Katharine Viner, deputy editor of The Guardian and launch editor of its Australian offshoot, delivered the prestigious A.N. Smith Lecture in Journalism at the University of Melbourne last night. Viner’s speech was a thoughtful take on journalism in the internet age. Few who have embraced the digital era would disagree that journalists should be more transparent, more accountable and engage more with their readers.
But the question of how to pay for this new, improved journalism got little attention. The Guardian lost a whopping 31 million pounds last year and has posted a loss for the past nine years — a situation only made possible through cross-subsidisation from used car magazine Auto Trader. Although that money won’t last forever, The Guardian has so far refused to put up a paywall on its extremely successful website.
While Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger recently said his paper is not the “Taliban of Free”, Viner struck a more fundamentalist tone last night:
“[J]ournalistically, paywalls are utterly antithetical to the open web. A paywalled website is just print in another form, making collaboration with the people formerly known as the audience much more difficult. You can’t take advantage of the benefits of the open web if you’re hidden away.”
We’ve never hidden our light under a bushel. Our subscriptions model, a community of invested readers, has engendered a loyalty and a participatory spirit other publications long for. And it’s allowed us to continually invest in editorial resources.
But then, we would say that, wouldn’t we. The New York Times, which has maintained its enormous global website traffic while asking regular readers to pay, and Fairfax, which has a metered paywall and is encouraging readers to scour politicians’ expense claims, might say the same thing.
The point here is one of sustainability. Viner finished her lecture by saying modern journalism must be a combination of the new and the old — of the phone and Twitter; of gut instinct and data; of professional journalists and amateur bloggers.
We’d add another — admittedly self-serving — point. Philanthropic journalism and public broadcasting have an important role to play, but any future for journalism that doesn’t include sustainable business models isn’t a future at all.
YOu are right from your point of view….however the business model that we currently have will not last forever as it is not sustainable.
Katherine Viner is a futurist and so is the Guardian…. long may they thrive,
Katherine Viner is on the money and to the future of the press whether they are print/ online or behind pay walls. Pay walls in some ways are their own form of censorship as it is only “like thinking” subscribers will gravitate to hear like thinking journalists opinion pieces.
You only pay for what fits with your view of the world and boycott the ones who do not.
Viner is right they are just newspapers in disguise and where conversation is for like minds and where argument is rare. The problem with the open press such as the ABC I note that opinion is becoming a malicious bloggers paradise rather then one where there is open debate on issues where subscribers can enjoy an open discussion. I like Jericho in the Guardian especially when he replies directly to respondents to his commentary and where there is an open exchange of views and opinions and an exchange of references. I expected that he Academic focused Conversation would offer the same – but alas not –
and it has degenerated into a tabloid for academics instead.
The US press such as the NYT and Washington post ration their Open sections to 3 but at least you pick the pieces that interest you before the paywall intervenes.
The subscriber TV channels are interesting as news is only a part of the bundled package so motivation for subscription is divided, a model that Murdoch has replicated with the Australian and Fairfax with the Age and where News pre- say is daily – the rest is updated weekly and syndicated. If my students are anything to go by it is the news via the social media that draws the most attention and that is free and often targeted.
The Guardian is a breath of fresh air in Australia – I have read the Guardian in most forms for most of my student and adult life.
It was amusing today that one British blogger was upset that he was reading about Abbott and Putin in his version of the Guardian and how could a country ” the population size smaller than that SE of England dare be included in his ” Guardian”.
An eclectic news environment is even difficult for some Guardian readers too.
I’m not so sure that society needs ‘journalism’ if by ‘journalism’ is meant specialising in reporting disparate subjects. Developments in politics, economics, health, business, etc, may be reported and analysed by people who specialise in those fields and write reports and analyses incidentally as part of their specialised work.
Thanks for your interesting editorial responding to my AN Smith lecture.
On the anti-paywall fundamentalist point: I do think that the web is fundamentally better when it’s more open – and it’s better for journalists, because we can engage with others, find stories, talk to people. That’s the bit you quoted.
But I’m not a fundamentalist on the economics. As I said in the lecture, http://gu.com/p/3jdxv/tw, ‘It is still unclear whether paywalls bring in enough money to be worthwhile, and it may be that they work better for more specialised content. Economically, it’s too early to rule them out when we’re all trying to survive.’
Some readers seem to have missed that crucial hedge! Just because something is preferable journalistically doesn’t mean it will always make economic sense.
That said, the Guardian’s business model is more robust than you suggest. An interesting take on this in yesterday’s Columbia Journalism Review puts it into context: http://bit.ly/19CZMQk
Clearly there’s not one business model that suits all. If paywalls work for Crikey, then that’s brilliant news, because it’s a must-read, and long may you thrive.