Journalistic utopias don’t work
The Global Mail’s threatened closure is a huge missed opportunity for journalism, but there are lessons to be learned about letting journalists run the show, argues Mumbrella’s Tim Burrowes.
Back in what I now realise were the final golden years of local newspapers, my first job saw me working with a wonderfully resourced team. Experienced, well-paid journos, steeped in the crafts of reporting. A room full of knowledgeable sub editors who knew the beat intimately and were on hand to stop cub reporters’ idiotic mistakes from making it into print. And a small army of photographers available to record every golden wedding anniversary and house fire.
Yet we didn’t appreciate those resources, and we squandered them. The lunches were long and the product was tired. Frankly, if everyone had worked a bit harder, the paper could have been twice as good with half the staff.
Now I’m not suggesting that the team of journalists on The Global Mail have spent the last two years on the piss, but it does seem to me that journalistic utopias rarely work out as hoped.
Hear, hear!
Agree with your comments on the Global Mail, also finding The New Daily of little value and rather trite. However, The Conservation has a variety of different papers from academics which are interesting and often thought provoking.
Tim,
I think you are partly correct, but think you are approaching this from the wrong angle.
Please indulge me in a long winded response…….
There are two issues at stake here.
1. The political views of Graeme Wood
2. The sustainability of long form journalism
Graeme is a lefty. Lets assume that what he wants to do is raise the quality of journalism in the country. And if he drives mum and dad into fits of apoplexy in the process, then that’s a nice bonus.
But the internet ss not the solution to everything. Graeme comes form an online background and has a massive distaste and lack of trust in “traditional”, and in particular print media. Trust me. I know this. I have spoken to him about it. A dislike of the print media is almost a hallmark of internet entrepreneurs over the last decade.
But here is a guy who has donated over $1M to the greens and has supported left leaning media. And I assume that is to try and give issues he sees as important a voice.
Problem is that you can’t commercialise “thinky” or “important” long form journalism online. Ad yields are trending towards zero. Retargeting and ad networks have accelerated this change, but it was inevitable. The internet is a low friction environment. It’s a price game (by and large). I made the decision years ago to abandon online ad sales. It’s a mugs game, and if you are an I can has cheeseburger or Huffington Post it’s OK. It’s all about the page views. That’s all advertisers are incentivised by.
But do the maths on a piece of Australian journalism. Lets say someone spends 6 months on an article. It’s an important article. Its about corruption or paedophilia or something really juicy. Journos get no money, so lets say the cost of that article was $50k. ($80k salary + $20k in on costs halved).
At a $20 cpm how many people would have to view the article in order to cover costs? With two ad slots on a page you would need 1,250 THOUSAND people to view the article and then make a return.
Lets drop that yield to $2.50.
OMG. You will need 10,000 THOUSAND people to see that article. That’s right. If I spend 6 months on an article and want to get my costs back on it I need 10 Million people to read the article.
With a brand that has no marketing footprint to speak of.
Fuck that. At $5 cpms its far cheaper to stick up funny animated gifs and link to other peoples work. And that’s the problem with the internet it doesn’t discern against quality. Almost all metrics are about aggregates. How many followers, how many fans, ho many page views.
Success online is unfortunately measured by the size of your audience. No one will pay a premium for an online audience they can reach elsewhere, cheaper.
Now if Graeme really wanted to send mum and dad into fits of Apoplexy the money would have been better spent buying a hlf dozen comedy writers and putiing together something similar to “The Daily Show”. An erudite host who mocks the idiocy of Mum and Dad would have made a far more effective cehicle to get a political point across.
Just buy the space from a commercial network and onsell a few ads. I think you will find there is an audience on TV that can be commercialised through higher ad revenue.
Just my thoughts….
Can you please change the spelling of Conversation Thanks Peter
Well, well, well…we have the Huffington post sold for millions (the owner making millions on the sale) and written by millions of volunteer writers who write for exposure- what’s the difference?
@ Peter Cox. I agree with your comments re The Conversation but I suspect one of the reasons it works so well is that its not a journalistic utopia but rather a consumer utopia.
The Conversations writers are academics so have a clear advantage on depth of knoweldge not just over time-poor journalists at daily’s but even over longer term in-depth reporters. No matter how good you are as journalist you still have to “spread yourself thin” over subjects in your career – so it’s impossible to compete with a specialist academic on depth of knowledge. It may be possible to have the edge in communication skills but The Conversation is consitently showing academics may pretty good writers too. Readers win – but journalism doesn’t.
*make* pretty good writers – ah the irony.
Surely the New Daily will be next. At least The Conversation and the Global Mail had/have unique content. The New Daily simply has the same mix of stories as all the other news sites (perhaps because it is filled with AAP copy. Not sure how they expect to build an audience without offering something readers can’t get elsewhere.
At least Dad has the sack to publish comments he doesn’t agree with.
Tim, it surprises me that you don’t.
Sorry to have wasted my time (and yours obviously)…..
Hi ABGRLC, apologies for the slow moderation… I was on a flight.
Unlike your mum’s private jet, I have to switch off my devices… Your comment now live.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
@Caroline – HuffPost had a business plan. The Global Mail had only a journalism plan.
Hi Tim do you have a POV on The New Daily?
Hi, er Hi,
In truth I haven’t spent enough time with it to do so. First impression in launch week was that it was yet to develop a personality.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Good piece Tim. I was always a bit worried about The Global Mail – it just didn’t give me enough reasons to visit very often. Very talented bunch of reporters – but if they want to attract more funding (and I have seen the statement they have put out which says that they intend to do just that) my gut feeling is that their business plan will need to change considerably.
I agree with much of what Tim has said.
In response to some commenters, it’s important to remember that The Global Mail was a philanthropic venture and was always intended to be a not-for-profit organisation. It was meant to reach sustainability at some point but that was intended to be five years down the track. If anyone was responsible for coming up with the business plan to make it a sustainable operation then it was Graeme Wood but he chose only to hire journalists not commercial staff.
Tim: the fact is that any venture that makes a business of journalism will need to have journalists in charge. The problem we have is that journalists have been categorised as chldren, treated as children and behaved as children for decades. Fundamentally, they do not know where butter hits the bread. That does not mean they cannot. It does, however, explain why various large publishers are struggling to cope with anything like a digital transition. Hywood is a typical example: his favourite anecdote (and yours it seems) is about the good old days when journalism was measured by hours in pubs.
Good journalists are nothing without good ad sales people.