
Will Someone Please Invent iTunes for News? - robg
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/12/business/media/12carr.html?8dpc
======
GHFigs
No. Contrary to the RIAA party line, people did not stop paying for music when
it became easy to obtain for free. The industry was not "decimated" by file
sharing, they were _surprised_ and _pissed off_ by it. iTunes didn't succeed
because it convinced people to pay for music--it succeeded because it was the
nicest way to do so. It's not magic, it's not mystery, it's just building
something that doesn't suck. Old media companies still have trouble with that
concept. Exhibit A: "Already an NYTimes.com member? Log In Now"

Ugh. The punchline is the same TechCrunch "Apple Tablet" rumor that JUST WON'T
DIE. It's like the HN version of a Rickroll.

(edit: The Game)

------
danw
News and music are different. Chances are I'll hear a song somewhere, then buy
it and listen to it again and again.

A news article is usually read once then never re-read. How do I know if the
article is worth paying for without reading it? And why would I pay for it
after I've read it or heard the information?

------
brentr
I would be wiling to pay for news if the media produced pieces on things I
want to read: science, mathematics, computer programming. Until the media does
this on a consistent basis, I will use a tool like HN to weed out the fluff
prevalent in today's media and send me to free things.

~~~
mynameishere
Well, obviously, you would only buy things you were interested in.

~~~
brentr
Perhaps I did not make my point clear. The media produces little of substance.
The following, in my opinion, is not news: murder, abuse, or celebrities.
These topics, however, seem to be what most highly distributed "news" consist
of.

~~~
thehigherlife
i'll give you celebrity, but you aren't interested in what types of crimes are
happening in your area?

~~~
brentr
If there is a shooter in my area, yes. I do not care about a woman in Florida
who killed her daughter six months ago. I do not care about a child gone
missing in California or any other state. These events are tragic, but not
important to me.

EDIT: For clarification, if there is something I could do, then I would care.
Since I live in NW Ohio, crime that happens anyplace other than NW Ohio is not
important to me. There is nothing I can do about a crime that occurred outside
of my locality. When the national media reports on such topics, they are
simply sensationalizing a tragic event for their own self-interests. It
disgusts me. They view death and tragedy as a commodity to expend for the sake
of profits.

Take for instance this headline currently on CNN: A helicopter has crashed on
the campus of Texas A&M University, authorities say.

Is this tragic? Yes. Is this truly noteworthy as a national topic? No. Why
does this receive attention? Do you think that this was the only accident
today? This is a prime example of the sensationalization I mention. If you run
a search with Google News on "plane crash" several other crashes come up. They
are covered by the local stations. Why does an arbitrary helicopter crash in
Texas make the national news? Pure sensationalism.

Sorry I have edited so much, but this is a topic that infuriates me.

~~~
jbjohns
What do you mean by this (child gone missing)? You don't care about child
kidnappers even though you could potentially see the child and alert someone?

I can be pretty cold myself from time to time, but if that's what you mean
that's pretty heartless.

~~~
electromagnetic
I'm sorry, I'm in Canada and I have to suffer the crap that is American news,
it even gets on the god damn news here. I even got news of several of the
numerous school shootings on public news back in the UK. I'm sorry, but
American kids shooting up American schools, isn't the concern of either a
British or Canadian.

Okay, 90% of child kidnapping directly involves someone in the family - first
thing the police should do, hunt down everyone in the family haul them in and
tell them it's a crime to leave the state without court permission. Then
you've only got 1 out of 10 cases where the suspect isn't already in your
custody! Those cases, I'll watch on the news; I don't care when some hillbilly
family starts kidnapping each others kids.

~~~
brentr
Thank you for your POV. Even though you are not in the US, it's nice to read
the thoughts of someone else who shares this opinion. Perhaps if enough people
shared this view and let it be known, the national news might report on
something of substance.

