Caple on the PI’s close, future of coverage
DMZ · March 26, 2009 at 6:38 am · Filed Under Mariners
As posted a couple times in comments yesterday, and in which I’m quoted. Check it out.
It’s been weird not seeing Hickey articles pop up on my RSS subscriptions, which is in turn a little funny since that says a lot about why pro-paper people like me don’t subscribe.
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23 Responses to “Caple on the PI’s close, future of coverage”
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I appreciated Caple’s approach. He recognized that things like the daily featured game story had become almost irrelevant because most fans got the story well before the paper was published. I also appreciated his understanding of the costs involved with daily coverage of teams with 81 road games and his openness to the possibility that an economic model for bloggers to afford this was not impossible, if currently unforeseeable. A lot of print journalists and bloggers miss points like those.
I was a TV news reporter for 12 years, so I know how the news media works and how reporters think.
The fact of the matter is that most newspaper reporters (and TV reporters) have never had a “real job.” They have no clue how business runs, the idea of selling a product or service at a profit is a totally foreign concept to them. They’ve spent their adult lives sitting around writing stuff and having somebody hand them a check for it. “Nice work if you can get it!”
All this whining about “poor me, now I have to get a real job” is getting old.
The answer is simple: If you produce a product that people are willing to pay for, people will buy it and you will MAKE MONEY.
For example, I pay for memberships to RushLimbaugh.com and GlennBeck.com even though they have radio shows that I can listen to for free.
Why?
Because they provide information that I can’t get anywhere else. It’s worth it to me to pay for it.
If John Hickey really is such a great baseball writer that people would PAY to read his stuff, he should have no problem setting up a website and making a living at it. I will even volunteer to help him set up the site.
But if people are NOT willing to pay for his writing, then maybe it’s not as “valuable” as you think it is.
The free market works, if you sell a product or service that people want, you will make money. If you sell a product or service people don’t want (i.e. print newspaper), you go broke.
It’s simple economics. Supply and demand.
Unfortunately, most news people are economically illiterate. Belive me, I know, because I worked with them for many years.
Nobody has a “right” to sit around writing stuff and get paid for it. If it’s worthwhile, you can sell it. If it’s not, do something else to make money.
If enough people want something enough to pay a reasonable amount for it, then someone will figure out a way to produce and provide it.
There was a nice article in the Kitsap Sun this morning about the Mariner
Defense from the black artshitting coach. If the Kitsap paper can publish that sort of thing, I’d have to think someone could do it in Seattle. If not the Times, then someone else will fill in.If John Hickey really is such a great baseball writer that people would PAY to read his stuff, he should have no problem setting up a website and making a living at it.
Come on, it’s not nearly that simple. The select few that make money can do it because of massive exposure, which is not something anyone can manufacture, even a reporter. It’s like the music industry, where the bands that make money aren’t particularly better artists, they just have a lot of hype and a little bit improved production values. The examples of Limbaugh and Beck illustrate the same point (and that’s where we stop in terms of discussing politics here).
It must have been awful for SeasonTix to be mired in the swamp with the economically illiterate. I “belive” you, man.
But the examples of Limbaugh and Beck’s websites are laughably irrelevant. Those mokes have national networks pushing their internet content, which in any event, probably provides only a fraction of their income. I’m sure if you gave Hickey daily radio play across the nation, he makes a go at a website.
A daily newspaper is an aggregator of different types of content precisely because the business model for a local daily arts newspaper, a daily sports newspaper, a daily local events newspaper,etc. is not there. For all we know, the sport content does quite well in bringing eyes to the newspaper (it is commonly host to a great deal of advertising), but may not sustain the entire paper, which is the sum of its parts. I think Caple’s point is the correct one — this business model by which local print sports content is delivered daily is falling apart, with no obvious replacement on the horizon.
Come on, it’s not nearly that simple. The select few that make money can do it because of massive exposure, which is not something anyone can manufacture, even a reporter.
But it’s not exactly that complicated, either. I sub BP and ESPN Insider for baseball news. I would sub USSM in a heartbeat. My job: working on a subscription-based computer game. I know about subscriptions.
I won’t say it’s easy: you have to identify that saddle-point where subscription revenue from a smaller number of readers outweighs the ad revenue from a larger number of readers, and know how much you have to work on the site to keep on the right side of that equation. I’ve long thought USSM is on the cusp of being one of the premiere baseball sites on the web, enough to get folks to pay a nominal fee. I still think that.
