In his New York Times column complaining about Huffington Post and the new economics of content competition, I think David Carr makes two understandable but fundamentally fallacious assumptions about news and media: that the value in journalism is in content and that making content must be work. Because that's the way it used to be.
In their op-ed the next day in the New York Times complaining about copyright losing its hardness, Scott Turow, Paul Aiken, and James Shapiro extend the error to entertainment, assuming that content is entertainment and content is what content makers make.
Not necessarily.
Pull back to view the true value of these things: information, knowledge, enlightenment, amusement, experience, engagement. Content can be and has been a vessel to deliver their worth. But it is not the only one. That is the lesson of the internet -- indeed, of Huffington Post itself. I have argued that the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, the BBC, and other media should have but never would have started the Huffington Post because they, like the gentlemen above, still see content as value in itself and further believe that content is their own franchise (granted by their control of the means of production and distribution). So the benefits of content cannot come from others -- bloggers, commenters, citizens, amateurs -- as new wine in new casks. They instead want to put their old wine in the new skins (witness The Daily).
That is why old media people are missing new opportunities. It's not about the content (stupid). It's about the value.
We can be informed now by many means: by our neighbors telling us what they know, enabled to do so by the net, at a marginal cost of zero, doing so not because it is work (and work must be paid) but because this is what neighbors do for each other. We can be entertained by many means: by clever people making songs and shows and telling stories because they love doing so and because they are compensated in attention rather than royalties (and that attention may well lead to money when they can finally detour around the gauntlet of old media's closed ways to find audiences on their own).
Why do people write on Huffington Post? Because they can. Because they give a shit. Because they like the attention and conversation. Because they couldn't before. Why do they sing their songs on YouTube? Same reasons.
Is there still a role for the journalist, the professional, the artist in this? Perhaps. I think so. That's why I am teaching journalism school. But I'm not necessarily teaching them to make content. That is now only one of many, many ways to meet the goals of adding value to information, time, and society. Some of my entrepreneurial journalism students are, for example, creating businesses that will use data to impart information; they will add value by gathering and analyzing it and making it possible for you to find the intersecting points that matter to you. Other of my students are creating platforms for you to get more value out of your own data. Others are creating platforms for people to connect around interests and make and find their own value. Others are finding new ways to sustain reporting and the making of content. They are all valid if they bring value.
If you concentrate on the value, not the form -- content -- then the possibilities explode.
Turow et al shut down the idea that opening up information can yield greater value that protecting it. Sharers are...
... abetted by a handful of law professors and other experts who have made careers of fashioning counterintuitive arguments holding that copyright impedes creativity and progress. Their theory is that if we severely weaken copyright protections, innovation will truly flourish. It's a seductive thought, but it ignores centuries of scientific and technological progress based on the principle that a creative person should have some assurance of being rewarded for his innovative work.
No, I'd say rather that there are more ways to open up value. If Wikipedia were copyrighted by a publisher, it never would have become Wikipedia because it would be owned, not shared. We now have a new means to collect value rather than merely to own content.
I remember at the DLD conference a few years ago when Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales defended himself from a ninja-knife-wielding Jason Calacanis over paying people to contribute to online resources. Calacanis, like Carr, called it work. Wales instead likened it to a pickup game of basketball. Viewed from a distance, basketball certainly looks like work; they sweat enough. So why don't we demand that they be paid? Why aren't we lamenting the loss of a marketplace for their value? Because that's not where the value is. It's in the fun.
Granted, what's done with that fun -- how it is exploited -- is relevant. If I start charging admission to watch you play basketball -- it is great content, after all -- or if I put sponsors' banners on the court -- you did draw an audience -- you might want a cut. If you can get it -- if you can show that there aren't a million competitors for court time in an open marketplace -- great! But what if the gate or the ads merely support my ability to provide free court time to you or free uniforms to your town-team kids? The economics are not necessarily sweat = work = product = pay. Neither is it any longer true that owning the expensive means of production and distribution assures a return on that investment. There are other expressions of value.
