellation of local, independent, community-minded news sites in our area of the city. We own and operate CHS and the Central District News. We have a steady neighbor in the Montlaker. The Madison Park Blogger soldiers on. Meanwhile, First Hill and Eastlake keep the effort warm if not fully stoked. There are also efforts like the Seattle Transit Blog, The Seattle Bike Blog and The SunBreak that are succeeding in creating an entity that sustains a focused news voice.
How we pull together and survive is a daily experiment. Like CHS, the West Seattle Blog has grown almost solely through advertising revenue. It is a straightforward — though slowly growing — business that — surprise, surprise — fits in about as well as anything with a local media enterprise. The city’s neighborhood news blogs are not dying. Want to advertise on CHS? Here’s how to get started.
There is also a new generation of big media news and information that will move forward in this gap. Capitol Hill-based The Stranger’s Slog has become the city’s leading online voice. The investments by SagaCity Media in the Seattle Met brand continues. And while TV news brands wastefully continue to defend their news at 5 PM, 10 PM and 11 PM turf, there are signs of shifting focus.
Change happens slowly. The implementation of the Times wall is really just another step in the direction CHS and many others have been lucky enough to have been traveling. It’s nice to find out that you’ve been following fortune. The plan, at this point, is to keep marching — and maybe cover a little more ground.
Thousands of old PC’s and cell phones in the landfill. Toxic metals sinking into the ground. Also: Not everyone has or wants a computer.
I never see stacks of mobile phones bearing the CHS homepage melting in the rain outside some dumb bank where they were dumped. So, yeah. Wasteful.
Perhaps not everyone, but my 80+ year-old Mom has an iPad that she can read the news on.
Not unless they have the money to pay for more than one or two full-time reporters. Investigative work still needs to be done, people still need to be paid.
I can imagine the politicians and corporate execs happy about the decaying news watchdogs though. Their mistakes and corruption will less likely, or worse, never be exposed.
I wonder if there is a way to consolidate the top stories on CHS blog and other free, neighborhood-oriented, community blogs to increase readership for each blog and to provide a free alternative to the Seattle Times for accessing city-wide news. Perhaps you could have a map of Seattle that you could click on to get news from a different area of the city.
I think a lot of readers, like me, love CHS and would prefer a consolidated, non-profit neighborhood model for local news but are currently more likely to go directly to the Seattle Times website because (1) the Seattle Times has been free; (2) readers do not realize that the community blogs exist; (3) readers do not realize how high quality the reporting is on these websites; and/or (4) readers who are aware of the blogs prefer to not have to click through so many sites to see if there might be a new, interesting story to read.
A consolidated model for neighborhood and/or issue blogs would likely increase viewership for each blog because people from different neighborhoods would be more likely to discover the blogs on the consolidated site and click on an interesting story even if they live and work outside of the neighborhood. This consolidated model might also allow sites like CHS to include more city and/or state wide issue stories without having to worry about overlapping with other community blogs, essentially creating a true, free alternative to the Seattle Times. Just a thought.
There’s little good about it. Certainly paper itself is a messy, needless irresponsibility, but in a democracy, journalism is anything but disposable, and we’ve yet to come up with a successful business model for supporting real journalism any other way. It’s not at all clear that the Seattle Times or any other online news source can make a for pay model work.
Brilliant writing, expert editing, fact checking, and – most of all – investigative journalism are the time-consuming occupations of skilled, dedicated professionals who can’t function without substantial funding. And a free society can’t remain so for long without a free press.
I like computers; my mom made a fetish out of the idea that someday I’d have a computer on my very own desk; I’ve been working on them since 1984. But, reading the news from a newspaper is not the same as reading it online. Printed news and online news sites compliment each other and we will be far poorer as a society if we lose one medium is sacrificed to the other.
Newspapers cover subjects that I don’t have a primary interest in, which is a Very Good Thing. On-line news is a pipeline for what you already want to know about. Your exposure to other opinions, other events, is minimal compared to the physical reality of a newspaper that throws the world in all it’s complexity in your face. I can’t avoid scanning and absorbing info on what I don’t know about — and my knowledge base is stronger for the experience. I’m willing to pay for that “extra eye,” too.
Someone else has already touched on the value of reporters/editors/time and all that a large organization can offer an information source. As for the environment, the electronic world had its own burden of pollution, as well.
