If it's crap... We'll tell you
A letter to the Editor of the Los Angeles Times - By Carlyle
This is the letter I've just e-mailed to Tim Rutten, editor of the Los Angeles Times in response to this frightening editorial I recommend you should read.
Dear sir,
as a professional online writer, I thought I would drop you a line about your dangerous and unethical stance on the deregulation of the newspaper industry for the self-serving sake of price fixing. While I certainly understand that it must be hard to have front row seats to the end of an era - especially one that involves the death of a lifestyle you have no doubt come to love - such is the way the free market works. Technology has usurped your place in the world. Now comes the time when you either evolve and join the new way of the world, or die out and become an extinct relic of the past.
Murdoch's plan is ludicrous. It is not the way to save the press; only the way to maintain news as the industry that makes his family Billionaires. It is a pyramid scheme that provides a semi-opulent lifestyle to writers (as opposed to the home office lifestyle we successful web writers are relegated to) while making an incredible profit for himself.
I can go on like this all day, so I'll simply rebut a few of the flaws in your piece dated Aug 22, 2009.
American papers had combined revenues of $34.7 billion from the advertising in their print editions last year and just $3.1 billion in advertising from their online sites, despite the fact that, on average, 67.3 million people visited them each month.
There are two problems here. The first is the assumption that there is less Ad money on the internet PERIOD. Let me ask you this: where will that $34.7 Billion go when print finally gives up the ghost? Down a hole? Or onto the internet? Arguably, all that money won't go towards news sites - after all, there's a lot more money to be had in pictures of kittens, news of who Brittney Spears slept with last night and videos of kids falling off of skateboards - but a lot of it will. Meanwhile, with the reduced costs of production (no paper, printing, transportation, delivery or large offices) means leaner operating costs that go solely towards paying for bandwidth and writers. The second problem here is the 63.7 Million people visiting these sites. That is 67.3 Million unique visitors each month - most of whom only visit a page once to a handful of times over the course of the month. Treating them like 67.3 Million subscribers is to be disingenuous at best. Some of them were people who would never subscribe to a paper, but will gladly read a well written or important article linked from elsewhere (as I did with your article.) On average, each of these visitors contributed $43 in ad revenues a year, according to your numbers. Not a bad take, considering there were no middlemen or production costs.
Unless that imbalance is reduced, all but a few quality papers will disappear.
I'm at a loss as to why this is a bad thing. There is no need for a paper in every city anymore - the local television stations have taken up that mantle online, providing any and all local coverage, and the national stories by and large come from the AP in all but these few, quality papers of which you are speaking. So why is it that we should keep a lumbering, corpulent industry dedicated to mostly repeated news on life support when only a few, dedicated, quality sources will do the job just as well - if not better?
The press, after all, does not assert 1st Amendment protections on its own behalf but as the custodian of such protections on behalf of the American people.
The American people no longer need the press to assert our rights for us. We are practicing those rights ourselves, on the internet, without the filter of editorial oversight that I think we both can agree Murdoch (and many of his contemporaries) wields poorly.
What Murdoch is proposing, and you are supporting sir, is dangerous, frightening and downright un-American. Three paragraphs of patriotic pap (in the body of your article) be damned, what you are recommending is that Newspapers be able to price-fix the news to force people to pay a premium set by wealthy paper owners in order to save their wealth from emerging enterprises, because they are finding they can no longer compete in new markets. The dinosaurs went extinct because they could not adapt to changing conditions. That is the future that frightens Murdoch and his ilk. Journalism isn't dying. It is being forced to be leaner, meaner and to act at a pace even faster than it ever has before. Those that cannot keep up, those that cannot evolve, will find that there is no room for them in the new market place. That is how it has always been and how it always shall be.
That does not mean that I disagree with the need to enforce copyright and protect writers from infringement. That's the next legal hurdle we need to overcome. But Price fixing won't save journalism. Quite the contrary. It will only continue to keep it chained to the interests of the powerbrokers who own 96% of all print media. Sadly, fellow writer, you find yourself on the wrong side of a war, firmly embedded with the army that wants to see the press anything but free.
Best of luck in your future endeavors.
