Pay for news online – why not?

As the Rocky Mountain News turned out the lights today, my online-news buddy Karla and I sat down for coffee to hash through the questions of “are newspapers dead” and “what becomes of news as we know it.”

To me, there are open questions (and opportunities) in the hand wringing over newspapers’ demise. For one thing there’s the assumption that newspapers must be saved; and then there’s the lingering popular notion that people won’t pay for the news. I’d argue that a reasonable portion of the public now willingly pays for its daily dose of news, and there’s no reason to expect that to change – it’s just the business model that is changing (delivery, payment methods, content options, etc.), however painfully and publicly. Does it spell the end for more newspapers as we know them? Yes, especially some of the big ones that are leveraged to the hilt and face heavy local competition for readers/viewers and advertising. (As an Advertising Age article pointed out the other day, the vast majority of newspapers in the U.S. are actually doing fine, with annual profits on this or that side of 10%.)

Back in 1998, when I entered the online-news arena to launch BostonHerald.com, one of our earliest debates was whether to charge for the content. We investigated many scenarios to accomplish this, but in the end the publisher decided that since the pioneers of online newspapering (N.Y. Times, boston.com, and others) were giving their stuff away for free, there was no business logic in us to try charging for our version of the news. That decision was debated at papers around the world over the following year or two, and everyone came to the same conclusion. News had to be free and advertising alone would have to pay the bills – for better or, as it turns out, for worse.

Skip ahead to today and you have Google, Yahoo!, and many other online sources swiping and scraping the news from newspapers and TV outlets, posting it for free, and making money off the advertising they sell with it. And you have the Monsters and the craigslists of the online world chomping away at available local advertising. The result? The Rocky Mountain News shuts down because it can’t make as much money as it needs to spend. And the Rocky wasn’t alone as it teetered on the edge of closure.

Flash forward to the near future and you have a scenario where many newspapers across the country will have lost the fight against free news online and no ad support. As they close, the pool of credible news-gathering operations shrinks and an ugly question of the industry’s role as government and business watchdog looms. (That’s a topic for another day, though it has bearing here, for sure.) In this future scenario, the news audience is left mostly with second-rate news outlets and self-appointed voices of varying quality being the primary sources of “information” on everything from politics to sports to the arts. That may amount to a lot of info, but it’s not necessarily good info. (Cue the Wikipedia debate here.)

While greater minds than mine have considered this, here is where I think news will go in the not-too-distant future: One or more online “news stores” will open that sell high-quality news content in whatever format or frequency you want it and in whatever size allotments you like. Just like online supermarkets today, you can shop the shelves on a daily basis or subscribe to a regular bundle in a “my news” model. Love everything about the Red Sox and nothing else? Load up your cart. Want a variety pack – say, the Herald for Sox stats, the Boston Globe for City Hall coverage, the Brookline TAB for hometown info, the Times of London for theater reviews, the Jerusalem Post for updates on the war, etc. – then pick and choose the news you care about. When you’re ready to check out or subscribe, you pay a few cents or more for each item and your news package is delivered when, when, and how you want it.

At the core of this scheme are two key points: someone with legit credentials (and a paycheck) has to generate the news you buy, and the branding and promotion of those content sources will become critical to the equation. Just as you go to the supermarket now and choose between several different brands of butter or frozen pizza based on your taste and quality preferences, so too will you be able to visit the open market of paid online news and make your choices based on the merits of different suppliers. And while you might no longer subscribe to just one newspaper, you will reward your preferred news sources with your micropayments and thus contribute to the health and vibrancy of the market-driven news industry of the 21st century.

Will this system work? How long will it take to get there? I can’t say. Certainly many hurdles need to be overcome, not the least of which is getting a critical mass of news sources to demand payment for their content (watch Newsday for pending developments on this front), and creating the entity or entities that operate the news stores. And then there’s the reality that today’s news audience is technologically fragmented – from print-product holdouts to those with the geekiest gizmos. But these are details to be resolved over time.

So today, while I shed a tear for the Rocky, I see opportunity and exciting possibilities on the horizon. Getting there won’t be easy, or a smooth ride. But get there we will.

Eleuthera Diaries

NO NEWS -- The world’s troubles are playing themselves out in several notable ways here on Eleuthera. The sun may be shining, but there are dark clouds here as well.

The Nassau Guardian daily newspaper has cut off delivery of the daily paper to Eleuthera, and presumably other of the Out Islands. In announcing the change, the paper acknowledged that the cost of ferrying small batches of papers to these not-so-remote outposts had become prohibitive. The news is available online, they said, repeating an all-to-common alternative.

This raises a number of troubling issues. For any of the Out Islands, they are now yet one more step removed from the parliamentary processes that govern them. With limited television and radio news as well, the daily paper was a way for locals to stay on top of the news of their nation that could impact their lives and livelihoods.

On a much more local scale, the demise of the newspaper amounts to a further isolation for one elderly Eleutheran woman who’s “job” it was to deliver the papers to her friends and neighbors. At age 80+, you’d think perhaps she would have easier things to do than drive around with the paper. But it connected her and, by extension, others in the community who relied upon her arrival each day. Certainly the word-of-mouth news system will remain intact, as it has been for generations. But that’s no substitute for the real thing.

What alternative do the locals have for information. Well, radio and TV will provide some of that – though most people get their TV by satellite, which means they don’t necessarily get Nassau TV. As for a local newspaper, there is the Eleutheran, the local monthly newspaper… though it is spotty. Word at The Market grocery story is the February edition has yet to be published and the month is half gone.

