So do you enjoy getting your news off the Internet?
A lot of people do. After all, it’s immediate and almost unlimited in variety. And if you’re the sort who wants your information filtered through a specific ideological slant, you can find that as well.
But best of all, the vast majority of Internet news is free — free as the air. There’s no need to subscribe to a newspaper or pay for your information. It’s all there for the taking.
Do you ever wonder how this is possible? Somewhere along the line, all of this information costs money to gather, write and produce. How do you get it for nothing?
The answer is a bit complicated. But you may want to enjoy it while you can, because your free ride may soon come to an end.
Those who celebrate the supposedly rational workings of the free marketplace may want to examine the conduct of the banking and newspaper industries over the last decade or so. They offer remarkable examples of self-destructive behavior.
Those of us in the trenches, who put out a daily paper, questioned the idea of posting news for free on the Web when the concept first surfaced. How was a company supposed to make money when it gives away its product?
As it turned out, newspapers didn’t make money. They began to hemorrhage red ink. Virtually all of them have been forced to make dramatic staffing cuts, hurting their quality and content. Some have gone belly up.
If there is any bright spot in this, I suppose, it is that this debacle proves newspapers aren’t the communist-controlled propaganda sheets some of our critics claim we are. Stalin would have had the MBAs who cooked up these schemes taken out and shot.
Today, news organizations are trying to reverse the trend of putting the free information cart before the revenue horse. Internet-driven news is here to stay; now the task is to make money from it.
All of those ads you see on Internet news sites help, but not enough. In the end, other options must be explored.
Some of that took place last week, when the Federal Trade Commission hosted a workshop subtly titled, “How will journalism survive the Internet age?” Among the speakers was media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who blasted the idea of free news content on the Web. His flagship paper, The Wall Street Journal, charges for access.
Opposing Murdoch was Arianna Huffington, whose Web-based news site, The Huffington Post, is as liberal as Murdoch’s news organizations are conservative. Huffington argued that ad revenue will generate profit without charging readers. Part of her site’s success is based on the fact many of its contributors are volunteers who donate their services.
That reminds me of the old saying, you get what you pay for.
If the future of journalism depends on reporters who work for free, that’s a problem. Already, the Internet is loaded with news produced by special-interest organizations seeking to prop up preferred views or ideologies. It would be nice to think there are thousands of dedicated, honest and determined journalist out there willing to inform the public with no strings attached. But come on. Let’s get real.
It may come as a surprise to some people, but reporters have to eat once in a while. When it all shakes out, expect to begin paying for reliable Web-based news.
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