Comments on: SA editors mull the future of newspapers in a digital world

By: Tim Gregory

Tim Gregory — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 10:58:40 +0000

Excellent post, and a great balanced view of the continuum of opinion online regarding the future of newspapers.
From the perspectives given in this article, I would say that Ray Hartley really ‘gets it’ in a more profound way than his contemporaries interviewed in this piece, and his climbing online traffic is testament to this.
I work for a Media24 company and attended a conference recently where we were addressed by the head of the World Association of Newspapers.
I was shocked and appalled at the directions in which they were thinking.
http://tim-gregory.com/2009/07/shaping-the-future-of-the-newspaper/

Ray’s thinking is way more progressive than most other news publishers.

By: Let's get sentimental: the readers deserve it | Grubstreet

Let's get sentimental: the readers deserve it | Grubstreet — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 08:00:19 +0000

[...] This was followed by an interview with former Financial Mail journalist Duncan McLeod on his new website, TechCentral. [...]

By: halicon

halicon — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 08:09:58 +0000

I would rather seek sincerity in news, where obviously old and archaic methods of delivering news are fast falling short of today’s emotional requirements. I don’t want to tell my friend to buy the newspaper over MSN but rather send him a link.

Also daily newspapers work off sensationalism and looking at certain daily publications in South Africa whom I lost all respect for during the Mbeki-Zuma struggle should reconsider where exactly their professionalism lays.

Also when online newspapers defeat ctrl-c ctrl-v and me emailing bought for content to 20 friends for free?

By: Alan

Alan — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 05:59:53 +0000

herewith an essay written in 2008 by Clay Shirky:

Back in 1993, the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain began investigating piracy of Dave Barry’s popular column, which was published by the Miami Herald and syndicated widely. In the course of tracking down the sources of unlicensed distribution, they found many things, including the copying of his column to alt.fan.dave_barry on usenet; a 2000-person strong mailing list also reading pirated versions; and a teenager in the Midwest who was doing some of the copying himself, because he loved Barry’s work so much he wanted everybody to be able to read it.
One of the people I was hanging around with online back then was Gordy Thompson, who managed internet services at the New York Times. I remember Thompson saying something to the effect of “When a 14 year old kid can blow up your business in his spare time, not because he hates you but because he loves you, then you got a problem.” I think about that conversation a lot these days.
The problem newspapers face isn’t that they didn’t see the internet coming. They not only saw it miles off, they figured out early on that they needed a plan to deal with it, and during the early 90s they came up with not just one plan but several. One was to partner with companies like America Online, a fast-growing subscription service that was less chaotic than the open internet. Another plan was to educate the public about the behaviors required of them by copyright law. New payment models such as micropayments were proposed. Alternatively, they could pursue the profit margins enjoyed by radio and TV, if they became purely ad-supported. Still another plan was to convince tech firms to make their hardware and software less capable of sharing, or to partner with the businesses running data networks to achieve the same goal. Then there was the nuclear option: sue copyright infringers directly, making an example of them.

Continue reading:

http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking-the-unthinkable/

By: donovan

donovan — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 10:15:21 +0000

Killing the messenger, Mr Bruce?

By: Paul Jacobson

Paul Jacobson — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 13:01:28 +0000

Great piece as usual Duncan! I believe that news publishers need to distinguish between physical newspapers and journalism. I don’t see paper newspapers having much of a future although I do believe in supporting quality journalism. There is a lot of free news content online but that is frequently free to readers by virtue of an innovative revenue model.

Your revenue model isn’t novel but it seems to be working at the end result is that I can access great content on your site, essentially for free. Ideally I would like to pick up my news in my feed reader via full feeds, not truncated feeds, and that may involve some sort of subscription. I am ok with that. I already pay to receive two magazines and I’d pay to receive great news content on a variety of flexible devices. RSS may be just the right tool for that.

By: David Bullard

David Bullard — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 06:42:54 +0000

What is likely to happen is this. The “rainmaker” writers will be in great demand and a bidding war will start to attract them to new sites. Meanwhile, it will be easy to measure who is read and who is not and, therefore, who attracts the advertising. This means that individuals will have to be rewarded properly (unlike newspapers). I now write for three websites and they all pay substantially more than newspapers are prepared to pay for the same copy. One column is sponsored by Outsurance and the other two are in negotiation. If a deal is signed I will share substantially in the revenue. That makes sound busines sense to me. Last week’s column on Moneyweb got 90 comments and the top rating is over 300 comments. So the message is….buy the best writers, attract more readers and attract more advertising. Simple innit?