Dear sir,
as a professional online writer, I thought I would drop you a line about your dangerous and unethical stance on the deregulation of the newspaper industry for the self-serving sake of price fixing. While I certainly understand that it must be hard to have front row seats to the end of an era - especially one that involves the death of a lifestyle you have no doubt come to love - such is the way the free market works. Technology has usurped your place in the world. Now comes the time when you either evolve and join the new way of the world, or die out and become an extinct relic of the past.
Murdoch's plan is ludicrous. It is not the way to save the press; only the way to maintain news as the industry that makes his family Billionaires. It is a pyramid scheme that provides a semi-opulent lifestyle to writers (as opposed to the home office lifestyle we successful web writers are relegated to) while making an incredible profit for himself.
I can go on like this all day, so I'll simply rebut a few of the flaws in your piece dated Aug 22, 2009.
American papers had combined revenues of $34.7 billion from the advertising in their print editions last year and just $3.1 billion in advertising from their online sites, despite the fact that, on average, 67.3 million people visited them each month.
There are two problems here. The first is the assumption that there is less Ad money on the internet PERIOD. Let me ask you this: where will that $34.7 Billion go when print finally gives up the ghost? Down a hole? Or onto the internet? Arguably, all that money won't go towards news sites - after all, there's a lot more money to be had in pictures of kittens, news of who Brittney Spears slept with last night and videos of kids falling off of skateboards - but a lot of it will. Meanwhile, with the reduced costs of production (no paper, printing, transportation, delivery or large offices) means leaner operating costs that go solely towards paying for bandwidth and writers. The second problem here is the 63.7 Million people visiting these sites. That is 67.3 Million unique visitors each month - most of whom only visit a page once to a handful of times over the course of the month. Treating them like 67.3 Million subscribers is to be disingenuous at best. Some of them were people who would never subscribe to a paper, but will gladly read a well written or important article linked from elsewhere (as I did with your article.) On average, each of these visitors contributed $43 in ad revenues a year, according to your numbers. Not a bad take, considering there were no middlemen or production costs.
Unless that imbalance is reduced, all but a few quality papers will disappear.
I'm at a loss as to why this is a bad thing. There is no need for a paper in every city anymore - the local television stations have taken up that mantle online, providing any and all local coverage, and the national stories by and large come from the AP in all but these few, quality papers of which you are speaking. So why is it that we should keep a lumbering, corpulent industry dedicated to mostly repeated news on life support when only a few, dedicated, quality sources will do the job just as well - if not better?
The press, after all, does not assert 1st Amendment protections on its own behalf but as the custodian of such protections on behalf of the American people.
The American people no longer need the press to assert our rights for us. We are practicing those rights ourselves, on the internet, without the filter of editorial oversight that I think we both can agree Murdoch (and many of his contemporaries) wields poorly.
What Murdoch is proposing, and you are supporting sir, is dangerous, frightening and downright un-American. Three paragraphs of patriotic pap (in the body of your article) be damned, what you are recommending is that Newspapers be able to price-fix the news to force people to pay a premium set by wealthy paper owners in order to save their wealth from emerging enterprises, because they are finding they can no longer compete in new markets. The dinosaurs went extinct because they could not adapt to changing conditions. That is the future that frightens Murdoch and his ilk. Journalism isn't dying. It is being forced to be leaner, meaner and to act at a pace even faster than it ever has before. Those that cannot keep up, those that cannot evolve, will find that there is no room for them in the new market place. That is how it has always been and how it always shall be.
That does not mean that I disagree with the need to enforce copyright and protect writers from infringement. That's the next legal hurdle we need to overcome. But Price fixing won't save journalism. Quite the contrary. It will only continue to keep it chained to the interests of the powerbrokers who own 96% of all print media. Sadly, fellow writer, you find yourself on the wrong side of a war, firmly embedded with the army that wants to see the press anything but free.
Best of luck in your future endeavors.
Comment
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Comment by Santos on August 26, 2009 at 11:15pm - Okay Carlye, I re-read the article and now understand it. The last time I really didn't and that was due partly to the fact that I was trying to rush through it to read your response. That and the writer was "speaking", imo, a bunch of gibberish. Also, it seems to me that they only want to legalise price fixing for the newspaper industry. That doesn't seem fair to me. Does Murdoch think he's God of all companies now?
