September 3rd, 2008
Publish2: The Web’s Newswire
The web has become the vanguard of reinventing news distribution in the digital age. And while newspapers have often lagged in seizing new opportunities on the web, they have a golden opportunity to lead the charge in reinventing a foundation of the news ecosystem — the newswire.
Newswires have traditionally been based on a number of assumptions: good news content is scarce; wire copy is an effective way of engaging readers; and newspapers can all publish the same wire content in their own limited-distribution regions without making it a commodity.
All these assumptions go out the window on the web.
So reinventing the newswire requires fundamental shifts in mindset: From the limitations of scarcity in print to the opportunities of abundance on the web. From a walled-garden approach — “if we don’t create a story or get it from the wires, then it doesn’t exist” — to one that embraces the web, where consumers have access to every publication in the world and the most interesting and informative takes often come from sources other than the traditional wires.
The current mindset of most newsrooms, as they face shrinking budgets, is that they may need to forgo the broad coverage that they traditionally provided through wire content in order to afford staff for original local reporting. Several newspapers have in fact announced their intention to cancel their wire subscriptions.
But newspaper web sites can tap into this wealth of web content without expensive licensing agreements — they just need to LINK to it.
A web newswire can distribute links instead of full content, driving traffic to the sites that originally published the news, instead of creating a commodity out of the news by publishing the same content on hundreds of sites.
A web newswire can distribute links to a newspaper’s own content, giving it national distribution (think Alaska newspapers’ reporting on Sarah Palin) but where all the attention comes back to the newspaper’s site.
A web newswire can also distribute links to great blog content, magazine articles, and content created by people in their communities.
The most successful web-native news destinations are all about links — so by publishing newswire links to the best content on the web, newspapers can enhance their positions as daily news destinations.
Think Google, Drudge Report, Yahoo, Digg, and Fark. These sites constantly send readers away by linking to the best content, and readers keep coming back for more.
Instead of chasing links from Drudge, for example, as many newspaper sites do, they should focus on BEING a destination for finding links. Imagine a web newswire where the collective linking of newspapers’ sites could actually compete with sites like Drudge in driving traffic to newspaper content and other high quality journalism.
Instead of abandoning broad coverage in favor of pure local, newspaper sites can still be a destination to find out what’s going on in the world, in a way that complements their local reporting and integrates into their local community. Why shouldn’t readers discuss national issues on a newspaper site, given that they share the bond of living in the same community?
A web newswire can also solve the problem of how newsrooms with increasingly limited resources can find links to the best content on the web. If all newsrooms contribute links to the newswire and share their daily “link news budgets,” they can tap into the collective editorial intelligence of hundreds of newsrooms.
If consumers can vote up the best content together, why not newsrooms? This is the same cooperative approach that gave birth to the traditional newswires, but one that harnesses the “network effects” of the web — the same network effects that power sites like Google, Digg, and Twitter.
And… it can all be done for free.
Publish2 has built a platform for newspapers to create a new web-native newswire — and we’re offering it to newspapers (and all journalists) at no cost.
The opportunity to serve readers more effectively and deploy resources more efficiently has a huge upside in and of itself for newsrooms faced with shrinking budgets. We are also developing a way for marketers to tap into the distribution power of a new web-based wire service, and provide a way for every newsroom that participates in the Publish2 Newswire to create a new source of revenue.
Imagine turning the newswire from a cost center into a profit center.
Interested? Register for a Publish2 journalist account, or contact us at newswire@publish2.com.
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I agree that the idea of a web newswire is exciting, both from a technological and from an end user perspective. But how do you see the economic side working out?
The numbers I see (http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=4517 for example) have me deeply skeptical about the ability of online advertising to support even small content producing businesses. The sites you cite as working well in this paradigm (eg Google, Digg, Drudge) work because they don’t have to pay for the expensive content; they just link to it.
I don’t like the “walled garden” either, but I’m starting to think we’ll see more walls — not less — as content producers (be they news, music, photos or anything else) seek to protect the value of their creations by restricting their availability. Again — I don’t like that idea. It just seems inevitable unless somebody comes up with a better model that provides adequate revenue to support content creation without limiting access.
The models that are successful in this paradigm — like HuffPost or TPM — work because they enjoy a nationally sized audience generating CPMs but support tiny (single digit) staffs, and do as much or more aggregation as they do creation. Do you see the link-with-ads model supporting, say, the couple dozen reporters it takes to cover a small city? Do you have numbers to show it works? (I ask hopefully?)
Thanks …
A web newswire sounds like a good idea - but if your concept is for the online wire to link to newspaper websites then where do you think the newspapers are going to get their authoritative, accurate and timely news from in the first place?
If newspapers are no longer subscribing to newswires how are they going to get fast, fair and accurate news from around their local area, country and abroad?
Rely on bloggers and press releases? I don’t think so.
