Paywalls, Twitter, and Tiger Woods: The changing face of Internet journalism

Updates: See end of story.

Though Rupert Murdoch’s decision to move newspaper content behind a paywall is the most publicized decision of its kind, it is not the only one. In an Op Ed in British paper The Guardian, journalism professor Tim Luckhurst (left) writes that “Johnston Press, Britain’s most prolific newspaper publisher with 286 titles, will place the online content of six of its local titles behind paywalls.”

“Shoddy, Propagandist Ranting”

Luckhurst, to put it mildly, looks unfavorably on Internet journalism. He thinks that putting news content free on-line was a mistake brought about “by a potent cocktail of commercial fantasy and woolly ideology topped with a sprinkling of youth appeal.”

And of blogs, he writes:

The internet is a valuable tool. It can bring inspiring, diligent and creative reporting into every home. But it will not do so by obliging consumers to accept the shoddy, propagandist ranting some categorise as citizen journalism and less credulous critics recognise as a deplorable reversion to the days when news was always deployed as a political weapon and only occasionally reported.

A writer of my acquaintance, Adam Tinworth, has written a rebuttal. He remarks, “Mr Luckhurst seems blissfully unaware that he has just produced – in that self-same paragraph – a piece of ‘shoddy, propagandist ranting’.” He continues:

To dismiss the whole of the free-to-air reporting, analysis and news-gathering being done on blogs and the myriad forms of social media that exist in that one paragraph is to duck the crucial question of “what do you offer that’s so much more compelling than the work done on free content”. Worse than that, it shows a worrying ignorance of the material and work that is being done by the amateur and the entrepreneurial professional in the field of online journalism. Research is meant to be a crucial part of journalism, and it had better be part of any business plan. There’s no research here, just prejudice and, I suspect, fear.

This reminded me of a story I originally meant to cover a few days ago. Ironically, it is about how on-line media can be significantly faster in getting the news out than even the Internet outlets of traditional news sources. (Read on below the jump.)

Tiger Woods: The Internet vs. CNN

In TechCrunch last week, MG Siegler wrote about how Twitter and Google News were faster than CNN to break the story of Tiger Woods’s car crash. Fully 45 minutes before the story appeared on CNN, Siegler was receiving multiply-retweeted Twitter updates saying, “BULLETIN — REPORT: FAMED GOLFER TIGER WOODS SERIOUSLY INJURED AFTER CRASH NEAR FLORIDA HOME.”

Within ten to fifteen minutes, Google News had reports from local sources, and a number of important details.

Cut to about 30 minutes after that. CNN finally got its “breaking” story up. And what did it contain? This:

(CNN) — Golfer Tiger Woods was injured in a car accident near his home, Florida officials say.

Seriously. That’s it.

Which is to say, it took CNN 45 minutes to report what Twitter already knew—without any of the additional details that Google News had found. Compared to Internet journalism, it would seem that the online paper was a paper tiger in the Tiger Woods story.

Twitter as Walter Cronkite

In a follow-up post, Siegler compares the role of Twitter in the Tiger Wood crash to Walter Cronkite in the Kennedy assassination. He rebuts the idea that traditional media takes longer in order to do more fact-checking, and notes that when shocking events happen, people want facts as soon as possible—even if they have not been checked yet.

As an example, Siegler cites Cronkite’s reading out unconfirmed information on the air in the wake of the Kennedy shooting. The public did not care that the information was unconfirmed; they still wanted to know it right away.

That was what the traditional media did then, and during 9/11, and when other great disasters or shocking events take place. It seems that Twitter is starting to fill that role now.

We’re entering a new age of realtime information. Some people don’t like that because they fear inaccurate reports. They’ll cite the Balloon Boy example as how things get out of control on services like Twitter. Well you know where the Balloon Boy reports were way more out of control? On CNN and the other cable news channels. And you know where I first heard sound arguments that there is no way that balloon could hold a full-grown child? Twitter.

This is the climate in which traditional journalists want to begin charging for their news.

The Internet: It’s More Than Newspapers

And this brings me to a follow-up to the Adam Tinworth post that I mentioned earlier, in which Tinworth calls attention to a comment someone left on Tim Luckhurst’s Op Ed.

The model you have of your consumer’s behaviour is wrong, they aren’t using the internet as a way of reading a newspaper, they are using the internet, some of which consists of newspaper content, its a different thing. It was bad enough having to explain this in 1999, I find it a bit surprising it still needs saying in 2009.

If newspapers are going to want to start charging for their on-line content, they had better start providing value for the money. And when consumers can get faster-breaking facts, verified or not, via free Internet resources than they can from traditional news sources, that could end up a tricky proposition.

Update: Another writer of my acquaintance, Eric A. Burns of Websnark, weighs in on the issue, with a post I wish had been written before mine so I could have incorporated it as well.

Burns points out that a significant part of the Internet’s value comes through free linking, which is prevented by paywalls—and this is why Wikipedia is getting used a lot more than the Encyclopedia Britannica these days.

Update 2: Rob Beschizza blogs at BoingBoing about why paywalls won’t save most newspapers.

The critical point here is that advertising is still what makes money for news, even when there’s a cover charge. Paywalls aren’t just sold to readers. They must be sold to advertisers. Paid walls make the eyeballs behind them much more valuable.

Update 3: Devin Coldewey at Crunchgear dissents from Siegler’s comparison of Twitter to Walter Cronkite, for a number of reasons. Most notably, Twitter is better at spreading information than originating it, and it spreads what is popular rather than what is important.