Like SeasonTix, I’ve worked in television and radio for more than a decade.
I know a lot of newspaper writers here in Atlanta, and our local paper just laid off 1/3 of their staff (the second round). Everyone is scared, and I don’t blame them.
As much as I feel for my friends and colleagues, their management let them down.
Newspapers have always thought they were in the newspaper business. They’re not. They’re in the information business. How it gets to people isn’t important.
The Atlanta Journal Constitution, for example, is losing $1 million a week. I’m guessing the vast majority of that sunk cost is in actually printing and distributing the newspaper.
And what for? I get the paper daily. All the news in its pages is old. I read it for the opinion, some sports, some local and some lifestyle. The rest is irrevalent.
Papers are nibbling at the corners trying to stay solvent. Reducing the size….cutting staff….cutting circulation….little things like that. When what’s really needed is a radical change in how they deliver the news and post a profit. This can be done, using the Internet and new technologies (like the Kindle). But as it is with most people in the media biz, they’re too scared to make a radical change.
So, I guess we’ll have to wait for a bailout from the feds.
Something I’ve struggled with lately is where to look for local news. I’m torn between the local paper web sites versus the local TV station web sites. The papers tend to do a better job providing news, but the TV tends to be more current and refresh periodically during the day.
So once the papers go to web only, now they are up against local TV as well as national news and sports sites (the ESPN’s and CNN’s).
So I would agree that
just shutting down the printing presses isn’t enough.
The cusp, unfortunately, turns out to be none too comfortable or lucrative.
Has USSM ever considered testing a subscription system, similiar to what ESPN insider does?
You give some free teaser copy, then you have to pay to read the rest of the story.
That would be a good way to test how much “value” USSM actually provides to the readers.
I know I am ruffling some feathers here but the reason a lot of news media are losing money is nobody wants to buy what they are selling — actually “nobody” is too strong, but not enough are willing to pay them to maintain their current expense structure.
It really IS that simple … if you want to make money writing stuff, find an audience willing to pay for what you write and keep your costs in line so that you make more than you spend.
That’s how real businesses operate.
In the past, newspapers were a monopoly so they didn’t have to act like real businesses. If you wanted to buy a full page ad in the real estate classifieds, you had to pay their exhorbitant rates. You had no other choice.
Now, people have LOTS of choices for their source of information. Today, news media sources have to earn their keep, they can’t depend on their monopoly status to keep them in business.
If you can’t find enough people who care enough to pay for what you write, either quit doing it or do it as a hobby.
Don’t complain that there is not a viable business model. The business model works — people WILL pay for stuff they think has real value to them — it is the product that sucks.
The news media is the only business I know that constantly insults their customers. They think they are “stupid” for not buying what they are trying to sell, rather than trying to figure out what the customers ARE willing to pay for and giving it to them.
I think blogs are the future.
My daughter is going to the University of Missouri School of Journalism. They have a “convergence media” program that teaches students how to shoot video, do audio interviews, write for blogs, etc.
In other words, the days of specialized radio reporters, TV reporters, newspaper reporters are over.
In the future, reporters will be required to do everything and post it in real time on the Internet.
Geoff Baker at SeattleTimes.com is on the cutting edge of this trend.
I would say, first, that Dave and I are both generally opposed to any model that introduces a tier between some readers and others, for a variety of complicated reasons outside the scope of this discussion.
And, also… it’s really not that simple. It’s easy enough to say “it’s a hobby or a business, play ball or go home” or whatnot, but having existed in the wide grey expanse between that bromide and reality I’d just like to say that at best that vastly understates the complexity of the situation.
I adore USSM but I wouldn’t pay for daily access.
I think blogs are generally labors of love/stepping stones…kind of like online resumes…. Case in point-watch how Dave is building his “brand” as he presumably is trying to move toward a job in a FO somewhere.
The book blog has at least two authors working in the industry. Several other online sabermatricians have leveraged their free content into jobs in FO’s as well.
But as a money-making endeavor on it’s own merits? It’s tough to see how especially given the fierce competition for the attentions of readers.