Wire Service Guy,
Don’t you think lumping “bloggers” into a single quality category is little short-sighted at this point? Especially given that newspapers, magazines, broadcast brands are all producing original reporting for the web using blogs.
And as for getting “fast, fair, and accurate news,” take Sarah Palin. Alaska newspapers have have been cranking out a huge amount of high quality reporting. Why should other newspapers just link to it? And they can get the link when they’ve got the scoop.
And from “abroad”? How about linking to English language news sources from around the world? A little less provincialism might be healthy.
As for regional, the Ohio News Organization seems a very promising experiment. We’d love to help facilitate other such regional news sharing networks — and connect those to national distribution.
Working Reporter,
You’re right that smaller papers are having a hard time with pricing power for online advertising. One way they can increase their economic leverage is by banding together to create a network. On the web, the most successful publishing economics have been achieved by companies that can harness “network effects” — Google is the archetype.
The problem is also that most online advertising models are just reproducing the value proposition of advertising in print. Search advertising is arguably the only true web-native advertising model to come along, which is why it has been so successful
One key to a new business model is unlocking the value of a network that newspapers could create TOGETHER — which is completely counterintuitive to the legacy business models, which were about monoliths. The other key is creating a new, more power value proposition for advertisers — and to create a marketplace that maximizes pricing.
Harnessing the power of networks depends on openness — walled gardens may ensure that the economics stay small.
Hi Scott, all good comments and perhaps I was too generalistic (is that a word? I work in IT so I can make up words as I go along!).
What I am trying to emphasize is that there has to be an original source of “fast, fair and accurate” news. Whether someone posting on a blog is a professional MSM reporter or an independent writer they have to start somewhere with their information about run-of-the-mill stories and if it is not going to be official press releases or rumour-based websites where are they going to start?
OK, so some organisations are starting to make provision for non-MSM writers (take the recent Democrat and Republican conventions, bloggers were well catered for) but by and large it is down to agency reporters and photographers to be first on the scene of breaking news, to wade through the guff put out by press offices, and to use their corporate resources to ferret-out stories that are being hidden.
Most newspapers deliver their reports with a particular political slant or leading on a certain angle in the story so, personally, I think there is always going to be a need for agency reports to be the starting point for a lot of original journalism.
All the best.
Banding together is an idea worth exploring, but it seems like it would invite antitrust scrutiny at the minimum. And I remain deeply skeptical, from the numbers I’ve seen, of the ability of online ads to pay for significant content. But I’d be happy to be proven wrong.
Working Reporter,
Antitrust, hmm… Not sure I see any precedent for those concerns on the web. Google’s AdSense ad network, for example, is huge and generates billions of dollar across thousands of sites. And links on the web are as about as open a standard as you can get — nothing to stop anyone from competing.
Wire Service Guy,
I’m not suggesting that a newswire based on links is a substitute for original reporting. It’s about the distribution of that original reporting. Distribution is what generated the newspaper profit margins that paid for reporting. Doesn’t it make sense that a new, web-native distribution paradigm could yield a new economic model that could pay for original reporting?
Google’s billions come from having perfected search as a content distribution model on the web. Why couldn’t all the traditional news brands — which are still very strong as brand — band together to do something similar? The key is they can’t do it by themselves.
As for wire services, I think it’s important to distinguish their original reporting from their content distribution model. I agree that the original reporting by wire service journalists is still hugely valuable. I think it’s the newswire distribution model that needs to be reinvented for the web. The wires are already doing this themselves by distributing their content through Google and Yahoo (very lucrative deals, I imagine). So that wire content is available on the web where newspapers can simply link to it along with all the other original reporting published on the web.
Everyone who thinks that online ads don’t have much money-making potential for news orgs: check out Paul Bradshaw’s excellent ideas for how ad sales reps and their managers could be doing their jobs differently — and much better.
The dirty little secret in the news biz is that most news orgs are terrible — if not downright backwards — about how they price, sell, and position online ads.
- Amy Gahran
While Crosscut.com has a lot of original content, it also features “The Clicker” pretty prominently on the home page: “The latest from news outlets and blogs around the Northwest and beyond, chosen by Crosscut editors.” Worth a look.
Awesome piece Scott. Totally lays out the value proposition of Publish2
Linking is an editorial service - and in an age with an abundance of information, it’s the “new” wire service.
That’s why/how Huffpost is going local.
Scott:
I was seeing antitrust concerns in your suggestion that “One way they can increase their economic leverage is by banding together to create a network. On the web, the most successful publishing economics have been achieved by companies that can harness “network effects” — Google is the archetype.”
I took that as your suggesting that newspapers could share a centralized advertising system like Google’s, which, yes, I think would bring antitrust scrutiny in the same way JOAs do. If that’s not what you meant — if you were referring just to exchanging content links — I don’t see how that addresses the economic issues I’m talking about.
