Out With A Bang

[Apologies, long delayed.... blame NCFC and their post-relegation blood-letting...]

I’m actually half of a mind not to go down the pay-for-our-content path. The natural conclusion seems to stare everyone so squarely in the face that it doesn’t seem worth the debate.

But debate there is… prompted largely by the great man himself, Rupert Murdoch.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/may/07/rupert-murdoch-charging-websites

Treading a tiny toe in these waters does, at least, give me an excuse to post a link through to a formidable performance by Ms Huffington in front of the Senate in which she, too, starts to knock holes in the ‘walled garden’ theory of newspaper salvation.

It’s worth a watch.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-tv/arianna-testifies-about-t_b_198385.html

‘The future of journalism is not dependent on the future of newspapers…’ was just one of Arianna’s better lines.

Ditto: ‘What won’t work and what can’t work is to pretend that the last 15 years hasn’t happened; that we are still operating in the old content economy as opposed to what Jeff Jarvis has descrbed as the new link economy…

‘… that the survival of the industry will be found by protecting content behind walled gardens; we’ve seen that movie and consumers have given it lousy reviews…’

And there’s been more since… it is the talk of this media town of ours. And was in February when Ms Kiss went round the same block with a City analyst tucked up her sleeve…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/feb/23/newspapers-online-content

.. whose line was very, very interesting.

‘Publishers in the UK trying to establish a payment model have to remember the BBC. For things people really want, like sport, the BBC does better than newspapers…’

Because for the nerdy, niche-y, share-tipping, bond-dealing, deal-revealing news that the WSJ and FT specialise in, there is a subscription model. Fine.

But is there one for either the New York Times or The Times? Given that both now seemingly being intent on finding one.

But what, actually, remains of any value therein after you strip away the kind of insider business news that the WSJ and the FT deliver to their subscription audience?

Well – and I’m biased – but for me, the next, great eye-ball puller is sport. As Jemima’s man pointed out, that’s what the public wants. Sport.

But if Mr Murdoch starts to, say, charge for Martin Samuel’s comment piece in The Times, is he worth 99p per month of my time and money more than, say, a Paul Hayward or a Henry Winter? Would I step into a walled garden with only our Martin for company? Nah.

Because I can get a similar level of good, sporting commentary for free elsewhere. On the BBC, for example. Who are, of course, never in a month of Sundays going to be allowed to put up walls around their garden.

But the real danger in this debate is to think that all online content is worthless; that no-one will ever be able to charge anyone for anything on the web.

And that’s wrong. Because it depends who you are charging…

Does the BBC do better, on-line written content re Norwich City Football Club than me on www.myfootballwriter.com/norwichcity? No.

Does the BBC do better, on-line written content re Norwich City Football Club than Archant, via say www.pinkun.com? No.

They just do it quicker than Archant. The MailBox opens for work on a Sunday, for example.

Does VirginMedia Sport do better written NCFC coverage than either MFW or Archant? No. What about AOL Sport? No.

These higher news and information portals – the pan-national outlets that both the NYTimes and The Times aspire to be – have chinks in their armour. They don’t have content gatherers on the ground supplying them with the volume and the depth of coverage that their worldwide audience might demand.

Or at least read.

But, down at the bottom of the pond, some of us do. We’ve got some big, rich, eye-ball sticky content that neither PA nor AP nor Reuters offer. Cos we’re the grunts on the ground; not the aggregating and regurgitating drones overhead.

Because it’s the grunts, not the drones, that get beyond the gate-keeper and get something worth telling…

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=53

Which, even now, even in 2009, is still worth something.

Good, exclusive content still has value – particularly if its highly-networked and neatly-packaged; if it’s uniformly-delivered and consistently-written.

Then it has value.

And the person paying for that value is not the consumer, it is the provider… it is the pan-national news and sports platform who needs quality, provincially-sourced content to distinguish it ahead of the rest… to make it stand out from the rest of the PA, AP, Reuters-fed pack.

It gives them something different; it adds depth, colour and greater engagement to their own, enfeebled offerings as they take their own axe to provincial correspondents and their copy.

The trick is to get yourself booked onto a platform that’s sufficiently elegant and smooth enough to provide a conveyor-belt of quality content that your rivals don’t have access to.

It’s long tails of sticky content; for which there remains both a demand and a market.

But the market you’re ’selling’ to is the not the consumer; they can get their ‘news’ everywhere.

Who you’re selling your content to is the higher provider, the bigger platforms who want to ensure that you, the consumer, can’t get that quality, flow and breadth of written sports news from everywhere.

Just them.

And its the scarcity of that service that then commands the value for the on-line advertiser.

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