Insomniactive

Anyone who shares my fascination with the intersection of philanthropy and journalism will absolutely love The Non-Profit Road, a blog written by new friend Jim Barnett. Those of you (and I know who you are-mostly) who are bored to tears by the topic are best not to bother and to continue simply rolling your eyes-if only electronically- at yours truly.

(As my wife says, “are you truly capable of turning anything into a metaphor for non-profit journalism?” Apparently).

Jim brings an interesting combination of experiences to what is obviously a subject he’s passionate about. And I learn something new every time I check in.

I don’t completely agree with some of the leaps that Robert Niles makes in two recent OJR posts. But they’re damned thought-provoking.

The first is about how the 1995 court case Stratton Oakmont v. Prodigy chilled newspapers into following their conservative instincts, even thought they were granted a safe harbor by the Communications Decency Act the following year.

The second is an even more jaw dropping assertion that if newspapers had only kept live links to archived stories-and not put them behind paywalls-Google algorithms would ultimately have elevated ‘paper sites to the top of the SEO heap rather than drowning them.

They’re quick reads, and both very worthwhile.

The same technology that is destroying the economics of content—and particularly of news-also brings unprecedented and nearly unlimited possibilities to informing society. Every day, the gap between what is possible and what is commercially viable grows wider. Picture two curves forever diverging beyond the horizon.

As far as I know, this is sui generis. Think about it: Moore’s law does not drive the list price of the newest Pentium processor toward zero, nor do advances in solar technology make electricity free. This unique state of affairs provides the textbook construct for philanthropy: non-profit journalism both defends against a threat and capitalizes on an opportunity.

At the threat end of the spectrum lies the public good argument: that a la national defense, market mechanisms alone will not produce the minimum threshhold of public interest journalism that society requires. And the opportunity is that every day, the art of the possible in any given topic area, arcane as it may be (e.g. campaign finance in New Jersey) grows richer. But as content floods the zone, the potential for monetizing this content becomes yet more remote. It’s not surprising that when it comes to such information, society as a whole has a “much longer tail” than does any individual. Welcome, philanthropists.

The root problem faced by newspapers is neither declining circulation nor spiraling ad revenue. The real bugaboo of the newspaper biz is unbundling. Even though the article has always been the fundamental unit of news, the paper—the whole package (or at least the section)—has forever been the fundamental unit of profit. Papers are profitable because it’s hard to get to the article about the football game without at least tripping over an ad for a new Chrysler. (Well, a new Toyota). Now that the article is available outside the package (and 80% of the time, without even being mediated by a home page), the fundamental unit of profit has become the article. This must be true, as Google has so decreed it-and before Congress, no less, through the mouth of Marissa Mayer:

Changing the basic unit of content consumption is a challenge, but also an opportunity. Treating the arrticle as the atomic unit of consumption online has several powerful consequences. When producing an article for online news, the publisher must assume that a reader may be viewing this article on its own, independent of the rest of the publication. To make an article effective in a standalone setting requires providing sufficient context for first-time readers, while clearly calling out the latest information for those following a story over time. It also requires a different approach to monetization: each individual article should be self-sustaining.

Thanks, Marissa. We’ll get back to you on that cold fusion stuff, too.

Yikes. What she’s really saying is that the atomic unit of profit-not consumption-is the article. She’s also saying, correctly I think, that the same technology which turns articles into just so many lemonade stands makes yet more granular the fundamental unit of news. In an unbundled world, the basic unit of news now the topic, or even the fact.

You get the picture: as the unit of news chases the unit of profit upstream, monetization becomes ever more impossible. Only a handful of articles work or will ever work as standalone p&l’s. But by how many orders of magnitude does that problem expand you’re trying to monetize a topic? Or a fact?

Again, I say: welcome, philanthropists.

In her latest hard to read column, Judith Warner says she has sympathy for Megan McCain, Bristol Palin, and presumably a host of other young women (Elisha Cuthbert?) to whom Warner is obviously superior.

Open plea to the Times editorial folks: this woman is a bad writer with a tin ear for the popular culture she attempts to bring to bear on political events. The NYT gets a lot of comments to the effect that the Gray Lady is wasting column inches on Maureen Dowd. Maybe, sometimes. But for the love of pete-if you’re going to swing a hatchet, start here.

If only all our companies could be competing against the likes of Dean Singleton:

WW: I’m sure one of the phrases you hear on almost an everyday basis when these topics come up, and I’m guessing it’s not one of your favorites, is, “The horse is out of the barn,” when it comes to free content on the web. In your opinion, is it a short-sighted approach to say, well, “We made the wrong decision about this years ago, but now we have to stick with it”?

DS: Let me tell you, having been involved in ranches since I was born: It’s not always easy, but you can chase that horse back in the barn.

For a while, glibness from business leaders is amusing, then it becomes maddening. And then, sickening. We’re there. Ask him if he wants to bet his ranch on this. He talks about it enough.

My friends who suffer my blather gladly have heard this for about a two years: some day, someone will buy the New York Times and run it as a 501c3. And now it looks like it could be sooner than later. Newsweek reports that media titan David Geffen, having been rebuffed by the Los Angeles Times is the man of the moment. I have a hard time believing he’s 66, but I digress. Anyway, from Newsweek:

“David would hope the newspaper makes a profit,” said the confidante. “But he believes that operating without the ultimate responsibility of paying dividends or necessarily having to be profitable is the best way to run an institution like The New York Times.”

Exactly. No more God/Mammon confusion; just a recognition that the NYT is a special institution best run in the public interest.

It cheers me to be believe that such an outcome is possible; my emotions about it being inevitable are more mixed. Geffen is reputed to be worth $4.5 billion; if the Sulzbergers would listen to their fellow shareholders (the least forgone conclusion in this whole discussion), Geffen could own the paper for closer to 10 than 20 percent of his net worth. And given that pulling off such a transaction-and then endowing the paper a la the suggestion of David Swensen-would be the categorical media deal of the century, we must assume that somebody will do it. It’s the ultimate media vanity play, and there are plenty of checkbooks who can pull it off and never miss the dough. And, done properly, it would be a bold stroke in the public interest.

From The Art Newspaper, this long and excellent piece by Andras Szanto on the future of arts journalism. It covers a lot of ground that will be remedial to newspaper geeks, but brings a fresh eye to the challenges faced by practitioners of serious criticism and reporting.