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Kinsley's rhetorical overreach

The main point of Michael Kinsley's anti-micropayments Times op-ed--"Two bucks per reader per month is not going to save newspapers"--is well taken, and worth considering if, like me, you've previously been intrigued by the pro-micropayments argument. (Ditto for the anti-micropayments case made by Gabriel Sherman today on Slate.)

But Kinsley goes too far with another claim in his piece. Here's the passage in question:

Newspaper readers have never paid for the content (words and photos). What they have paid for is the paper that content is printed on. A week of The Washington Post weighs about eight pounds and costs $1.81 for new subscribers, home-delivered. With newsprint (that’s the paper, not the ink) costing around $750 a metric ton, or 34 cents a pound, Post subscribers are getting almost a dollar’s worth of paper free every week — not to mention the ink, the delivery, etc. [emphasis added]

The problem, I think, is that Kinsley is so eager to make his case that he treats reader intent as a non-issue.

By which I mean: If I decide to fork over a few bucks for the Sunday Globe or Times these days, rather than reading it online, I am deciding to pay extra for the (atavistic) pleasure of holding an actual newspaper in my hands. But if all I was getting for my money was blank pages, I'd keep my money in my wallet. It's the content available therein--and the (atavistic) privilege of interacting with that content the way I do when I hold something I hold in my hands, as opposed to when I'm staring at something on a screen in front of me--that's making me give up my lunch money.

Project back 20 or 30 years, meanwhile, and Kinsley's claim looks even more questionable. I'm reasonably sure that no one decided to budget X number of dollars to read the Globe (or the Times, or any other paper) in the late '80s because they wanted to rub some paper between their fingers. Instead--and contrary to Kinsley's claim--they wanted the *content* that was printed on that paper. And at that time, there was no other way to get it.

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8 Comments

  • ani dalit said:

    One of my problems with on-line versions of things (library catalogues, newspapers, etc.) is that I am never quite sure whether I have missed something (important).  With a physical newspaper or index cards in files I can get a sense easily of how the body is structured and then learn how to navigate it and to search it thoroughly.  I can methodically go through it, perhaps using a particular strategy.  On-line I feel that I am at the mercy of searching tools whose algorithms I don't really understand, and, since I can't "see" the whole thing (site maps aren't much help because they're vague) for an overview, I am never quite sure I've found everything the site offers that I'm looking for.  This may speak to my own ineptitude with electronic technology, but, to get back to the issue at hand, I like that I can flip the pages in the newspaper sections that interest me and make sure that I haven't missed something I want to read.

    February 10, 2009 8:34 PM
  • Dan Kennedy said:

    Adam ... it's pretty hard to argue math. As the noted newspaper consultant Bill Belichick once said, it is what it is.

    February 10, 2009 10:06 PM
  • Adam said:

    Dan, you're focused (like Kinsley) on what the paper does with the money it gets from the consumer. I'm focused on why the consumer spends the money in the first place--which strikes me as important when you're debating whether people will pay to get news.

    February 11, 2009 7:21 AM
  • ani dalit said:

    As the vendor, you want my money.  How you match it to your costs may not affect my willingness to pay for what you are selling.  You think you're selling me the cup, because it costs you more than the lemonade, but I'm thirsty and I think I'm buying the liquid.  If you figure out a way to provide me liquid in a different kind of container, maybe I'll buy it.  But if it's like one of those paper cones for ice cream, maybe I won't, maybe I'll go where I can get a real sugar cone or a dish out of which to eat my ice cream, instead.

    Or maybe the issue can be thought of as a cubist painting -- multiple perspectives simultaneously.

    February 11, 2009 7:36 AM
  • ani dalit said:

    And as I understand it, part of the problem with selling the news is that the lemonade (news content), with or without the cup, is actually too expensive for buyers, thus giving rise to the need for advertisers or some other third-party subvention.

