Out With A Bang

This took us down a familiar path…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2009/aug/25/charging-for-content

As, in fairness, did the original…

http://www.allmediascotland.com/spike/4493/24082009/Brian_McNair_Writes_About_Charging_for_Journalism

It’s all interesting stuff; and coming at a highly-charged time, too, as Rupert Murdoch leads the head-long charge towards building walled garden after walled garden around his content and TrinityMirror swallow hard and contemplate taking The Birmingham Post to a weekly and the Mail to a morning.

All of which prompts Mr McNair to ponder just what, exactly, would he pay for online, journalistically?

And the answer is opinions. Ideally the opinions of the opinionated. For that he would pay.

‘Those who buy one newspaper, but find an article on another’s online site which appeals, may well pay a small fee for the privilege – ten pence for a piece by Julie Burchill doesn’t seem excessive to me, and if 100,000 people agree, there’s £10,000 right away.

‘“It’s the brand, stupid”, I wrote last time. The brand is embodied in people, in journalists. Finding ways to get online users to pay for the individual personalities, obsessions and styles of journalists is the challenge…’

Of course, that all then begs the question as to whether Julie Burchill would be happy enough to be sat in someone else’s walled garden; or for the price of a WordPress blog and a micro-payment widget, might not be slightly tempted to build her own walls around www.juliebirchill.co.uk and work that ‘brand’ for her own benefit.

Just as much as JeremyClarkson, RobertPeston, etc, etc… might likewise feel that they now have sufficient traction audience and repute-wise to do their own thing; to be not be enslaved to to someone else’s website as much as we were all once enslaved to someone else’s print press.

We now, after all, enjoy access to both the means of production and the means of distribution… it’s back to journalism as a cottage industry; of just needing an elegant means of selling our hand-woven wares…

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=30

The problem with Brian’s piece is that he doesn’t stray onto ‘my’ patch… sport. That’s not something that pops up on his radar…

‘Well, there are three kinds of journalistic writing which I’d happily pay to read in my newspapers: news, or reportage; investigation and analysis, including features which may be about events not currently in the news now; and commentary…

Tis is a shame; because what drives his decision-making purchasing-wise are the very staples of sports journalism… of giving insight, commentary, analysis, colour and depth to a standard body of facts.

Be they the team, the score and, indeed, the manager’s post-match quotes; when so much of our ‘news’ is homogenised – particularly via that growing content production dairy that is the BBC – people might pay for branded sports content. From an individual writer/brand.

Might, I hasten to add. Might.

If it is about a specific, passionate niche.. ie one particular football club.

But I suspect not. We’ve dropped the subscription element to www.myfootballwriter.com/norwichcity. It’s a b*gger to get right; there’s a hard core that might, just, pay. But finding an ‘exclusive’ in a message-board age when you are always running up against the club’s own official site is hard, hard work.

Even after 16 years.

What isn’t so hard is to drive traffic and eye-balls through the site on the back of your ‘brand’; as Mr Shirky has long maintained, half the trick is giving people nothing more demanding than a ‘good read’. And I’m not alone in working this particular, passionate and provincial seam.

And that’s key, too. Provincial. Cos I’m not sure either a PaulHayward.com or a MartinSamuel.org would work; where’s the niche, boys? Expert sports writers, to be sure. Expert Norwich City football writers..? Mmm.

And I’m not alone. I can think of three dozen boys in this country who can plough that same furrow; with or without the Birmingham Evening/Morning Mail.

And I can think of at least two in the US; so out of what once was the Rocky Mountain News comes ‘Write Em Cowboy’ and ‘Jack Of Diamonds’; just as – in the dim and distant past – www.rickwaghorn.co.uk came out of the Norwich Evening News…

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=298

But even then, I’m not sure subscription would work… syndication, however, might.

Provided the network was there; the elegance; the breadth of coverage that stretched from one end of a division to another… be it an NFL Conference or a Football League One.

And with the network, the elegance, the breadth… comes both local and national advertising. And if the content is weaved off a cottage kitchen table and the costs are pared down to match, that’s when the numbers start to stack.

Which is why I now keep a wary eye on the BBC; because the more they start to churn out the written word for a living, the more they are squashing our hopes of selling our wares for our own living; that function should be out-sourced; to independent content production houses… one dark, satanic mill at Fort Dunlop should not be replaced by another at the MailBox.

The gig – and the reward – should go to www.colintattum.co.uk Or www.chrislepkowski.net Or a www.chrislakey.org. A www.daveprentice.net … there are dozens ‘on the circuit’. Not just those caught in the spotlight of the Mail/Post this afternoon.

They are the ‘brands’ that deserve their chance in this brave new world of ours; not the BBC.

The BBC doesn’t do ‘individual personalities, obsessions and styles of journalists’ ; the punters, however, do.