I don’t think there is any comparison between CHS and ST. Really? Now I am not a huge fan of ST, but it is NEWS. CHS is a blog, mostly gossip, relevant, but not news. And if it is going to sell itself as a “news” organization might I suggest someone in your office purchase an AP Style Guide and take some writings lessons. I consider CHS more along the lines of TMZ for my neighborhood. I enjoy it. But you’re no Seattle Times. And likewise, the Seattle Times is no New York Times.
Ha ha. Thanks for reading!
Newspapers are really only single-use though, and sure lining a bird cage. I would venture to guess that few people are using computers exclusively for reading news. Oh, other little things like earning a living.
I agree. There is room for both neighborhood blogs and also a city-wide newspaper (which reports local as well as national/international news). While I enjoy reading CHS, and the sometimes-lively debate in the comments section, a true small pleasure is sitting down and reading the Seattle Times with a cup of coffee in the morning. Having serious investigative journalists on their staff is extremely important to a healthy democracy and is not something that a local blog can offer.
Even when surrounded by thousands of blogs, many legacy journalistic ventures like the Seattle Times have continued to establish themselves as the premium product for their market or niche. Blogs have a place, I read CHS, Seattle Transit Blog, and bunch of others regularly, however I also read the Seattle Times and I will gladly pay for it’s content. Traditional journalism is still regularly putting out a a product unmatched in the blogosphere, such as the national quality investigation into the 787 battery failures that Dominic Gates continues to write about. The sheer amount of paid, (and edited) quality journalists that traditional news continues to bring to the table, is vital. We just have to look at what the PI has turned into if we want to understand why it’s important much of the Seattle Times reporting structure stays similar to what it is now. I hear lots of complaints about the Seattle Times being a monopoly in Seattle, think about how much better our region would be with multiple newsrooms, and a thriving blog community.
I think one of the under-valued aspects of traditional print journalism institutions is the ability to go deep on wide range of topics. CHS is the undisputed source for people who want to know what’s going-on, on Capitol Hill. I mentioned earlier the Seattle Transit Blog, they’ve got amazing stuff too; however, in a world where many simply gravitate to media which shares their perspective and feed an often ignorant bias, having to go out and aggregate your own news means we will continue to segment ourselves from those who see the world differently than us. Maybe, even though I live in Capitol Hill there is something important for me to learn about in the Kent School District, perhaps someone in Everett would be enlightened to learn about some of the transit projects going on in Seattle’s city center, (you know, aside from simply what their co-worker tells complains about at lunch.) If I just have my browser pointed to the niche news I care about, how will I ever become a better citizen of Seattle, Washington State, or the world?
At the same time while I think traditional journalism, the editorial oversight and full-time reporters that come with it are important, I don’t think the industry is perfect. I think one of the amazing opportunities that the internet gives is the chance to read local stories and perspectives from all over the world, and putting up a monthly subscriber paywall minimizes that ability. I’ve long believed that creditable newspapers need to work together on going forward into the future with a business model that sustains the important journalistic infrastructure, while also being willing to let go of old models when needed. I should be able to go to my favorite news aggregator, click on articles from around the country and easily pay with a central processing platform, a few pennies for each one that I read. By going behind a complete paywall, the Times will be depriving the Seahawks fan who moved to Chicago, quality articles about their team, or limiting the aviation geeks from around the country who won’t see value in a monthly subscription price, the ability to read Mr. Gate’s previously mentioned Boeing pieces. Imagine an iTunes for news, where you can pay for what you want, not be forced into paying for a whole bundle.
What he said.
It wouldn’t shock me to see journalism move into the non-profit or private foundation model.
Am I dumb, or is the Blog biz model essentially the same as print journalism, without the overhead of print? I mean, they are both reliant on advertising revenue. This, I believe, is why WSB and CHS are thriving, because they live in big enough and diverse enough hoods to make this model work. While the smaller hoods (Beacon Hill, etc.) struggle to have enough advertising revenue to be anything more than neighborhood message boards.
I don’t love the Times, but I did love their piece on elephants recently, and before that, on senior home abuses, and before that on the methadone crisis in our state. Local blogs will never provide this level of investigative, absolutely necessary journalism, so I am saddened about the pay wall.
“And a free society can’t remain so for long without a free press.”
Well… actually the Seattle Times behind a paywall means no less freedom of the press. As Richard Stallman would say, there’s free as in beer, and free as in speech. The Times will still have freedom of speech and freedom of the press, we just won’t get our free beer. That’s OK… free news is not a right.