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Jan
29
Here’s the original quote in the e-mail teaser from OJR (Online Journalism Review) for their article, “Readers owe nothing to publishers”:
If you want people to read your publication, you then need to do whatever is necessary to make them want to read it.
Sounds right to me. More from the article, after a cute anecdote about the aggravation of having to sift through pounds of Sunday advertisements to get to the comics, which are, invariably, split up anyway:
Here’s what normal people do when they can’t find the content they paid for in their newspaper: They cancel. As they have been, in droves, over the past generation.
News publishers like to point to television, free news online, English literacy rates and slew of other reasons to explain their readership losses. But the contempt that newspapers show for their readers by burying their editorial content beneath their remaining advertising surely is not helping keep readers around.
On the Web, we’ve gotten used to thinking about the usability of our websites. But our colleagues on the print side have been committing grave usability errors in their products over the years. And when that type of thinking infects a news organization’s attitude towards its website, news organization set themselves up to repeat its offline failures in the new medium.
And more to the point of how many of us say that we know that there are good folks writing good stuff:
Don’t get me wrong. I want newspapers and websites to have advertisers. Lots of ‘em. I know the importance of surveying your online audience. I’ve run several online surveys myself.
But if news organizations are proud of their news content, why do so many insist on hiding it?
Readers owe you nothing. They have no responsibility as citizens to read your reporting, and no responsibility as consumers to look at your ads. The have the right, and ability, to go about their lives without ever once glancing at your publication.
If you want people to read your publication, you then need to do whatever is necessary to make them want to read it.
Robert Niles, author of the article, concludes with superb advice for all news providers – citizen journalists and traditional providers alike:
As a news publisher, you’ve got a choice:
1) Get mad at your readers and take steps to force them to conform to your will. Then, after you’ve paid millions to your lawyers, hope you have enough left in the bank to pay for the therapy you’ll need to overcome the frustration of not being able to control other human beings. Or…
2) Acknowledge that readers owe you nothing. Build your websites to serve them, with editorial and advertising content that you make readily available, easy to see, access and understand, but that you do not force on anyone. Hope that by doing that, you can build a readership that will be attractive to advertisers, allowing you to build and sustain an ad-supported publishing business.
If you think that option 2 is naive, ask yourself this: Has the advertisers-first, readers-second model helped the newspaper industry build its circulation over the past generation? Has that model helped broadcast TV increase its ratings? And if that model has not helped them, what makes you think it will help you and your website?
I want journalists and news reporters to provide the most popular content on the Web. I think that society benefits when large numbers of people read high-quality, accurate and insightful news on a daily basis. But those readers have no responsibility to do so. We, as a news industry, must make them want to do so. And wrapping our reporting with spam, pop-ups, take-overs and irrelevant come-ons is not helping us do that.
It’s only amazing to me that this message still hasn’t gotten through to the biggest in the media industry.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 10:27 am January 29th, 2008 in Blogging, Business, Marketing, Media, Tech, Writing
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3 Responses to “Print fails to compel readers to read; dragging down websites w/same errors”
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Jill:
Great thought provoking post. I hadn’t given much thought to the problems with ads on online news sites detracting from the news presentation. In many ways, its worse online – with ads that roll across your screen or otherwise jump right in front of what you are reading! Or, ads that flash and explode or perform other pyrotechnics on the page. The ads in newspapers may be irritating but they can’t do that just yet.
So is there a solution? I think newspapers are toast because they must promise major advertisers (car dealers and department stores in particular) placement that will distract the reader from the news. Otherwise they’ll take their money elsewhere and we know how desperate print is for ad lineage.
Your comment about the Sunday comics is one shared by thousands of readers – and complaints have been made for years (I’ve read them) and they are ignored – advertisers concerns come before readers.
Online there’s more discretion – but sites are often set up with unrealistic profit expectations so they, um, prostitute themselves out to any type of advertising at all. Newspapers will get car dealers, stores and such, but online you’ll see more out and out scams and ripoffs mostly having to do with quack cures and weight loss. Its a major complaint I have with Sirius radio – its literally being supported by credit and investment scams and other ripoff ads. Its sad that that’s the only kind of advertising (with some exceptions) that seems to be able to support these alternative media sites.
I guess the bottom line is that as long as they have to make money in a capitalist system, this is what you’re going to get.
So perhaps your real problem is with living in a capitalist system. I wish you much luck in finding places to live in the alternative reality. Not too many choices these days. Even China has (mostly) converted.
John, are you saying that the way the U.S. embraces and gives voice to capitalism is the only way capitalism can exist and/or succeed? Or that it doesn’t have any elasticity for less than perfect for-profit models through which it provides its goods? That doesn’t seem accurate to me.