Bad old media
Jan. 21st, 2010 09:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolorosa_12My thoughts on paywalls:
I grew up immersed in the 'old media'. My father was the television political correspondent for Australia's ABC News for 20 years, and it was a common sight to wake up in the morning to find him sitting surrounded by open newspapers, listening to the news on the radio, while watching the Sunday morning current affairs shows on TV. I watched him break stories and pick politicians apart and predict (and fail to predict) the results of seven federal elections. He's seen more federal budgets than Peter Costello. (When I was a child, in fact, I thought the word 'budget' meant 'Dad has to stay late at work on Tuesday'. I'm not kidding.)
My mother has worked as a radio broadcaster since the mid-'70s, and for most of my childhood she worked for ABC local radio in Canberra, before switching to Radio National after we moved to Sydney. My sister and I treated the studios and offices of 666 ABC Canberra like a personal playground, sitting in the control room and talking to our mother during news breaks, lying silently on the floor of the studio when she was on air, and even being interviewed by other broadcasters on occasion (I did a mean line in 'books for children and teenagers' when I was, you know, a child and a teenager).
We grew up surrounded by the 'old media'. To this day, my favourite way to spend a Saturday morning is to get a cup of coffee, get some breakfast, and work my way through The Sydney Morning Herald. My mother passed on her addiction to The New Yorker to me. I watch news and current affairs programs voluntarily (unless they are A Current Affair or Today Tonight, which bear about as much resemblance to current affairs as Naomi Robson and Anna Coren bear to real journalists).
Almost all our family friends were journalists, mainly other political journos from the Press Gallery at Parliament House or producers and presenters from 666.
I have worked for a newspaper since I was 17, including a year spent as a sub-editor.
I say all this to emphasise that I have a great deal of affection for the 'old media'. It put food on my table, paid for my overseas holidays and gymanstics and piano lessons and my sister's fancy private school education. Journalism is the air that I breathe.
And yet...
I adore the 'new media'. I love sites like BoingBoing and The Huffington Post and the RiotACT precisely because they are biased and more opinion than news. I love podcasts and iPlayer and the fact that I can comment on news stories and debate them with a wider circle of people than my friends and family. I love the anarchic way news spreads on Twitter, and the way it allows us to hear voices that were previously marginalised or silenced. I love being able to watch or listen to programs when I want, not when the network decides I should. I love that stories stay online longer than the life cycle of a daily newspaper, and that I can refer back to them whenever I want, if only I know what to type into Google. I love that my mother sends me links to articles from The New York Times online.
I love free content.
And that is why I am dismayed and disappointed at The New York Times's decision to start charging non-subscribers to read its online content. This won't happen until 2011, and they're only going to charge people if readers want to look at more than a set number of articles per month, but it's a step in the wrong direction. In a year, the link I've just given you may be behind a paywall, if you've already clicked on a few Times articles.
The New York Times website was easily one of the best newspaper websites. It had well-written articles, including longer features pieces, great slide shows and videos, and was generally of exceptionally high quality. But I'm sorry to say that the instant they start charging for all that, I'm gone. And I imagine it'll be the same for a lot of people.
It makes me a little bit sad, since The New York Times seemed to be an example of 'old' media that got 'new' media and did it right. But for all that, they seem to have failed to grasp the culture that goes with it. I'm sorry to say, but the day we have to start paying for New York Times online content is the day I start getting my news exclusively from BoingBoing and Twitter.
I grew up immersed in the 'old media'. My father was the television political correspondent for Australia's ABC News for 20 years, and it was a common sight to wake up in the morning to find him sitting surrounded by open newspapers, listening to the news on the radio, while watching the Sunday morning current affairs shows on TV. I watched him break stories and pick politicians apart and predict (and fail to predict) the results of seven federal elections. He's seen more federal budgets than Peter Costello. (When I was a child, in fact, I thought the word 'budget' meant 'Dad has to stay late at work on Tuesday'. I'm not kidding.)
My mother has worked as a radio broadcaster since the mid-'70s, and for most of my childhood she worked for ABC local radio in Canberra, before switching to Radio National after we moved to Sydney. My sister and I treated the studios and offices of 666 ABC Canberra like a personal playground, sitting in the control room and talking to our mother during news breaks, lying silently on the floor of the studio when she was on air, and even being interviewed by other broadcasters on occasion (I did a mean line in 'books for children and teenagers' when I was, you know, a child and a teenager).
We grew up surrounded by the 'old media'. To this day, my favourite way to spend a Saturday morning is to get a cup of coffee, get some breakfast, and work my way through The Sydney Morning Herald. My mother passed on her addiction to The New Yorker to me. I watch news and current affairs programs voluntarily (unless they are A Current Affair or Today Tonight, which bear about as much resemblance to current affairs as Naomi Robson and Anna Coren bear to real journalists).
Almost all our family friends were journalists, mainly other political journos from the Press Gallery at Parliament House or producers and presenters from 666.
I have worked for a newspaper since I was 17, including a year spent as a sub-editor.
I say all this to emphasise that I have a great deal of affection for the 'old media'. It put food on my table, paid for my overseas holidays and gymanstics and piano lessons and my sister's fancy private school education. Journalism is the air that I breathe.
And yet...
I adore the 'new media'. I love sites like BoingBoing and The Huffington Post and the RiotACT precisely because they are biased and more opinion than news. I love podcasts and iPlayer and the fact that I can comment on news stories and debate them with a wider circle of people than my friends and family. I love the anarchic way news spreads on Twitter, and the way it allows us to hear voices that were previously marginalised or silenced. I love being able to watch or listen to programs when I want, not when the network decides I should. I love that stories stay online longer than the life cycle of a daily newspaper, and that I can refer back to them whenever I want, if only I know what to type into Google. I love that my mother sends me links to articles from The New York Times online.
I love free content.
And that is why I am dismayed and disappointed at The New York Times's decision to start charging non-subscribers to read its online content. This won't happen until 2011, and they're only going to charge people if readers want to look at more than a set number of articles per month, but it's a step in the wrong direction. In a year, the link I've just given you may be behind a paywall, if you've already clicked on a few Times articles.
The New York Times website was easily one of the best newspaper websites. It had well-written articles, including longer features pieces, great slide shows and videos, and was generally of exceptionally high quality. But I'm sorry to say that the instant they start charging for all that, I'm gone. And I imagine it'll be the same for a lot of people.
It makes me a little bit sad, since The New York Times seemed to be an example of 'old' media that got 'new' media and did it right. But for all that, they seem to have failed to grasp the culture that goes with it. I'm sorry to say, but the day we have to start paying for New York Times online content is the day I start getting my news exclusively from BoingBoing and Twitter.