~~~
Prrometheus
Old media companies will probably die before they change. Then new ones will
take their place. Sometimes change must occur through economic selection.

~~~
electromagnetic
Agreed, look at the New York Times. It's currently on the verge of collapse
and it's finally starting to realize this isn't the 1930's anymore and the web
isn't just another place for people to read your newspaper. It appears they're
beginning to get the point that it's the 21st century and you can do pretty
much anything online.

It's a shame it's taken the New York Times to get to the brink of destruction,
but I believe almost every newspaper company is going to get to that point
before they realize they need to change... just I think most won't adapt fast
enough.

------
harpastum
The issue I have with this article is the fundamental difference between the
way the record companies and newspaper companies went about offering their
data online in the first place.

The record companies have always charged for their music; getting free music
has always been theft.

Newspaper websites (excluding the WSJ) have always been free.

The comparison to the two would only be valid if the record companies had
offered music for free at first, then wanted to start charging.

The newspaper organizations have set up a business model that simply doesn't
work: they have established the value of a news article to be free. That's
nearly impossible to change ex post facto.

The only chance I see of this changing is if some of the major players drop
out, making a real shortage of good news stories. That might inflate their
value enough that they could start charging effectively.

~~~
michaelneale
>The record companies have always charged for their music; getting free music
has always been theft.

But everyone forgets about radio. Disturbingly this gives record companies
more ammo to shut down internet radio (which annoys me as its the only radio I
listen to now - and I am happy for it to have ads in it).

------
DaniFong
I'd rather have Pandora for news.

~~~
brandnewlow
Cool as that would be (and hello there, we corresponded a year ago on an
alumni list), that's besides the point. Pandora for news wouldn't help out the
newspapers as long as the stories themselves are still free and surrounded by
add-blocked ads.

~~~
DaniFong
Hi there again,

I'm less concerned about the newspapers than the journalists. Pandora probably
won't help the music labels, in the long run, but it seems like it helps the
artists, who gain listeners from communities that might not otherwise.

------
jgilliam
It's called Kindle

~~~
justindz
I get your point, but as a counterpoint let me mention that I did not pay
hundreds of dollars up front for my copy of iTunes. Nor can I purchase
individual articles, columnists, etc. at a fraction of the cost of a
subscription to the whole paper (because I don't give a hot fudge about
Sports, Entertainment, Style, etc.).

~~~
acgourley
Many people paid hundreds of dollars for their iPod.

~~~
ConradHex
I use itunes and don't own an ipod. I burn CDs with it to use in my car.

That isn't an option with kindle.

------
stcredzero
How can investigative journalism support itself on the web?

How does Drudge make money? (These are two very distinct questions.)

What do people want that they are not getting from the media now?

------
Jasber
___“The notion that the enormous cost of real news-gathering might be
supported by the ad load of display advertising down the side of the page, or
by the revenue share from having a Google search box in the corner of the
page, or even by a 15-second teaser from Geico prior to a news clip, is
idiotic on its face.”_ __

The notion that newspapers are still spending money on multi-million dollar
presses and bloated newsrooms is what's really idiotic.

~~~
gabrielroth
Evidence that newsrooms are bloated, please.

~~~
Jasber
By bloated I mean local newspapers covering national news. When small papers
have newsrooms with 60 reporters, and 40% of those reporters cover national
news--that's a problem.

To see evidence of this go look at your local paper. Mine writes about (not
syndicates...writes) national news all of the time.

Small to medium sized papers shouldn't be doing this anymore. They should be
focusing on their local communities and dominating that market.

By bloat I mean purchasing multi-million dollar printing presses in 2005
(<http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-108017775.html>) when you should be
investing heavily in your local and online markets.

~~~
brandnewlow
There are some claims here I'd still like links to backup.

Show me a "small" paper with 60 reporters.

Show me a "small" paper with 25 reporters covering national news.

Your local paper has 40% of its reporters covering national news?

------
aditya
A new model for news is definitely needed, but is hard to figure out.

