Newspapers can’t keep distributing content for free on Web

Brian Till

Monday, Dec. 15, 2008 | 2 a.m.

A lot of conversations I’ve had over the past few weeks have centered on the American decline, not in terms of global influence and economic standing, but in terms of journalism. I’ve found myself speaking with students of the field, freelance writers and grayed reporters, all of us solemnly reflecting, as if a good friend had died.

And then something struck me: I spend hours a day reading news, digging into any paper I can find, from Lebanon’s Daily Star to the Buenos Aires Herald, but I’ve purchased only about a dozen American papers in the past year. I, I realized, am the murderer of news.

I spend my life burrowed in Lexis-Nexis, enamored by any paper available in English. I’ll grab pages from a buffet of reportage at work, and devour new stories on my BlackBerry during my commute, but I haven’t paid more than $40 for news in the past three years — perhaps not more than $100 in my life. News has simply become too accessible to pay for without a concerted effort. Free quick reads on the train, full pages by front desks at hotels, and, of course, news always available online.

About the only time I buy newspapers is before boarding planes, when digital sources will be inaccessible. About the only pages I’d paid a dime for while grounded came to me on Nov. 5. Who could pass up the historic “Obama Wins” headlines?

The better question — who in my generation even realizes the role he has played in the murder of news? Silently skimming off Google’s AP content and other major news outlets’ Web sites, where advertising tries in vain to offset the cost of reportage, my generation, and many around us, have failed to recognize the part each of us has played in the death of American journalism.

So I made a decision amid this existential crisis. I will soon be a subscriber to four American newspapers: the Miami Herald, The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Rocky Mountain News, and the Chicago Tribune — all publications in major financial distress.

My moral qualms solved, the reality remains — what will it take? How will journalism survive?

I’ve yet to find a member of my generation — as enthusiastic as many are about blogs and “new media” — who’d rather see the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times fail than cough up $100 for a subscription. But nobody’s ever asked us to; nobody ever explained to us that we’re the free riders killing the industry.

We’ve grown up with news being free, whether our parents paid for it or we stumbled across it on the Internet as young teens. In college, many of us found stacks of papers free in dining halls and student unions as publishers showered schools in hopes of building devoted young readers.

To where from here? I think the industry can survive only if big guns — the Tribune Co., owner of the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, which has filed for bankruptcy reorganization; The New York Times; The Washington Post; Murdoch; McClatchy; and Gannett — manage to collude. They, as a cartel, must demand that we pay for news, be it digital or print. I think a system where subscribers get Sunday print delivered combined with unlimited digital usage is a likely model.

It’ll require a far more sophisticated password system than what The New York Times employed when it kept opinion pieces and archived content cordoned off in subscription-only territory, so that people don’t share user names. It’ll also require Web pages capable of preventing text from being lifted and reprinted. Finally, it’ll take a vigilant legal effort by news corporations to keep material from being reproduced or quoted at length on parasitic blogs.

Most important, it will require leveraging the power the major newspapers have over their wire services — as major subscribers — to keep the Associated Press, Reuters and others from selling material to operations — such as Google and Yahoo — that distribute content for free. Without this dimension, getting news for free online will continue unabated, and the industry will continue toward its demise.

Surprisingly, there’s an unrelenting faith among students of the field, professors, writers, editors and even managing editors that something will break. That someone will “crack the code” and figure out how to make journalism profitable again.

I don’t think there’s a code to be cracked; I think there’s only a reality to be explained. The news industry is in collapse; a critical piece of successful democracy is in jeopardy. Unless you trust blogs to accurately and consistently report news, or trust government and business to be completely forthcoming with their misdeeds, you ought to recognize the free ride you’ve been on and stand to pay your fare.

Brian Till, one of the nation’s youngest syndicated columnists, is a writer for Creators Syndicated. He also is a research associate for the New America Foundation, a think tank in Washington.