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hardly ever buys a paper and says TV news is "annoying" because of its emphasis on celebrities and promotions for programs that won't air for hours or even days."What works for me, and I think I'm speaking for a lot of people in my age group, is the Internet," Glas said. "It's absolutely convenient."
Media Of The Masses
Where 18-to 34-year olds in the (NYC) metro area get their information.
Daily newspaper 55%
Sunday newspaper 56%
Magazine 94%
Internet 80%
Radio 92%
Television 79%
Why Won't Johnny Read? [newsday.com]
I'm far out of range of the top age limit (34) of this study, and my SmallTown US home/background certainly isn't NYC. Even so, this article is dead-on, IMO.
I'm 28.
Dan
Besides all that, people who stare at monitor all day, usually like to relax with newspaper or a magazine.
It will not happen, not in my lifetime at any rate, btw I'm 96 -;
The beauty of sites like news.google.com is that you can read only the stuff that interests you. And you can read about things happening around the world, not just in the US.
The NASA shuttle explosion was sad but it's still the number one news story on TV (three weeks later). Again, it's sad, but only seven people died. And they're going into SPACE and back for crying out loud. I think it's amazing it doesn't happen more often.
24 yrs old.
unless it's specialty news
So do these statements follow logically?
- If people only pay for specialty news, providers will seek (or be forced) to become more specialized until few can be called general.
- As more people pay for specialty news, providers will be able to offer coverage that renders many of today's arguments moot.
how do we get people to PAY for news on the internet?
I remember having read somewhere (K5? can't remember) that one never pays for the news themselves. One pays for the filtering, let's say, 'ranking' of news.
If a bomb blows up a bus on Colombia, for example, there's the problem of the relevance of the report. Somebody has to certify that the information is true and relevant.
Or, by other side, lots of news are not important enough. The journalism works by filtering them out.
There is nothing holding the internet crowd from making free journalism. But if the quality, veracity and relevance can't be proved, there should be still payed professionals. And they will be payed by the people that needs them.
If Washington tourist think those stinger missiles are protecting them from terrorists, that's important to know, especially if you operate a DC hotel, even if the terrorist aren't buzzing around in low-flying F-16's.
I'm is the US. CNN and Fox might as well be a branch of the White House. PURE PROPAGANDA!
Thank G*d for the CBC! (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), good TV and Radio news with in-depth coverage. When I watch CNN, which I do occasionally, I quickly realize how shallow it is. Fast food for the mind, not to be digested, it is pre-mulched.
I get my news from:
CBC radio every morning
Daily paper (10 minute scan)
CNN or google once a day for 1 or 2 minutes
CBC Sunday morning in review show
Foreign news sites once a week
Has anyone else checked out papers in other countries? I find this fascinating. Do you realize how many car jackings there are in South Africa! It is a huge problem with many people being killed for just driving down the street. Lots more interesting stuff all over the world.
Got to go, rte.ie/news beckons :)
The problem will be for the smaller newcomer to this media circus. If you have an established name then people will pay, but if you are in a niche market then it may well be a lot harder.
After all what happens if you charge and your competitor does not, the news you are putting out must be a lot better than any competitor to get them to pay.
I also think that there is an enormous issue of copyright, and illegal distribtuion.
CrissCross mentioned something similar to AVS they use for adult sites, but that does not work either, as it only takes one person to join and pass on the news or images from there.
I am curious about this.
crisscross
...we are currently working on a system to close off access to ALL on-line news in our region unless you have what we call a "newspass".
Referring back to the title of this thread...The young adult English speaking market in Japan may be Internet savvy enough get their news from other channels for free. I really don't see how you could stifle all the English news out of Japan on-line like this. An "alliance" like this just may spawn a Google-like competitor who provides relatively ad-free, fast loading, clean news source and then you'd be shooting yourself in the foot.
CrissCross mentioned something similar to AVS they use for adult sites, but that does not work either, as it only takes one person to join and pass on the news or images from there.
If you are saying that one person would access the sites and rebroadcast via email or web, then that would be dealt with the legal route. I think this scenario is unlikely.
If you are saying that people could pass on their IDs to others, then that could be dealt with by tracking the user's IP or by other methods.
Bill:
Maybe you could close off some of the money losing English newspaper sites but you're going to have a hard time capping off the international press.
Our market is not young Japanese but foreign businesspeople that want Japan news. Young Japanese adults can get their info from Japanese sources. If no English news is available for free then businesspeople will have to pay or do without.
An "alliance" like this just may spawn a Google-like competitor who provides relatively ad-free, fast loading, clean news source and then you'd be shooting yourself in the foot.
How can that happen if all the sites are behind the payment gateway?
You are right that the newspapers may not be interested in this proposal because of other business motives. Even so, we belive that the proposal serves to move the discussion of payment forward.
Our market is not young Japanese but foreign businesspeople that want Japan news.I think you'll have a real battle on your hands if you're going after the business news market as you well know your biggest competitor has already gone subscription based and also has global name recognition. ;) However, the biggest market for English news in Japan is probably the expat/English teacher/foreign born resident, correct? A good portion of these people will not pay for the level of content quality currently offered by the Japanese media online.
If you're referring to the market outside Japan then wouldn't you also have to contend with the likes of Reuters, AP, and other sites like CNN, Yahoo, Google-news etc.? Sure these guys rely on the local media for thier news feeds, but are you saying you can control all of those as well?
Google-like competitor
When you say that you're going to put all English news about Japan behind a paid scheme I get the image of China blocking out sites it doesn't like...I just don't see how you can erect a barrier like that. If you said you were going to sell premium content subscriptions I could understand that, but to block off news the way you're suggesting doesn't seem possible (not in today's market).