At outside.in we're indexing and organizing local news across the US and have
recently started partnering with national news sources (like nbc) to fill gaps
in our index and to provide them with the local coverage that they're missing.
Along with providing their users a new way to find and read news (by putting
it on a map, for example.)

Eventually, it will be a combination of both major media and citizen
journalists covering issues that are important. What compounds the problem for
the newspapers is that people have stopped consuming news the same way they
were doing it 5-10 years ago. The internet has obviously played a big part in
this, but so have changing social patterns and expectations on the part of the
consumer on news availability.

The bigger shift we're noticing that people are actively searching for topics
they're interested in, as opposed to flipping through a newspaper, they want
to see things they may be tangentially interested in ('crime', in 'Brooklyn')
but had no way to get to earlier.

It will definitely be interesting to see how this plays out.

~~~
brandnewlow
It will be. True. But I fail to see how sites like outside.in are helping.

My concern with what you guys do is that you've spent the last few years
"indexing" everyone else's content...without hardly sending anyone to the
original sites themselves.

I explained this to one of your biz-dev guys a few months back, so I see no
need to do so here but I'll restate a few points.

I added my publication's RSS feed to outside.in several months ago. Since
then, my biggest day of referrals from you guys has been 6 visitors/24 hours
according to Google analytics. Big whoop.

Meanwhile, how many Google hits did you get from my content? From everyone
else's content? Feel free to call me wrong with data, but I imagine Outside.in
is an SEO machine and that Google accounts for most of your traffic.

How is this helping the publishers you "index"? It's been very, very clear
from day one how it's helping outside.in.

Your business-development guy told me you're hatching partnerships with major
newspapers to put "publisher" content on their sites. Will those links lead
back to the original publishers? Or will they point back to the summary page
on Outside.in?

There are now a handful of players doing this between you, Everyblock,
YourStreet...even the Huffington Post with its local channels.

And not one of them sends any actual traffic back to the sites they index.
Meanwhile their traffic numbers go up, up, up, the VC money rolls in, and the
publishers themselves keep on spiraling down.

People rip on Digg all the time. But I tell you what, Digg actually sends
bodies through the door. Same with reddit and other sites like this. Sure,
they probably get a lot of Google hits that would otherwise go to the original
sites, but they focus on sending people along to the original stories. They
profit from the ecosystem of good content and then contribute back to help new
sites sprout up.

~~~
adrianh
I can't comment on the other sites you mentioned, but at EveryBlock, we've
heard very positive things from publishers regarding the traffic we send to
them. One local news outlet (not a blog) gets 20% of its traffic via referrers
from EveryBlock. (I'm not sure whether that says more about EveryBlock or
about that site, but still.) For at least three sites I can think of off the
top of my head, we're the #1 referer -- i.e., we send them more people than
any other site does.

Adrian

------
ryanmahoski
I find plenty of quality news in text form. What I want is better stuff for
when I'm on the go. Radio fails - it's mostly ads and the banal. Podcasts are
better but they're not interactive and I can't un/subscribe until I'm back at
my computer. Audio books and lectures from The Teaching Company dominate my
ipod in transit - but with these I don't get news or blog content.

