Texas Center For Community Journalism

Just in case the Ambien you were prescribed is working now and you’re finally getting some sleep instead of worrying about all the new challenges facing our business…let’s look at one more and find out how effective the Ambien really is. Here’s a quote from the beginning of this article: “If local newspaper, yellow pages, radio or local TV companies thought that Google, Yahoo, eBay and craigslist were disruptive, they are now going to face down a competitor that will have an even bigger impact on their businesses than any one of those companies did.” That competitor is the location-based marketing made possible by mobile phones. Articles like this one predict the impact on urban and suburban markets more than rural ones, but we all know that urban phenomena soon spread to smaller cities and towns. This is one we’ll have to keep tabs on.

Check out this story in All Cross’s rural journalism blog in Kentucky. It reports research from Kansas on rural grocery stores, many of which are closing because of the competition from nearby big-box stores, among other factors. If you have seen a trend like this in your area, click on the link above — it’ll take you to Al’s story and his link to the Kansas study about grocery stores in the Midwest. You’ll have all the background (and sources, if you want to call the researcher in Kansas) you need to do a story if you’re seeing this trend yourself.

Someone asked last week for a summary of online articles about the pros and cons of paywalls.  Nothing is more relevant right now in Texas community journalism:  Are our newspapers going to charge for access to their websites, or should they remain free in hopes that they will generate additional advertising revenue?  There is no easy answer to this. 

We know that the ethos of the Internet is that information should be free.  And since Al Gore invented the Internet, that’s been the prevailing practice.  Some news sites have implemented paywalls.  Others have gone from free to paid and back to free.  And there are many options in between those polar opposites.

The paywall concept seems to be working in a few places, and especially among some of what we call “niche” sites – websites that offer specialized information for limited audiences.  Even such a well-known paid site as The Wall Street Journal can be considered a niche site because of its focus on specialized business coverage.

You’ve heard publishers claim that the best way to establish value is to put a price on the information.  The price we impose on the online product becomes the value of that product, they say.  But in a supply-and-demand economy, the seller does not establish value; the buyer does.  Let’s say you want to sell your old Yugo, and you want it to be seen as a sought-after and valued purchase.  So you price it at $50,000.

Good luck.  If there’s such a thing as a Yugo collector, you may well get it.  But if someone is just looking for a car, there are too many options out there.

So if we expect consumers to pay for the online product, we have to offer something the consumer perceives as value (as opposed to something we think is valuable) and something that the consumer cannot obtain elsewhere. (In the paywall literature, that’s typically called “premium content.”)

And remember that “elsewhere” may not just be another newspaper or a news medium – it can be other online sites, blogs, and especially social networking.  The most recent Pew study reported that 35 percent of respondents had a favorite news Web site, but of that number only 5 percent said they would be willing to pay if their “favorite site” erected a paywall. 

Sounds like a blanket condemnation of paywalls, but that’s not what I intended.  Instead, the point is just that the whole paywall issue is more complex than it seems.

So as you consider this issue, and your own decision about whether or not to put up a paywall, here are some considerations.  The following five articles are examinations (all written in readable style) of the paywall issue.  There give options and they bring up perspectives you need to consider.

Whatever you do, do this first — make a pot of coffee and lock yourself in your office and read through these articles.  You may still choose the paywall route, but you can say you’ve looked at some of the important options.  Here they are:

• Fees for online news yet to succeed: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world_business/view/1071443/1/.html
• Five ways to monetize the future of the news media: http://mediachannel.org/blog/2010/05/5-ways-to-monetize-the-future-of-news-media/
• Pitfalls of the paywall: http://mediachannel.org/blog/2010/05/5-ways-to-monetize-the-future-of-news-media/
• Newspapers experiment with charging for premium content: /blogs/whatsnew/newspapers-experiment-charging-premium-c
• On newspapers and paywalls: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-mcquaid/on-newspapers-and-paywall_b_211508.html

Tommy Thomason was given the Dewane Kelly Friend of the Newspaper Award Saturday by the West Texas Press Association.

We do love to moan about the pressures of the news business.

Come to one of our workshops, or maybe to a TPA meeting, and you’ll hear lots of talk about the problems of life in a newsroom.

Most of them deal with stress and time and money.  And listen long enough, and you’ll hear some whines about the good old days when life was simpler.

Yeah, sure.  Kerry Craig, assistant editor of the Sulphur Springs News-Telegram, sent the Center an email this week that’s a reminder that the good old days of journalism weren’t exactly stress-free either.

Fact is, they could be downright dangerous.

Kerry sent along a news article from 1891, found by a researcher working on a book and passed on to him.

The article, from the St. Louis Republic, was headlined “FOUGHT A DUEL TO DEATH.”  The deck: “Two Texas Editors Shoot at Short Range with Fatal Result.” Here’s the article:

         Sulphur Springs, Tex., Sept. 16 – This quiet little city was thrown into great excitement over an impromptu duel about 9:30 o’clock this morning between E.M. Tate and Everett Moore, respective editors of the Hopkins County Echo and the Alliance Vindicator, which resulted in the death of the latter.  Tate received a slight wound in the left arm.  Moore received five wounds, one in the groin, two in the side and two in the leg, and lived but a few hours.  The pistols used were large and deadly weapons.  There has been ill-feeling between the two men for some time, and they have been attacking each other very severely in their papers.  This morning at the hour mentioned they met on the public square and at first engaged in a fist fight.  Moore finding Tate to be the better man, backed off from him and drew his gun, but Tate was equal to the occasion and drew his gun by the time Moore could fire.  Both men continued firing until their weapons were emptied, Moore shooting after he had fallen to the ground.  Eye-witnesses to the affair are unable to say which was the first to shoot.  Tate says Moore fired first and that he acted purely in self-defence.  Tate surrendered himself to the Sheriff, and is now undergoing a preliminary trial.

The Vindicator isn’t around anymore, but the Echo lives on today as a weekly publication of Kerry’s Sulphur Springs News-Telegram.

Dueling editors weren’t exactly unique to Texas.  The history of American journalism is full of editors (especially in the South and West) for whom the term “newspaper war” was a literal conflict.

The arguments in print frequently erupted in fisticuffs on the street, and duels like this one were not uncommon.

One San Francisco editor even put this sign on his door:  “Subscriptions received from 9 to 4; challenges from 11 to 12 only.”