This type of solution worked for Adult sites, even though there are many free porn sites. I wonder if anyone has any data on the Adult Verification System model?
I checked around what happens now. They take the free "mini-newspapers" offered at nearly all public transport facilities (Metro and Spits in Holland), surf the news sites during work, and side-glance TV in the evening.
No discussion possible during work on what was in the newspaper yesterday, only newsscoops on what happened an hour ago, through internet.
It is becoming more stating/mentioning the general news than having an opinion on it. On the other hand, the youth is probably better informed and opinionated on anything that really catches their interest through internet, than anyone in the older age bracket.
What a relief it was to quit hauling twenty-five pounds of newpapapers and magazines to the trash each week, to say nothing of having them strung all over my living room. The money savings pays for my Internet service.
The wasted paper and cutting down of trees really bothers me. But my number one problem with the newspaper is the $200 per year cost!
News Sources for me:
Newspaper 0%
Magazine 10%
Internet 70%
Radio 10%
TV 10%
Anyone know where I can see a free copy (careful with those copyright laws now)?
Which is the cache of the same pages article! You have to loe Google!
People listen to radio news for free. And radio can make a profit. Would you listen to radio news station that charged you a fee to do so? I bet you would not. It is the same way with Internet News.
We make the mistake of trying to make the internet work like the old purchase-a-copy-of-the-newspaper system when it comes to selling news. Some companies are even attempting to make downloadable PDF versions of their newspapers that are identical in look to the newstand version (with huge bandwidth problems). Fact is, the internet is a totally different mechanism for delivering the news as compared to hardcopy on the newstand. If you have your news in PDF format it may be very difficult to take advantage of future delivery methods down the road.
A similar thing is this: Television IS NOT radio. When television first came out it took a number of years to get past the old radio mentality. Many of the early television shows were set up like radio broadcasts! They could not easily get beyond the old way of thinking. Likewise, when it comes to news websites it is difficult to get past the old printing press mentality.
What it really comes down to it this is a whole new world for newspapers.
I use my TV to watch DVDs and never even had cable.
Oh, and I'm 27 years old btw...
I can't stand watching TV for news - it takes too long. (oh, i must be of the MTV generation)Glad to be rid of finger-staining-too-big-too-hold-comfortably-ink-papers.
At 24 years old this is my news list:
boston.com - Local news
cnn.com - nationwide
BBC online - world
I'm a news junkie and proud of it :)
..... Shane
People paid for news before the Internet -- they will pay again.
I respectfully disagree. It has been decades since people paid anything more than a nominal fee for news; the cover price of most newspapers and magazines has never paid the full cost of production -- advertising has. At a lot of newspapers, they determine how much reporting they can afford to provide based on how much advertising has been placed. "How many column-inches can advertising support?" is a daily question.
At the same time, the advertising market influences the amount of editorial space a newspaper devotes to different subjects. All the celebrity gossip, movie reviews, sports reporting, and the special sections on food/dining, home/real estate, technology, and so on, are there partly because the newspaper needs them to attract advertisers and advertsing dollars from related markets as much as they need to attract readers for that kind of content.
I don't believe that the old advertising-supported model can work in the new world of diversified formats through which news is distributed (web, email, cellphone, etc.) because these formats are not physically suited to presenting advertising in a manner that is complementary to editorial content without being distracting and without comprimising editorial independence.
Another challenge to news is more embedded: media of all kinds have rarely been especially profitable -- media content is expensive, especially news content -- so it's a very challenging business to be in to begin with.
Nevertheless, it seems clear that "newspapers" need to think of themselves as "news organizations" that are "platform independent" in their distribution of news. At the same time, I believe that the smart organizations will still recognizing that the demands of different physical formats (radio, video, web, print) have different production values that require and enable their own special approaches to creating news that people will value.
As for the idea that "young people are abandoning traditional news media," that's a distortion, and probably untrue. The supposed decline in newspaper readership is a long-term trend, as this data from the Newspaper Association of America shows [naa.org].
But it may simply be that newspaper reading habits have changed as have newspapers. According to the above data, about 80 percent of adults read a daily newspaper in 1964. Today, about the same number of adults read a daily newspaper sometime during the week. Daily newspaper reading has declined, but newspaper reading is still very high, and according to this data (1-page PDF) [nadbank.com], the 18-34 age group has the highest proportion of newspaper reading over a week of any age group.
Perhaps people just catch up on reading newspapers offer every few days. Remember, forty years ago, most newspapers had fewer pages, so it was easier to read the paper every day.
If you ask me, the real challenges for news organizations today are to figure out how to add value to the product they provide through entirely new types of content (some of which will become new sources of revenue), to diversify their readership, and to create a universal means for micropricing of digital content that is suited to the interlinked world of the internet and allows the "nominal fee" to be so small one would hardly notice it, say a penny (US$ 0.01) per article or less.
For me personally, I'd just like my local paper to do a better job of covering local news. I get the NY Times delivered to my doorstep in Brooklyn each morning, and although I feel it's an amazing newspaper a lot of the time which always has more to read than one possibly has time for, the Metro section is probably one of the worst local news sections in the country.
I'm over the age limit indicated in the survey and my news coverage is 80% radio 20% internet and very little from any other source.
I haven't bought a newspaper in months the only reason for doing so is something to read on a train.
In fact when it comes down to it 99% of news is not worth finding out as it has very little bearing on the way I live.
Maybe not but i humbly see cnn and bbc being pay per view models within the next five years. The online version.
Maybe they would be able to charge non-UK IP addresses, which could be a compromise.