Maybe the solution is phone based. What if you could call a phone number and
hear the news read to you by a good narrator? By pressing keys you could drill
down into Tech, World, blogs etc. It would be an opinionated filter of news,
essays, wikipedia. Like this <http://audiothink.com/concept1.png>. With twilio
you could <play> .mp3s. First time callers could maybe get x minutes free
after which point they'd pay for their callerID to continue working. Not sure
how to handle payments - sending phone visitors to a web page might kill
conversion. I think bored commuters with hands-free devices and cell minutes
to burn might use such a service.

~~~
tokenadult
_I find plenty of quality news in text form. What I want is better stuff for
when I'm on the go. Radio fails - it's mostly ads and the banal._

I'm pretty satisfied with Minnesota Public Radio and its all-news nework,
exemplified by KNOW FM in St. Paul.

<http://minnesota.publicradio.org/radio/services/nis/>

I'm still learning about Minnesota Public Radio's availability as a stream on
the Internet or as podcasts, but in general that radio network tries to keep
up to date with the latest technology. This is, of course, not commercial
radio but rather "listener supported" radio that will hit you up with
fundraising drives every once in a while.

------
kleneway
This article reminded me of a quote I heard a while back: "People pay for
atoms, not for bits". Not 100% accurate, but if someone is going to fork over
cash, you really, really, really need to make it worth their while.
Unfortunately I don't think that individual news articles qualify.

I don't know if this is the solution, but here's one idea I had around this
problem that I keep coming back to. It's a way to combine the disciplined
process of a traditional news agency with the economies of scale and spirit of
the citizen journalism movement:
[http://astartupaday.wordpress.com/2008/07/23/y-combinator-
ch...](http://astartupaday.wordpress.com/2008/07/23/y-combinator-
challenge-3-new-news/)

------
easyfrag
What I really want is an iTunes for stocks and maybe some other simple
securities, something that will allow the really small investor to dabble. I
guess there's a whole bunch of regulatory and legal reasons that this can't
happen.

------
kenshi
Some newspapers charge for some (most) of their online content. The Financial
Times is the one that springs to mind. If the newspapers need to make money
from their content, they should charge for it.

They don't need anyone to 'save them', they just need the balls to ask a fair
price for good content. Of course, if most newspapers are just publishing
badly written stories with little depth, maybe people wont be willing to pay
for it.

------
johngunderman
"Free is not a business model," said Mr. Moffett of Bernstein. "It sounded
good and everybody got excited about it, but when you look around, it is clear
that is creating havoc and will not work in the long term."

I beg to differ. OSS and GNU/Linux are perfect examples of the contrary.

~~~
gsmaverick
Since when is Linux making enough money to survive as a business? They get
donations. So maybe you should think again.

~~~
michaelneale
Probably not quite what you meant, but most of the kernel developers are paid
to work on it full time (and by most I mean >90%, last I heard).

Whilst that is not a business in the same sense, there is business around
enough to make it worth while.

------
geuis
I say this sounds like Marie Antionette begging on her way to the guillotine.
I believe you reap what you sow. I find msnbc worlds better than CNN, who just
recently cancelled their sci/tech reporting. That being said, I read maybe
three stories a week on msnbc. I don't consciously remember the last time I
bought a newspaper. If these people would realize their problem is that they
aren't reporting on things people want to read about, they might find their
way to a paying audience again. They have generalized the public into large
segments, while in reality we exist across lots of little niches of interest.
I like tech, scifi, some business, Dr 90210, and I occassionally look for
topless photos of hot actresses from the 70s and 80s after watching old
movies. Pics from then, not now of course. I'm not sure what the answer is
100%, but sense the direction to water in their desert isn't in the form of
the same business and reporting structure, but in tablet form.

~~~
coliveira
I guess the problem is that newspapers started in a time when they had to
satisfy everyone. Therefore, there is no depth in their coverage. They also
invest in topics that are of interest for the "general" population, like
celebrities and economy.

For example, I have no interest whatsoever in the latest fight happening in
the middle east. However, the TV news insists in spending >50% if its
international coverage time telling me about this.

Journalism follows a model from the last two centuries, and it will take a
long time to change. Perhaps it will lose relevance completely, when compared
to blogs and other web sources.

------
Allocator2008
Perfect. Just add daily editions of the new york times to the iTunes store.
Maybe even have an audio version so one can listen to news stories. I love the
audio books feature of iTunes, where I can download books to my iPods or
iPhone. With the iTouch, one can get all the HD space of the iPhone without it
being a phone, if one already has an iPhone and just needs more space. The
whole iTunes/iPod/iPhone line is one of the greatest business models ever. No,
I don't work for apple, so I have no stake in this, I just LOVE my iPhone!

------
jonursenbach
How about we all finally just move completely to citizen journalism and be
done with this noise?

~~~
brandnewlow
Because much of it is unreadable drivel, compromised by iffy product placement
and factual errors.