Again, what I’m really looking for is hard numbers — or at least a comprehensive analysis — showing how much money a web newswire could make, and when. I’m sure you’ve seen the distressing new numbers at Mutter’s site (http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2008/09/newspaper-sales-fall-record-3b-in-6-mos.html) That’s the challenge I’m interested in seeing solved.
Amy, I’m familiar with Bradshaw’s paper and, while I think some of his ideas are very sound (such as the need to give sales people incentives to sell online ads and engaging small businesses) I find other parts irrelevant (news sites aren’t search sites; there are lessons to be learned from search sites, but it’s not the same model, because people don’t use the sites the same ways).
Linking is great, and newspapers should do more of it. But how does it deal with the fundamental issue facing newspapers: that they are losing print revenue much, much faster than they are gaining online revenue (which, as Mutter notes, actually declined last quarter)? What is the mechanism by which linking creates revenue, how much does it create, and when?
Right now, many newspapers see creating links offsite as giving people a reason to go elsewhere. I can see the arguments against that belief. But I think newspapers are much more likely to embrace the model you’re suggesting if they see hard numbers showing it helps them survive, not just helps them make readers happy.
It’s a smart business model to make customers happy. But first you have to make sure your business survives. Otherwise you can’t keep your customers happy for very long.
Working Reporter,
Don’t most successful business models require making your customers happy? Perhaps separating the business model from what customers want is a big part of the problem that newspapers are facing.
Inventing new business models requires trying new approaches. To say that nobody should try a new approach until it’s proven that it will work for everybody — that’s a bit a of Catch 22, isn’t it?
You got to start somewhere.
Newspapers have two choices — trying new things to find out whether they work, or continuing to do what they’ve always done. I can’t tell you for sure what the numbers will like for the former. But we all know what the numbers look like for the latter.
Scott:
I agree that newspapers need to try new approaches and new business models. But any responsible business should consider the realistic financial rewards of a new action before adopting that course. Newspapers have failed to do so, and that’s part of the problem.
I’m talking here about due diligence — market research, profit-loss analysis, supply and demand. McDonald’s doesn’t introduce a new burger until it’s confident that there is a demand for it and that people are willing to pay for it more than it costs to produce. There’s no reason newspapers can’t show similar business acumen. But they haven’t so far.
Newspapers failed to seriously explore charging for content in the 90s. The newspapers that did eventually try charging for content did so in a haphazard way that was independent of the industry’s overall model and therefore doomed to failure. They failed to explore, early on, the kind of networking you now encourage; early efforts collapsed under petty competitive instincts. Now free content is expected, making exploring that option far more difficult. Those who float the idea are usually shouted down by other insisting that paid content will never work. It’s never really been tried.
Newspapers didn’t do the due diligence of trying in advance to establish whether any of those ideas would pay the bills. Instead, they assumed the traditional model of free news supported by ads would translate online. So far, it hasn’t.
More recently, in the Web 2.0 era, newspapers have once again seized on a convenient model and assumed it would work for them: the model used by blogs and aggregators. They loaded up reporters and photographers with digital tools they barely knew how to use and ordered them to create video, blogs and podcasts without abandoning their existing duties. They loaded the results on their Web sites without even having a means of attaching ads to their new multimedia content, and without knowing if there was even a demand for such content. In many cases, there wasn’t, and the huge audience required to make the model work failed to materialize.
They didn’t do the due diligence of trying in advance to establish whether any of those ideas would work. Instead, newspapers assumed the blog/aggregator model of converting eyeballs to dollars would translate to newspapers. So far, it hasn’t.
We’re left, today, with newspapers in full-blown panic mode, slashing staffs and grasping for solutions. Some old-fashioned critics are suggesting they unring the bell, lock away the content, or even revert to a print-only model. Meanwhile, new media consultants are urging them to do even more blogs, podcasts, links and multimedia, without — still — demonstrating that those tools can generate revenue fast enough to save the business.
I want newspapers to stop lurching from savior to savior, only to discover a mirage. It’s time for the industry — for anybody who cares about journalism — to stop bickering about who is at fault, to cease throwing around untested ideas and to grapple hard with the underlying issue: News, on any level, takes money to produce. Online ads, in the current model, are not producing enough money to produce that news — and if current trends continue, will not do so for decades. News is an important component of a democratic society. We need to find a solution.
I want to see everything put back on the table — charging for news, abandoning the Web, creating free online journalism on a Wiki platform, radically reinventing news as a network of tiny, hyperlocal operations with shared ad networks, supporting the design of open source “iTunes for news” software, partnering with ISPs to become exclusive premium channels a la Showtime, everything. I want to see all options explored, but not adopted until the business and intellectual leaders of the industry scrutinize the possibilities with three simple questions in mind:
Can this idea help pay to create news? How much will it pay? And when?
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