    February 11, 2009 8:16 AM
  • RM said:

    you're spot-on. also, because kinsley is kinsley, and think that's sufficient, and has fooled many others into thinking the same, he's exempted from supporting his arguments. seems like it's enough that he founded slate; also it's apparently the case that because slate failed at this, everyone will. but first slate is an opinion site, not a news site. second slate is not very good. but another bit of sophism is the cry that newspapers can't survive on $2 a month from a million -- no kidding. but that million is on top of the millions the best papers already have. finally i favor the subscription model because it might be all that will work, and will make the surviving papers better. the newspaper business can't redirect its old revenue stream; it needs to create a new one.

    February 11, 2009 1:51 PM
  • Mr Punch said:

    I agree with ani dalit -- I read a newspaper differently depending on whether it's on paper or on screen, and I read more of it on paper. (A different reader technology might close the gap some, I suppose.)

    One thing I read more of in hard copy is advertising. This, it seems to me, is a significant part of the issue of how to pay for newspaper-like services going forward: Is there a way to capture the advertising revenues while ceding the subscription/newsstand revenues, or not?

    February 11, 2009 2:00 PM
  • danny bloom said:

    "Reading" online will never be the same! -- "Screening" enters the

    online vocabulary.

    Do you "screen" news online, or do you "read" news in print

    newspapers? -- A new word has been coined to refer to reading

    information online, changing the way we take in information

    What you are doing now is not reading, but

    "screening." Yes, you are at this very moment screening the text

    printed digitally on this computer screen. You are not reading text on

    a paper surface; you are "screening" this article through the lens of

    the computer screen in front of you. A new word is born -- screening!

    When a top computer industry writer at the New York Times was told

    about this new term, he told me in a  one-word email note:

    "Hmmmmmmm."

    Screening? Can anyone just coin a new word and make it stick? No, but

    new words are coined every day, and some stick and some don't. Time

    will tell whether or not "screening" (to mean "reading information on

    a computer screen, as distinct from reading a print newspaper or

    magazine or book") will stay with us or not. For now, the word has

    been accepted by the editors at urbandictionary.com and is listed

    here:

    www.urbandictionary.com/define.php

    Screening is defined as: "To read text on a computer screen, cellphone

    screen, Kindle screen or PDA screen or BlackBerry screen; replaces the

    term "reading" which now only refers to reading print text on paper."

    Example: "I hate reading print newspapers now. I do all my screening online."

    The word is so new, not everyone has seen it yet. And many do not

    agree with its coinage.

    Amit Gilboa, an Israeli writer living in Singapore, told me:

    "No, it's still reading. Whether in a book, a print newspaper,

    chalkboard, whiteboard, it's still reading words made up of letters.

    Screening is still reading."

    However, Hidetoshi Abe in Tokyo, Japan, told this reporter he likes

    the new term and agrees it fits our new Internet age. "I think

    'screening' makes perfect sense to represent the way we now take in

    information via computer screens. It's a whole new ballgame."

    Reading, of course, is a complex cognitive process of decoding symbols

    printed on

    a paper surface for the purpose of deriving meaning (reading

    comprehension) and/or constructing meaning, according to scholars.

    Written information on a

    printed page is received by the retina, processed by the primary

    visual cortex, and interpreted in Wernicke's area.

    But when we "read" online (or "screen", in the new coinage), the

    digitalized information is processed in a different way. Reading

    online is [b]not[/b] the same thing as reading on a paper surface in a book or

    magazine or newspaper.

    Reading on a print paper surface is a means of language acquisition,

    of communication, and of sharing information and ideas. Screening on

    the Internet is a horse

    of a different color.

    Readers of print paper texts use a variety of reading strategies to

    assist with decoding (to translate symbols into sounds or visual

    representations of language), and comprehension. Screening online uses

    other strategies, and the information is processed by our brains in a

    different way as well.

    Reading text on print paper is now an important way for the general

    population in many societies to access information and make meaning.

    However, a new form of reading, called "screening" now takes place when a

    person "reads" text on a computer screen or PDA screen or cellphone

    screen. This form of reading, now called "screening", is a very

    different form of  communcation.

    You have just "screened" your very first article online using this new

    term. You are now an Internet screener. Congratulations, and welcome

    to this amazing new world.

    Comments are more than welcome, pro and con.

    February 16, 2009 9:35 AM

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