Why the Rise of Paywalls Will Save Journalism
Journalism is arguably in one of the most fragile states since Gutenberg’s advent of the printing press almost 600 years ago. The industry, as well as the consumption of it, are in a state of rapid, systemic-level change. Much of that change is downward change. Revenue (with the strange exception of cable news) and career prospects are the most obvious downward trends. The harder to quantify ones are things like general respect and understanding of the job. To provide some context, a bit about my professional background.
I have over 10 years of experience working for various media organizations. I started out working in a control room on live local newscasts. Then I worked in post-production editing shows for the Food Network and a few other national TV networks. I spent the last five years of my career working at a local PBS station before leaving to start my own production company this summer. These years in the PBS world are where my work sometimes consisted of what may loosely be called video journalism, or documentary.
However, I am the first to admit I have only worked on a few projects that would hold up to the standards of in-depth reporting and extensive fact-finding that reporters in print journalism are held to all the time. I spent a lot more time contributing to the thousands of “inspirational” stories that dominated Facebook for the last several years. While it is definitely good to spread positivity, these stories are a far stretch from real journalism. However, they are the kinds of perfectly shareable stories that collectively racked up millions of views if that means anything.
I won’t spend much time talking about what everyone knows — the major factors that have driven the colossal changes in media. I am of course referring to the rise of social media and the simultaneously plummeting degree of training and equipment required to create media. These changes were largely brought on by huge advances in affordable consumer video tech, platforms like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and, well, smartphones.
Let’s get back to that fantastic title at the top of the article! (Gotta pat ourselves on the back once in a while, right?) I believe there is a major reason to be optimistic about the future of journalism and the titanic shift into whom media organizations are beholden.
I studied journalism and communications for six years in college. Out of all the lectures I sat through and all the books I read, one of the things that always stayed with me is just how important and central to journalism advertising was (and is, for now!). For me, the oddest example of this is when I learned how newspaper editors (at least historically) laid out newspapers. They would gather all the paid ads they had and arrange them on the pages. This was the first step in creating the newspaper you and I would ultimately read. AFTER that was done the space remaining, where the actual news would go, was referred to as “the news hole”.
This speaks volumes about the importance of advertising in news creation. Yes, newspapers of course also collect revenue from the physical circulation of papers that are not-so-slowly dwindling today. However, that revenue is a relatively small percent of the total, estimated to be 20 percent or less. So what’s my point? Let’s look at the storied publication and behemoth of modern digital journalism, The New York Times.
We’ll start with the facts — right from the horse’s mouth. The New York Times reported $709 million in digital revenue in 2018. The portion of that digital revenue that came from the subscriptions (paywalls) themselves, meaning not from ads, was $400 million. That’s over 56% — an incredibly different business model.
So maybe you’re asking why this is important? The New York Times is now hugely more incentivized to care about what you and I think about it than perhaps any time in its almost 170-year existence.
Regular Janes and Joes like you and me now have a chance to have as much influence in a media organizations future as Amazon, General Motors, Wal-Mart, or any large corporation that contributes to the billions spent in advertising each year (much of it now going not to news organizations but Facebook and Google).
Let’s say you read a story online by a news organization you pay for and you don’t like it enough to cancel your subscription — that’s now a big deal for their bottom line. This is a major sign that the long-awaited renaissance that journalism desperately needs is on the horizon.
I hope that this major shift who funds media organizations will usher in a new era of bold journalism. That it will bring about the kind of strong, fact-based scrutiny we need in a time where the world has seen its first trillion-dollar corporations. In a time when we’re seeing the power to shape young minds manifest itself in a million different ways across social media platforms. In a time when the world stands at a very real crossroads between supporting freedom of speech and balancing corporate and authoritarian influence.
In short, you’ve never had more power to vote with your journalism dollar. Use it.
