Dear Globe & Mail, (a letter to the newspaper industry)
Dear Globe & Mail,
I really like you. I don’t have a subscription to you because I’m normally too busy to read you every day, but I often buy a copy of you from the newstand in my building because it is simply easier (and more environmentally friendly) to share you with my coworkers, or to simply read you online. As I’ve written before, one of my favorite Saturday activities is to buy your weekend edition and read through it over a coffee.
Despite what everyone says, you also seem to be pretty popular with the fickle blogging crowd. I mean, as of today you had a almost 60,000 blog reactions on Technorati, and over 200,000 inbound links according to Google blog search. You’re still a primary source of information for these people.
If the recent debacle of CNN erroneously reporting that Steve Jobs was in poor health is anything to go by, citizen journalism is as flawed as Andrew Keen says it is. As a traditional media force, people still respect you.
But then you go and do something like trying to charge me $4.95 for a newspaper article that I’ve already paid for and read, and this hurts me (telling me that this content will only be available for 30 days only adds insult to injury).
Your greatest asset is the thousands and thousands of pages of information and news stories that you have in your archives. People want to view this content, and just as they have endured advertising in your print publications, they’ll endure the same kind of advertising on your website.
I understand your thinking when it comes to locking up this content behind a pay wall: it is valuable information, so people will pay to see it.
The problem is, you are only half-right. It is valuable information, but only when it is easy to access. In the age of Google, people will quickly move on and find the information elsewhere, somewhere where it easier to get at.
I know that you have a lot of people working for you (like Christie Blatchford) who don’t understand very much about computers, the state of media today or even life in the 21st century. But that doesn’t mean you have to end up as a failure. It just means that you have to pay attention to the people that want to help you.
Change your ways, Globe & Mail. or we’re through, and it won’t be because I’ll stop reading you. It will be because everyone stops reading you, and you’ll cease to exist.
Love,
Parker
PS: You should probably forward this letter to some of your other traditional media friends. I know that they are going through some tough times as well.
October 9th, 2008 at 9:54 am
I thought that they gave up this model a while ago. They’re still doing it? I ran into a guy I know who works there the other day and he told me they were getting rid of it because it is so counterproductive.
October 9th, 2008 at 10:01 am
Well put. If the New York Times and Wall Street Journal don’t charge for their archived articles why on earth would I fork over a penny to the Globe and Mail? They need to find other ways to attract revenue so they can keep up with the times. Loved the sentence about Ms. Blatchford.
October 9th, 2008 at 11:41 am
Actually both the NYT and WSJ used this model, but dropped it.
October 9th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
While I agree that having to pay that much for a single article is ridiculous, I’m not sure using Andrew Keen as a thought reference is your best choice here
In his book, Cult of the Amateur, he likens bloggers to infinite monkeys - eventually we’ll churn out a masterpiece - can’t say I agree with that, or much of anything else he writes in the text, however thought provoking it may be.
-Kerri
October 9th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
Hey gang - thanks for your comments.
I remember hearing as well that the NYT and WSJ dropped the paywall model, and I’m sure it resulted in a greater number of pageviews for them (and the related advertising revenue).
Kerri - the reason i reference Andrew Keen here is because he seems to be largely critical of citizen journalism and the efforts of bloggers (despite the fact that he himself has a blog…).
Cheers,
-Parker
October 9th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
I had this exact thing happen to me today. I was looking for a link to an article that I had already snipped out of the paper. I wanted to share it on Twitter (it’s the kind of thing people like to do).
Not for a second did I consider paying $4.95 for it. I don’t know why I would pay more for one article than I would pay for the whole paper (even on the weekend). What am I missing here?
October 10th, 2008 at 7:12 am
Not only have many papers gone ‘free’ online, they totally get the power of search traffic - they’re changing titles (etc.) for SEO reasons. The Globe has a lot to learn…
October 10th, 2008 at 11:39 am
This is also common practice at a lot of Australian newspapers which I used to do research for my Ph.D. Annoying to say the least…
October 14th, 2008 at 1:12 am
[...] most likely just gets people to look elsewhere, and diminishes ad revenue as well. Parker Mason has written an open letter to the Toronto Globe & Mail decrying its continued practice of charging $5 for access to a single archived article (for just 30 [...]
October 14th, 2008 at 1:15 am
[...] most likely just gets people to look elsewhere, and diminishes ad revenue as well. Parker Mason has written an open letter to the Toronto Globe & Mail decrying its continued practice of charging $5 for access to a single archived article (for just 30 [...]
October 14th, 2008 at 3:49 am
[...] most likely just gets people to look elsewhere, and diminishes ad revenue as well. Parker Mason has written an open letter to the Toronto Globe & Mail decrying its continued practice of charging $5 for access to a single archived article (for just 30 [...]
October 14th, 2008 at 4:54 am
Pretty sure they’re waiting to see whether teh Interweb thing catches on.
October 15th, 2008 at 9:58 am
[...] whose ruling could potentially throw the Fatherland back into ze digital stoneage. And you thought having to pay for newspaper articles on the web was a bad [...]
October 21st, 2008 at 9:46 am
[...] what is the difference between the print publications (those, not including the Globe and Mail, that realize they can still have a profitable business by giving away content for free) and the [...]