The truth is that Huffington Post recognizes the value of professionalism. I've lately recalled Arianna Huffington talking with Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger in London a few years ago when he -- with native irony, in front of his reporters -- asked why the hell she was hiring reporters, who are a pain in the ass to manage and expensive to boot. Because their stories get more traffic, she said. They add value. That's why she has editors and curators. They add value. That's why she has technologists who make the Huffington Post such a social experience. They enable value.
That's what I'm teaching my entrepreneurial students: add value. And be efficient: take advantage of the free exchange that is already happening -- the free and open platforms and the information that now easily passes on them. Then put your precious resources where you most add value. Do that before you even think of extracting value. There are the new economics of what we used to think of as content.
Follow Jeff Jarvis on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jeffjarvis
Writing is a skill and a craft that requires both time and practice. If I'm not compensated for my investment in my professional development and expertise, I and other writers will be forced to consider alternative careers. I'm 57, so there's no reason that I couldn't continue to work for another 15-20 years.
The description of your “New Business Models for News” at CUNY reads like a management or a sales/marketing course:
“Understand the key forces in a media business today: product, audience, revenue, marketing, distribution, globalization, costs and risks.”
That’s a business model for widgets (or other mass-produced goods); but it’s not “journalism” – new or old – in any sense of the word.
The old media business model has lots of problems. But as far as news/journalism, the answer isn’t mass-commoditization of that content via linkbaiting or SEO. That only creates a closed system, a circular loop, whereby the same content is continually circulated, websites each take a crack at “curating” it and linking back to each other. Regurgitating the same content with “curation” and SEO to drive traffic is like a game of telephone: the real meaning eventually disappears or is distorted.
In the process of creating new models for digital media, you don’t get to redefine what journalism is or assign arbitrary value to content based on variables like page views, uniques, or CPC/CPM costs.
Part 1
Regarding recent debates over paid content vs UGC (user-generated content): while the industry struggles to monetize the entire internet (and yes, digital companies need to profit if they’re to succeed), your claim that “it’s not about the content” deserves serious scrutiny.
It’s “not about content” if your only concern is profit, and quality journalism be damned. The rise of content farms churning out low-quality pieces which are then “curated” by editors is one example. As is the prolific practice of search engine optimization. True, both strategies allowed sites to aggregate and grow, but let’s don’t pretend that content hasn’t suffered, or that actual journalism holds no inherent “value” save what advertisers are willing to pay.
Entertainment fluff commands higher ad prices and drives more traffic than political articles – we all know this. But Kim Kardashian’s ass isn’t comparable to coverage of the revolution in Egypt. Most entertainment content doesn’t equal the value of news/political content - unless you’re a corporation only chasing ad revenue.
One is cherished merely by the fact of very limited camaraderie, the latter celebrated by the fact that those are professional players who get PAID to do what they do for a LIVING...thus giving their all, lifting the quality of their game to the best possible, and as a result, providing a much more highly entertaining game.
I don't see any old civilian risking their lives out in the war zone to report, or squeezing into the middle of Egyptian demonstrations. Those people putting it all out there are the old content-makers, the professional journalists. Why? Because they are paid to do so.
Really? Because I actually see a great deal of that.
Supply and demand. Unlimited expansion of content production reduces the margins.
Some agree with Jeff Jarvis in his argument about form (content) being subservient to value-function (enjoyment, usefulness, exchangeability, etc.). Others contend that the theory is just marketing bullshit and an excuse for not paying us. I must confess that to me it's all a bit confusing and some of it I agree with and some of it I don't. But there is one thing that I know to be absolutely true:
About ten or so years ago, the publsihing world did something strange to the number that they had been paying me to write about business and technology -- they moved the decimal point over on me, and a dollar became a dime. I do confess that I miss that lost ninety cents. I would really like to get it back.
That's my heartfelt appeal to the word (or content or value or whatever) gods -- please move that decimal point back over just one place. That's not too much to ask for, is it?
The wife, the mortgage, the kids, the tired old car...we'd all appreciate it. Thank you in advance. Yours truly, all the best and regards, sincerely.
Which by the way, should provide enough empirical evidence for anyone that content has very little to do with value.