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Jul 17 2009, 11:35 am by Bob Cohn

Information May Want to be Free. But Not Journalism.

My first real job in journalism was writing about labor unions and workplace issues. Brushing up, I read a book called The Teamsters that was then about six years old. It was an amazing history of power, greed, and crime at the most powerful union in the world, back when unions had real power. The author, a Yale Law school grad named Steve Brill, published the book when he was just 29. He went on to an impressive career as a media entrepreneur: founder of American Lawyer magazine, founder of Court TV, founder of Brill's Content, columnist for Newsweek. Now he's got a plan to make journalism pay, and it begins online. Hint: "The Atlantic is idiotic to give its stuff away for free." (Note to my old boss and friend Chris Anderson: He's not so enamored of the Free concept.)

Watch my interview with Brill from the Aspen Ideas Festival after the jump.

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Comments (18)

Diversity

The cost of information is the friction which makes all our markets so horribly imperfect. Obviously, the cost of information should be minimized. If information becomes free, doing economics right becomes a lot easier (maybe even possible).

The cost of bad information is a damn sight higher. Sad that: "there is no such thing as good free information" is as true as "free banking means that the bank uses your money for free."

fidesratioque

I wouldn't pay for any mainstream media outlets online. There are always other sources out there for people who are energetic enough to look, even foreign ones. And since I'm fluent in three languages I've got plenty of options.

Sorry, U.S. newspapers. You'll have to find a way to survive on advertising.

Hugo Pottisch

Wait, will commenters get paid too?

Chris Anderson

Great interview, Bob, but what he's describing--10% paid, 90% free--is precisely the "Freemium" model that my book is about. Not sure why he bangs on about why free is so terrible when his own prescription is 90% free.

gordon crovitz (Replying to: Chris Anderson)

Chris:

Greetings. Absolutely--the approach we at Journalism Online have urged many of our affiliate publishers to consider is indeed the freemium strategy. Thanks for popularizing the term. As my fellow co-founder Steve Brill suggested, we think that many strong brands will be able to convert 10% or so of their monthly unique audience--the most active, engaged 10%--to paying subscribers. The technology platform we're building will help publishers determine who among their users are likely subscribers and the kinds of access that will justify what level of pricing. Cheers, Gordon Crovitz

tibby

So glad I happened upon this story, I have been wanting to comment on this subject.

I have been been on the Internet since 1995 - 10 to 15 hours a day. For the first time in 20 yrs I have started buying newspapers. You get to a point where you miss good stories, you get sick of blurbs and searching for good content. Consolidate. People will come back to the newspapers. I'll happen, hang in there!

San Diego Web Design

Very interesting insider interview.

I like the concept 'get a little teaser for free, but if you want more, pay for it', and I know many people that really do pay for good online subscriptions from various fields. And there is lots of garbage online, so if you are really interested in something, you do value good content and are ok with paying for it.

I myself canceled my paper newspaper a couple months ago, and now I read it online (paid subscription). It's so much more convenient. You can keep interesting articles and read them later. You can go back to the archive after month and search for a keyword. And, this is very important to me, it's so much more environmental friendly.

Also, I'm sure newspapers these days can earn a lot with Google Adsense and other ads on their websites. The news landscape is changing, but this is not the end to journalism.

kayembee

I think the world is a better place with good content like that of the Atlantic freely available to everyone. I don't have any good solutions as to how to keep that happening, but I think charging subscription fees is a bad idea. There are plenty of people writing online that are just looking for fame and not fortune (in the short term, anyways) e.g. on the Huffington Post, and a lot of people would just settle for more diffuse content rather than paying for it online. Or, they will get "creative" and find ways of downloading it for free. So, I don't think one can easily get rid of the free competition.

By charging subscription fees, a site risks losing its audience and becoming less relevant. I know I personally stopped reading Salon when they started charging, and did not come back until years after they discontinued charging, as I just didn't know that they had stopped. I think many people are not comfortable right now with paying for stuff online -- at least I don't make impulse buys online, each purchase is more considered than those made in real life. I don't think journalistic media is the place to change people's feelings here. I'm far more inclined to make charitable donations to sites I like than to pay for a subscription, cuz that's the kind of down-with-the-man person I am, I suppose :). I also don't think iTunes and the digital music industry has it all figured out, as Brill suggests. The majority of kids I know just stream their music online at Pandora or NPR sites.