Exactly DMZ. I’ve been a newspaper reporter for 15 years, since back when we all thought the big threat was cable television. The most viable newspapers right now are ones like mine, an 8,000 circulation weekly with only a 16,000 circulation daily 20 miles away as competition. We’re surviving (hurting, but surviving) because we provide local news, features and sports that people can’t get anywhere else. The ones hurting the most are the largest papers (New York Times included) because a lot of what they offer can be obtained from numerous sources (because they are big and/or national stories). It’s easy to say “move to the Web stupid, that’s the future.” But it’s not that simple. I’ve done some good work in my career but I’m something of a small fish. Yet even I’ve had my work hijacked/stolen/plagarized on the Web. AP sued one of those “headlines now” Web sites for doing just that, ripping off the headlines of the stories that it had spent good money having reporters cover. Newspapers, mine included, are moving more and more to the Web but we figure out a business model, that won’t help. Unless the Web site has an actual “brick and mortar” operation (Target.com, Safeway.com, etc.), exactly THREE have figured out how to make money:
1) Amazon.com
2) eBay.com
3) porn
I have been heavily involved in Internet Marketing for over 10 years.
There are lots of people that make a good living off paid membership sites, but most of those are in the “how to make money online category.”
So just to prove that I’m not here to thow stones, let me give you some examples of how you could monetize USSM:
1) Create an email list (you already have from the people who are registered to post comments). The more people on the email list the better, so you try to snag visitors to USSM with a free offer, such as “Get Dave’s Super Duper FREE Report about xxxx Just enter your email here.”
Once you have built up your email list, start sending out promotions on which you get paid an affiliate commission. For example, special Spring Training travel packages, special Mariner events, stuff baseball geeks want to buy, etc.
With a decent sized list and stuff people want to buy you could make a decent amount of money doing that. Sell anything that pays you a commission to a targeted audience that likes you and trusts you. That is a proven money-maker on the Internet.
2) Run banner ads and posts on USSM promoting the same stuff that you promote in your emails. More Sales = more commissions.
3) Create your own Mariners-related “info products” for sale … Downloadable e-books, CD’s, DVD’s, etc.
4) Work out special promotions with the M’s where you sell a block of tickets and get a piece of the action.
5) Set up special events like the USSM/LL landing event in January, but charge enough money to actually make a PROFIT.
That’s 5 money-making ideas and not one of them is based on the traditional news media profit method of charging for advertising on your website.
So you see, you CAN make money with this site if you really want to.
If you want to email me I’ll gladly help — for a piece of the action. 😉
Both eBay and porn are in trouble, though. eBay has been mucking around with its business model recently, changing terms, etc., because there aren’t a lot of barriers to entry in their market and a lot of the discretionary spending stuff they sell isn’t selling. Pay porn is getting hurt by free porn. Amazon has done a remarkable job of keeping their site fresh and providing customers with value, but the speed of innovation online requires them to keep on their toes as well.
Re some of Season Tix’s most recent comments, I believe Derek said just yesterday that the prices paid for many of these products on baseball-related sites were very low. That changes the hassle to proprietors/turnoff to readers to cash ratio significantly.
Case in point-watch how Dave is building his “brand†as he presumably is trying to move toward a job in a FO somewhere.
Just to clarify, I’m not trying to move towards a job in a front office. I’m quite happy as a blogger. I do this for fun. I have no agenda.
I totally have an agenda, though.
I want to be the Mariner Moose.
[nothing to see here, move along!]
Crap, Jeff, what did I tell you about too-broad hints?
I would also like to point out that sales for DMZ’s book were driven by this blog. I wouldn’t have discovered it otherwise, and it’s one of the few books I feel I paid much less than it was worth. I’m sure he’s getting screwed by the publishers, like every other artist, but there is a slight bit of economic compensation going on. It’s probably not enough, but I personally love the way the site has been handled.
I love the idea to keep everything free, keep advertising to a minimum…and do a reasonable amount of pimping of real products like the book and the WSJ articles. I’m not sure if you guys made money per-sale from other writing contributions, so I won’t mention them.
And I just want to say I’m involved in a business that is rapidly changing. One past source of revenue has vanished in a very short time. Another area is holding very strong. Yet another is just fading slowly.
It’s all photography. Dave was right to try to jump ship.
I wasn’t implying an agenda but rather a thoughtful career plan but I apologize for being presumptuous.
You can’t train for that…it has to come from the heart….you’re either born the Mariner Moose or you’re not….
They weren’t.