By: Sue Grant

Sue Grant — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 12:55:47 +0000

Great piece and really nice comments. I am really enjoying your new venture Duncan.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 09:58:18 +0000

The issue to worry about is not newspapers but the quality of the content. Nobody reads junk, free or not, it just happens that the Internet news sites count a hit as a read whether or not the surfer read the article or clicked away. If Web news sites they ever start charging they will quickly be in the same position as newspapers because they churn out crap.

By: Peter Bruce

Peter Bruce — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 09:40:27 +0000

Nice piece Duncan. I guess one extra thought now I read it, is that obviously newspapers cannot survive into infinity. The difficulty is when commentators try to predict exactly when the last newspaper drops onto the last driveway. I think Alec H is being optimistic (pessimistic perhaps) when he talks about “When the Boston Globe closes, when the LA Times goes into receivership…”. I’ll bet you both survive this financial crisis. In fact, once the recession passes, so will debates about the end of newspapers. There will be an end but let’s agree we don’t know what it looks like yet or what the cause will be.

By: justinspratt

justinspratt — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 09:04:22 +0000

brilliant, brilliant stuff.

By: matthewbuckland.com » Oh Peter! You’re just being sentimental

matthewbuckland.com » Oh Peter! You’re just being sentimental — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 08:51:23 +0000

[...] If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my blog and get updates either via email or via RSS. Thanks for visiting!Duncan McCleod, former associate editor of the Financial Mail, recently burst onto the scene with a great new addition to my regular daily reads. On his new Techcentral site there have been two articles that caught my attention — the first being a fiery piece by former Vodacom CEO Allan Knott-Craig, and now an interview with respected local newspaper editors: SA editors mull the future of newspapers in a digital world. [...]

By: Editor

Editor — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 06:24:21 +0000

Time pressures meant I kept my interviews to these three editors for now, Mark. But this is such a fascinating subject that I’ll be doing further articles on it into the future. And the editors of the Daily Sun and Sowetan are top of the list for my next interviews — perhaps drilling down into more detail with them on the impact of cellphones…

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 05:57:48 +0000

Very interesting article. I don’t think people will pay for online news – publishers must find new business models. No one pays for Radio/TV news. Why should we pay for online news? By the way, why only talk to these three editors? What about the Daily Sun, Beeld or the Sowetan. These are some of the main papers around. Their decision would have a way bigger impact compared to the small M&G and Business Day. Elitist anyone? If the M&G only sells 50k copies a week, the wouldn’t ever get enough people online to pay for their product.

By: Dwayne Bailey

Dwayne Bailey — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 05:25:36 +0000

I hope FNB is counting the costs of all their staff saying, “Just catching up on the news, boss” as they update their facebook account! I still like the idea of taking a newspaper, sitting down and reading. I think getting your staff to do that is a great way to wind down and de-stress.

But maybe FNB is just trying to save some money so that they can reduce service fees to their clients Hahahahaha…. yeah right.

I grew up with newspapers so I guess it’s a learnt behaviour (In fact I still have this strange behaviour that I never read anything on the front page). I read a lot of news online and it made me think of my online behaviour:

1) If its not free I don’t read it
2) If I need to register for free I don’t read it
3) If I want to read it and its not free I try to search for the information and get it for free
4) I block all adds, so I don’t even give back to the news outlet.

I was going to say I was sorry about pint 4 but then realised I’m not since I hate getting 20 adds on a page that rotate and flash at me, be gone. I turned off my add blocking for IOL to test what its like, I turned blocking right back on again as it was such a horrible experience with all those adds.

At some stage it will simply be unprofitable to print as my guess is that those costs will keep going up. With devices like the Kindle and such maybe people can tie down content. Or perhaps newpapers that charge 10c for a article instead of R16 for a newspaper might find me willing to pay for locked down content simply because the price is so low. But the next generation won’t care for 10c is my guess unless you deliver on a platform where they already pay, i.e. the cellphone.