Brill's whole business plan annoys me, as his company wants to make all its profits serving as kind of an anti-middleman, making it harder for people to get information. It adds nothing positive to the world. The online world is wonderful right now. People like me can and would otherwise live without access to quality journalism. It is great to have the opportunity to (at least temporarily) have my world views broadened and enlightened through sites like the Atlantic.

Marty

Newspapers and magazines used to have the keys to the method of distribution -- they owned the presses. We weren't actually paying for the journalism, we were paying for the paper. The journalism was the carrot they used to get us to buy the paper.

But on the internet the method of distribution is hardware, software and network connections. The carrot is Wikipedia, blogs, email, twitter and the rest.

fidesratioque (Replying to: Marty)

Yep. Plenty of people turning out great content for free.

If a bunch of freelancers can turn out a superb operating system (Linux) for free, an awesome encyclopedia (Wikipedia), etc., etc., why not a great free newspaper?

Virginia Postrel

kayembee's comment points toward an important distinction: between creating value, which is happening all over the place online, and capturing it, which is increasingly difficult. The real standard of living increases when lots of valuable content is available for free, but producers have to cover their costs from some other source of revenue. That means a lot more nonprofits relying on patrons (and most opinion magazines have been formal or de facto nonprofits forever) and a lot more writers with trust funds, rich spouses, tenured academic posts, and other sources of income: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/books/review/Postrel-t.html

In other words, the world is a better place but we middle-class journalists are screwed.

Virginia Postrel

BTW, those Correspondents on TheAtlantic.com all write for free.

fidesratioque (Replying to: Virginia Postrel)

That's awesome.

fidesratioque

There are plenty of aspiring writers, too. Most would be happy to work for free. I write a quarterly column for an international legal journal for free. I view this as an honor rather than a job.

The idea that journalists do 'work' that should be paid for in money and that newspapers get to pick who has the privilege of getting this work is way too hierarchical for me.

Peter Salmon

This debate is one I find intensely interesting. I read many 'free' sites yet at the same time there are some I pay for, because they offer me additional value. For example the ability to search their complete archives where the publication focuses on specialist areas.

Part of the problem is that I think many seeking to apply the 'paywall' do not in fact have a sufficiently differentiated offering with a perception of value in the market.

In the last few days we have began to see some of this debate break out into the NZ Blogosphere with the publisher of our main business paper, which is only a weekly, announce that he intends to put 20% of his content behind a 'paywall'. Yet many would think that his content does not justify that, at the same time he launched into a tirade against bloggers and aggregators. Yet in some respects is not a newspaper an aggregator.

Some background for anyone interested can be found here http://bit.ly/1atZdU

Bob Cohn

It should be clear from the video that Steve Brill wasn't specifically talking about Chris Anderson's new book, Free, when he criticized the Atlantic's web site and others for giving away content for free. On the other hand, my interview with Steve occurred the same week Chris's book came out, and it was getting a lot of attention, so it's fair to assume, as I did, that he was implicitly talking about Chris and the arguments espoused in the book.

Of course, one of those arguments, as Chris notes above, is the "freemium model" of giving away most of your content and charging premium rates for a small portion -- high enough rates to make back the cost of the giveaways. To the extent that Steve is talking about freemium, as he does in the video, and that Chris is an advocate of freemium, as is clear from the book, perhaps my flip assertion that Steve is "not so enamored" of Chris's theories is, well, a bit flip. Even so, I have the distinct feeling that while they seem to agree on freemium, there's plenty in the book that Steve would disagree with, and plenty in Steve's new business model that Chris would reject.

Crazyfinger

There is already a glut of content. One option is to get out of the content-producing business, if you are not making money. Why not think about that?

In that New York Times review of the "Free" book, there is this sentence that captures it all: "The book is certainly good advertising. That says, as I would like to interpret it, there is no more a distinction between the main product - the primary content - and the associated advertisements that serve to promote the main product. Once upon a time advertisements were used to promote the main product. But with so much content - who knows it is high quality stuff or not, things are changing so rapidly the benchmark for quality itself is slippery - this distinction seem to disappear. Instead, "the book is certainly good advertising," for the book producer. To what end? To produce more "content" that is nothing but more advertising for the book producer. Not sure where this example leads to...but, like I was saying, why not get out of this business and find something else to do?

Regards, Crazyfinger

Peter Salmon (Replying to: Crazyfinger)

Your point is well made.

Somewhere I read the rather cynical but apt comment, which unfortunately I cannot find, that making the book available for Free creates a buzz, which ultimately forms a market for the book in hard copy and more speaking engagements for Mr Anderson.

Thus others agree with Crazyfinger