~~~
jonursenbach
And mainstream news orgs aren't?

~~~
brandnewlow
Correct. They aren't.

Have you read much "citizen journalism?"

Have you tried to look to local neighborhood blogs to find out what's
happening in your town?

Here in Chicago there's one blog that does a decent job of this,
<http://www.uptownupdate.com>

But its a labor of love. What happens if the writer gets ill and has to take a
break for a month or two? Who's covering Uptown then?

There are a few other neighborhood blogs like it that don't update more than
once or twice a week or that are filled with hateful invective.

Or let's look at it this way: Did you learn about the in's and out's of the
latest Pentagon policies from your wacky neighbor up the street?

Citizen journalism should really be called "amateur journalism" and treated as
such. Valuable, valuable things can come from amateurs: photos, facts, reports
etc. But amateur news services....are not news services.

~~~
jonursenbach
The term "citizen journalism" does not have to mean "your wacky neighbor up
the street". What about the, few, independent journalists working out there.
They are certainly citizens, yet they don't work for any mainstream news org.

And if your definition of CJ is rubbish, then we need search engines and
aggregators set in place to help us filter through the crap. Still, this isn't
part of the mainstream sources.

And I'm having a hard time seeing how you are rationalizing that news orgs
like CNN or NBC are _not_ comprised of iffy product placement and factual
errors. They report what they want you to hear, not what _you_ want to hear.
Fox News, for how much of a news organization than a tabloid they are, reports
factual errors on a constant basis. Product placement, have you ever watched
the filler crap that CNN or any of them show during the slow news days? Sanjay
Gupta, who works for CNN, has continuiously promoted big pharma companies that
he has financial interests in.

Every news organization, no matter what its name, is biased in one way or
another. They have to sell ad revenue or else they'll go off the air, so they
show you what they want you to hear. Not what _you_ want to hear. This is
where citizen/independent journalism shines and is also a reason why
newspapers are failing. People have found out that there are better sources of
news out there than what you get through your television or off the
newsstands.

~~~
brandnewlow
Some good points here. Thanks for the responses.

-"The term "citizen journalism" does not have to mean "your wacky neighbor up the street". What about the, few, independent journalists working out there."

There's a difference between an independent journalist and a citizen
journalist. The terms are not interchangeable.

Josh Marshall (TPM) is an independent journalist. He is not a citizen
journalist. He does this for a living and lives off the fruit of it. Arrington
is not a citizen journalist either. I agree that independent journalists
(essentially, journalism startups) will become increasingly important. But
that's different from citizen journalism.

Furthermore, while many citizen journalists are independent, I would argue
that many aren't. What about the folks uploading to CNN's iReport? They're
working for the mainstream press.

-"I'm having a hard time seeing how you are rationalizing that news orgs like CNN or NBC are not comprised of iffy product placement and factual errors."

There are instances of sketchy product placement and certainly factual errors
in the mainstream press.

However, there are also mechanisms for dealing with these when they're
exposed. People lose their jobs. Have their pay docked. Get moved to other
assignments. Lose face with the public. They also get sued...all the time.

Citizen Journalism, on the other hand, is, by definition, the wild west.

I am constantly underwhelmed by the stuff I read on blogs and on Twitter. It's
all marketing. And it's often disguised as editorial. Ever been to a "tweet-
up"? The one's I've attended consisted of dozens of people talking about how
to talk to people on twitter. Ugh.

The mainstream media screws up all the time. But at least there's people there
committed to NOT screwing up.

As per your last point...what are these "better sources of news" that you
speak of? I'm always interesting in finding new stuff to read. If you've got
some great links, please share them.

So I think we're on the same page regarding independent journalists. We're
only going to see more Talking Points Memo's and the like.

But I'm still very skeptical about citizen journalism as a tranformative force
unto itself, based on months of watching the local scene here in Chicago.
There are some great blogs here, but none that are really capable of carrying
the torch for a newspaper if it went under.