As for the Internet – well, yes, the Guardian and the Eleutheran are available online. But online is off limits to many people on this island. And so they rely on word of mouth – or they remain not-necessarily blissfully ignorant.


LOCAL OPPORTUNITY – One bit of silver lining in the dark clouds of the world’s economic meltdown that is touching this island is there is suddenly an opportunity to strike a new balance between natives and foreigners.

While Eleuthera has been here for centuries, it didn’t arrive on the modern map until the 1950s and ‘60s, when American capitalists like Juan Tripp of TWA, Arthur Vining Davis (Alcoa Aluminum), several Boston financiers, and others “discovered” it and planted the flag of development in the pursuit of luxury living. These men built a resort, golf course, and airstrip on the southern end of the island, and then invited their rich friend to come on down. That spurred a bit of a boom that, despite ups and down, has proceeded fairly smoothly for years. Club Med came (and was later washed out by a hurricane). British royals including Lord Mountbatten and Princess Diana parked their beach umbrellas on Windemere Island, the same beach I am overlooking as I write this. Then came Lucy Baines Johnson… and more recently, Mariah Carey. The story is the same in other parts of this island, notably Harbour Island at the far northern tip of Eleuthera, which is like the Hamptons of the Bahamas. Basically, wealth brought the wealthy, and that paved the way for more average types who could afford the million-dollar price of home ownership or the more reasonable rates at various small resorts.

This set up the familiar push/pull of prime real estate that once was the native environment of locals who, on their own, hadn’t the means to do more than eke out a living from the sea or the land, but who were graced with easy access to the natural resources and considered them available for all to share. But as developers bought up oceanside parcels, sliced them into houselots, and put up fences and gates, slowly the locals have been losing their access to the water. Pristine stretches of beach that once were gathering spots for family Sunday picnics or Friday-night fish fries have been taken off the local map. And where once a small cinderblock house at waters edge meant an easy place to put in your skiff to catch some fresh fish or dive for lobster, today that location is impossible to find, and the locals are being forced inland and out of sight.

But as the world credit markets have ground to a halt, so has nearly all development on this island. Talk with a local and the list of developments that are stalled slips easily off their tongue – Cotton Bay, Sky Beach, a Kerry-Heinz condotel here on Windemere (yes, apparently THAT Kerry-Heinz).

That means two things for the locals. Most critical is the obvious loss of income. No new houses means no construction jobs. And what work there is now pays a lot less. Carpenters and masons who, a year ago, earned $150 a day, now have to settle for $90, if they can get work at all.

But the upside here is that land values are falling too and so, for anyone with some money to invest, it is a good time to buy.

How does that help the locals? Beyond the obvious wishful thinking of “when this crisis turns around” there is another opportunity at hand. A local consortium is pulling together investors to purchase land and build affordable, good-quality homes for locals in an entrepreneurial-cum-economic-development model. Because the price of construction will be lower (by 30 or 40 percent), people who have solid jobs and good credit will have a chance to get out of the rental market and make an investment in a more stable future for themselves. The construction jobs will put food on local tables and money into local stores. And, along the way, some of the land being targeted for this project could end up reestablishing locals’ connection and access to the beach.

ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT – Shaun Ingraham is a man of many hats and abilities. Member of a long-upstanding Eleutheran family, Shaun is like so many others who live in rural or isolated locales – in a word, he’s industrious. Success for him is measured in a variety of ways. In more or less equal parts, Shaun is a carpenter, construction foreman, property manager, social entrepreneur, civic activist, fundraiser… A natural networker and an actual minister, he is the sort of fellow that inspires others to help out in whatever way they can because they believe in him as much as they believe in his cause(s).

Shaun has his hands on many projects. He is overseeing the comings and goings of tourists at a few rental villas. He is managing the construction of a new vacation home. He is nearing completion on a year-plus community project to fund, build, equip, and man a new fire and rescue station for South Eleuthera, complete with modern fire truck, ambulance, and all the latest disaster equipment, for which he has done fund raising both on and off island. (Through a typical networking connection, he was paired up with New York City firefighters, who have helped provide equipment and training.) He is the linchpin in a program to bring nursing students and faculty from his alma mater, Emery University, to the island to run medical clinics and to provide on-site certification training for local nurses so they don’t have to leave the island to advance their careers. He is spearheading the aforementioned low-cost home building project. And when duty calls, he does disaster relief work in several third-world countries through the World Council of Churches and Habitat for Humanity and continues to work on fund raising activities for these efforts.

He’s a pretty well-rounded guy, who in conversation can switch from his appreciation for smart TV shows like Boston Legal and Big Love, his appreciation for Facebook, to his insights on his current reading matter – Team of Rivals, the book about Lincoln’s cabinet choices that Barack Obama credits with part of his political strategy. He can go from amusing exchanges about the weather (usually the benefits of his versus yours) to savvy views on the global business and cultural impact of Diageo, the international beverage conglomerate, or Chinese labor policies. He is a unique combination of local and worldly – his love for his home island is genuine, he views of it far beyond parochial, his horizon somewhat infinite.

BEACH READING – Having left John Adams at home (too heavy to lug on the plane) and having ripped through a Stone Barrington detective novel, I’ve picked up Herman Wouk’s classic Don’t Stop the Carnival for a second read. It’s an entertaining story, and in these uncertain times, gives one a good reason to think about career and life trajectories. There could be worse things than packing up, moving to a tropical island, and running a beach hotel and bar…