Tuesday 9 November 2010

It may pay to get readers to prove their commitment

‘There is a grave risk of cutting yourself off from the mass audience if you are a mass media product’, warns Charlie Beckett, Director of Polis, in the department of media and communications at the London School of Economics. It is one of the main paywall worries, but I also think there may be something more subtle going on with reader psyche that may benefit paid-for products.


Discussing a Clay Shirky idea of a 'newsletter' model for paywall publications, George Brock, Professor and Head of Journalism at City University London, alludes to reader perceptions on his blog when he says: 'One of the problems for the printed press is the fall in the value that people think newspapers have.'


Everyone is familiar with the marketing ploy of getting people to pay more for a product to suggest superiority, which in turn attracts more users. It’s one of the oldest tricks in the books, used all over the place, from the private gym and supermarket to the arts organisation and football club.


Philosopher Julian Baggini (co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Philosopher Magazine), quoted by the BBC in 2007 says it's all about commitment.


'When we pay for something we are showing commitment in a very practical way. We put something of ourselves - in this case money - into whatever it is we want. And by paying for it, we are proving to ourselves that we value it.'


Quite so. How many newspaper readers are used to spending extra on branded products simply because they are branded rather than because there is any evidence that they are better? That’s not to say that anyone can get away with selling anything that’s substandard. That never works for long, but, of course, if more people do start paying to read online, media organisations will have more money to invest and they are likely to get better.


Baggini adds: 'People thought because a particular event was free, it wasn't worth putting themselves out for. The thinking is that having a high financial value creates the perception that something has real value.'


It applies to all forms of culture, Baggini says: 'We'd like to think that a piece of music has value in itself, that we like it because of what it is. But in reality economic factors do influence how we perceive things. The danger is that having not put the commitment in, you run the risk that you don't get as much out.'


In other words, if people pay for the print or website versions of their newspapers, they are more likely to value them and remain loyal readers. Even though there may be some initial caution, in the long run the audience base will be much more solid.


And what about The Philosopher Magazine website? Presumably it's all securely behind a paywall. Well, actually, no it isn't. A case of 'do as I say, not as I do', perhaps, but Baggini's point must still be worth bearing in mind.


The choice for journalism (and other forms of culture) may be: have a paywall and risk losing readers who do not want to pay, or give content away for free and risk losing readers who see this as a sign that your content is worthless. I know which risk I'd rather take . . .

Thursday 4 November 2010

Could London’s East End be the centre of a media resurgence?

David Cameron, in the Evening Standard this week promised that, ‘something exciting is happening in east London — so exciting, in fact, that it means we could create another Silicon Valley. This isn't far fetched — all the elements are here too.' Later in his article he said: ‘Google and Facebook are all creating either research labs or innovation spaces in east London.’ Exciting times.

Meanwhile, also this week, novelist and journalist Clare Sambrook, has strong links with the East End through her work, won the Paul Foot Award for Campaigning Journalism for her work on ending child detention for asylum seekers. Announcing the winner, and quoted in journalism.co.uk, Private Eye editor Ian Hislop said: 'Investigative journalism is very much alive.' He backed this up in conversation with Steve Hewlett on BBC Radio 4’s Media Show.

As if this were not enough heady journalistic news for the area, there was more success for two other East Enders. The Times, covered by Roy Greenslade in The Guardian, claimed 105,000 online 'sales'. James Murdoch, chief of News Corporation, owner of the Times, was pleased: ‘We are very excited by the progress that we have made in a very short space of time. In the few months since we launched these new products, the total paid circulation of The Times has grown.’ The Sunday Times was also a runner up in the Paul Foot prize for reports, by Jonathan Calvert and Clare Newell, on MPs and peers seeking cash for influence.

With all this positive news for one of the poorest areas of London and for one of the poorest, but arguably most important, areas of the media - investigative journalism - it is a shame that Sambrook found her campaigning work had been 'financially catastrophic’, as reported in journalism.co.uk.

It’s also a shame for the Times online that estimates suggest that the Times and Sunday Times would gross about £5.5m a year, about the same that 12,000 print customers buying the paper every day would bring in for News Corp .

Then there’s the little matter of News Corporation seeking approval from the European Commission to buy the 61% of Sky's parent company, BSkyB, that it does not yet own. This would make News Corporation the biggest media company in the UK. Dan Sabbagh, in The Guardian, points out that it ‘would be able to tie the Times digital editions with Sky subscriptions in a way competing newspaper groups could not match’.

It’s been a good week for media in London's East End, but it could be better.