Time Magazine’s former managing editor, Walter Isaacson wrote a heroic hail-mary cover story a week or two ago (here) endorsing a system of micro payments for journalism in an attempt to bridge that fast approaching cliff.

I like a couple of the ideas he brings up, namely clicking buttons to make payments instead of entering credit card information and charging micro payments to access day, week, month, year and lifetime subscriptions to media organizations.

Eventually there will be a brilliant solution hammered out (hammered as in media organizations are going to endure a serious ass whupping first). This quote says it best: “driving revenue while trying to re-invent a business model is a difficult thing to do, it’s like changing the tires on a moving truck.” Found that in the comments of a foliomag.com story.

I have several thoughts to contribute:

1. The monopoly is over. The cost of delivering advertising to to consumers along with words and pictures is now nearly zero. Advertisers paid whatever you told them to pay because the delivery method was expensive and complicated. Nobody gives a rats ass if the billionaire owners go somewhere else. Turning journalism into a break even industry is perfectly fine with editors, writers and photographers. I could go on and on about the decisions that are made by owners that put advertising and attracting easy readers first. My reasons for not reading Time Magazine anymore is certainly tied to their attempts to attract more readers (to serve to advertisers) at the expense of the quality of the product.

2. The cost to deliver the exact same product electronically should be a fraction of the printed version (I’m thinking 1/10th). If you’d like to buy me a computer (or other hand held delivery device) and pay my ISP bill each month then I’ll agree to the normal cost. Otherwise pass the savings I just gave you back to me.

3. Get off your high fucking horse. You’re no longer in control of the flow of information. Your sources have blogs, your readers have tweets and stories don’t end once you hit the publish button. Participation is mandatory.

There’s plenty of good punditry to read as well:

By Mark Fitzgerald, Editor and Publisher:

… Time itself looks more in need of saving than even newspapers that symbolize the industry’s troubles, like the Chicago Tribune or Chicago Sun-Times, both of which dropped pretty hefty packages on my doorstep Sunday.

By E&P’s count Time sold all of 14 pages of ads in the slim issue. Alan Jacobson of Brass Tacks Design puts it nicely at his blog with a trenchant piece that is far more worthy to be at the center of industry debate than Isaacson’s sort of obvious observations: “But its ‘Modest Proposal’ is delivered in a form that is remarkably modest itself — its 56 pages are barely thick enough to shim a coffee table, let alone support an entire industry.”

Bill Wyman on Hitsville:

But papers didn’t make money from subscriptions; the price basically covered the cost of getting multi-pounds of newsprint delivered to your door at 5 a.m.

… the more I think about it, the biggest problem the press has is that the evaporation of advertising has meant that the news it publishes has to stand on its own two feet.

Sure, back in the day there was some foreign news, some local reporting, some great reporters and editors sprinkled across the country. But let’s face it, most newspapers sucked in all sorts of ways, and one of the main ways was opting toward blandness and timidity wherever possible, as as not to offend the older folks subscribing to the papers.

Mark Hamilton on Notes From A Teacher:

So this is where my belief that micropayments offer at least a partial solution to the who-will-pay-for-the-news question runs up against cold reality. If you accept my idea of the three stumbling blocks, we need to devise a system that (1) allows for single registration for everything, (2) opens up the pot to everyone creating media with potential value, and (3) puts the user in control of establishing the value.

Mike Masnick on Tech Dirt:

… a piece by James Warren in The Atlantic, which you would hope would be a bit more intellectual — but instead makes the same old errors. Warren seems to imply that investigative journalism can only be done by newspaper reporters — apparently not realizing that the investigative reporting he’s talking about is a very new concept, rather than true “traditional journalism.”

Michael Turro, In Plain Sight:

newspapers cannot be saved. They are big bloated, convoluted corporate anachronisms that derive their strength and power from an economic model of news information that is in rapid and steep decline. These corporate entities were built and grew powerful in an age when new information was remote, precious, scarce, capital.

That age is over.

Today fresh information is immediate, cheap, abundant, available. News happens and is distributed in real time – worldwide – before lumbering outfits like the New York Times even have a chance to think up a catchy headline.

Finally Walter Isaacson on The Daily Show:

And finally the World Press Photo of the Year Award goes to Anthony Suau from a series of pictures he shot under contract for Time Magazine but they refused to print (story on PDN).

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14 Comments

  1. @ Rob

    2. The cost to deliver the exact same product electronically should be a fraction of the printed version (I’m thinking 1/10th). If you’d like to buy me a computer (or other hand held delivery device) and pay my ISP bill each month then I’ll agree to the normal cost. Otherwise pass the savings I just gave you back to me.