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Comment by Jerome Danvers on August 26, 2009 at 4:01pm -
Hey Carlyle, as someone from the UK, I must confess, I've always found he term 'un-American' confusing and slightly insiduous. I mean no offence whatsoever, but in the manner in which you apply the term (combined with some admittedly loose studies into the US legal system), I can't help but think 'un-American' is one of those concepts that's at best completely subjective, and at worst, unabashed propoganda. Legally, slavery should never have been able to occur under the Constitution, but it did, and the implications of which, rightly or wrongly, lead me to my conclusion.
Getting back to the topic, I think the future of the printed press is in the hand of advertisers as much as it is (if not moreso) in the hands of paying consumers. Over here, we have 4 free daily newspapers (I use that description lightly since it's 5% news briefs, most of the rest celebrity gossip) in London & if I'm not mistaken, one of them - The London Paper - is actually owned by the Murdoch corp! These guys afford to do what they do because of the advertising revenues. Methinks, the Printed media will find it's solution not in pricing, but in determining who its audience is and how best to market to them.
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Comment by Sgt. Sharki on August 26, 2009 at 3:56pm -
Great article Carlyle. As a fellow journalist I've been keeping a close eye on the death of the newspaper industry and while I'm sad to see the great ones fall if this is their solution, so long and don't let the door hit you.
This scheme is down right idiotic. If papers want to charge for content, go right ahead it's a free country. But to try and collude and agree upon a fixed price. Madness. Haven't these idiots ever heard of competition? Your rival charges X amount for a subscription, so you charge less or offer something better for the same price. This is basic econmic theory. Are these people really dumb enough to think they can all charge the same amount while competing with free services and succeed? No wonder this business is dying.
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Comment by Carlyle on August 26, 2009 at 2:55pm
- Santos, that's what Murdoch is trying to change. Making it legal to price fix.
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Comment by Santos on August 26, 2009 at 2:08pm
- Not is only price-fixing wrong, but isn't it also illegal?
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Comment by Ewok Princess on August 26, 2009 at 1:20pm - Newspapers and many news organizations are the arbiters of their own destructions. When was the last time anyone heard or read a well researched and unbiased news program or article? I watch the news for traffic and weather. I read the newspaper for the Comics and the Style section; sometimes, the jobs or real estates sections. I get my news from NPR and internet sources. However, I do agree with Travis, there are plenty of people who need to have the news in print form or radio..
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Comment by Travis Pickle on August 26, 2009 at 12:43pm - Aparently only between 15 and 22 percent of the world’s population is on the Internet so that leaves quite a lot of the others needing their fix of news elsewhere or not actually bothering!
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Comment by Ethan on August 26, 2009 at 12:13pm -
Travis -
Rest assured all printed media will not die out completely, like you said, I (and I assume most everyone else) still reads books in print, despite the rising popularity of things like the Kindle. In the future this might be a problem for book printers, but I think that day is a ways off.
And as for newspapers, I agree with you that many people (although i doubt there are billions of them) still want that physical paper as a ritual, but those can be provided by the "few quality papers" that will undoubtedly remain. There will always be a niche market for a Sunday paper at the very least.
And this is not a response to your statements, but why the hell should we pay the same kind of subscription fees for online news when the papers themselves no longer have to pay any kind of overhead except for bandwidth? Murdoch's time as the malevolent gatekeeper of world events is coming to an end, and he needs to get out of the way and do something else. Like bathe in an Olympic swimming pool full of money and baby seals or something
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Comment by Travis Pickle on August 26, 2009 at 11:27am
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Can printed media die off completely?
you can get 24hour news on TV and radio but that didn't stop people buying papers and pretty much everyone has access to a TV
I get all the news I can handle from the computer because i'm on it all the time but not everyone has access to the internet. There must be billions who still want a physical object, I know i read 0 books online and if I still did physical outdoor work i'd be buying my daily paper.
My in-laws spend an entire sunday reading those huge newspapers and all the suplements and they have Internet, it's a kind of ritual and even though they come in convenient more manageable sizes now they still choose to wrestle with the huge broadsheets!?
I think there's a long way before the interweb takes over the world!
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Comment by O-Town 84 on August 26, 2009 at 9:47am - Good Article Carlyle. Murdock has always been on my top THREE hate list.
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