    Or, they can charge the same amount and actually get photographers a bit closer to what they should be paid. But of course, that will not happen.

    Debra Weiss

    • @Debra Weiss,
      Or, the owners can draw modest salaries and plow profits back into contributor fees.

      Several people could live a year off the cost of one page of advertising in one issue Time.

      • @A Photo Editor,

        Define modest. And why should the owners take a modest salary. They’re the one taking the risks. The reason to be an owner and not an employee is so that you don’t have to suffer a concussion when hitting that ceiling.

        Debra Weiss

        • @Debra Weiss,
          Yeah I actually don’t care what salary they take because magazines and newspapers are no longer million and billion dollar profit centers. The owners incompetence is ruining the media industry. I could care less if Time Magazine goes out of business.

          Back in the day the owner was also the editor. I’m fine if we go back to that.

      • @A Photo Editor,

        I am not aware of any publisher or owner who have shared the wealth and I don’t expect them to do so in the future. Why should they? Regardless of the cost to them for delivery or whatever information delivery model they embrace, media is still controlled by publicly traded companies. And the bottom line with these folks is shareholder satisfaction.

  2. Great post and I couldn’t agree more.

    A few days ago I was meeting with a client and telling her about a project I was working on and considering pitching to a couple of magazines. She went to her coffee table, grabbed one of the magazines and displayed her frustration at how it didn’t have anything of substance, but rather a lot of fluff. These brilliant publishers just don’t get it. People want to read and see something interesting!

    I’m excited at the possibilities of new media. We’re all going to suffer some severe blows, but I sincerely believe that there’s a great future ahead once we figure out how to do it right.

    Why have micro payments? What about the option that has made billions for TV? Give away a demanding product and let the advertisers pay for it.

    • Speaking of interesting stories…

      Every time i pick up an issue of National Geographic, i find the most interesting and untold stories. Besides the stories i’ve heard of them not paying much to photographers, does anyone know how it’s fairing in all this?

  3. Excellent insight and commentary. Times, they are a changin’.

    Now do we remain in denial of what is happening all around us, and, as a result, concede control of our futures to entities that just have the bottom line as their motivation, or do we face up to these rapidly evolving and proliferating issues, and tackle them collectively, meaningfully, and, hopefully, in a way that retains some level of control for our profession?

  4. The internet is not as pervasive as some would like to imagine. Sure, all of us can catch the news that way, but lower income people cannot. So if the valuable or best articles appear on line, how can someone not on-line read them?

    I think one of the biggest negative impacts upon newspapers has been Craigslist.com. Why place ads in a paper, when you can run them for free on-line? Owning a portal like Craigslist, any media company could crush their competition, which might be why Craigslist is not privately owned.

    In the end, I don’t see newspapers being saved, with a few exceptions. Rather than regional or city papers, we may be left with national papers. Fewer choices, but few enough to survive. This is what I see as a real solution.

    The biggest losers in all of this are journalists and photojournalists. They will be left with a profession that is no longer sustainable. As soon as the veterans die or retire, there will be no incentive for new professionals to begin. That leaves news images to citizen journalism.

    Freedom of the Press can involve risks. Who will take those risks, when there is no gain, nor compensation?

  5. IMHO, Micropayments are a dream. They will very probably not work on the World Wide Web.

    As you might remember, WWW was originally established for the free exchange of information between universities and scientists. The principle of “publishing to the WWW is free” was always at the very heart of the WWW, it is a basic expectation, the core rule. In my opinion, no company can change that.

    I think the problem is, that WWW was not created with the business opportunities in mind. It was not planned originally that WWW should provide commercial publishing. Of course, some people came with the way of monetization content published on the WWW, but not in the area of mainstream news. Maybe it is even not possible.

  6. A great post and some very accurate comments too. Two questions:

    Do people thing that the same thing happening to newspapers will eventually happen to monthly niche title magazines?
    And what is to happen to photo editors when social media becomes the editor?

    As a photographer, editors have grteat value, becuase they’re not emothionally attached to your work and won’t pick the shot you worked hardest to get, just becuase of that. Is society to become the world’s photo editor?

  7. In 1919, Charlie Chaplin and a handful of other successful actors formed United Artists, as a result of wanting to have more control over actors’ salaries and creative decisions.

    At the time, Richard A. Rowland, head of Metro Pictures, is said to have observed, “The inmates are taking over the asylum.”

    Maybe it’s time that photographers take it upon themselves to take control, and revolutionize the way that images are distributed.

    • @jamie kripke,

      Commander, Good luck with that. Like herding squirrels, wearing sunglasses. With blinders on the sides of the glasses.


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