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Loading ...Besen: The future of gay news media
In one of the most important articles of the year, Walter Isaacson wrote in Time Magazine about the shredding of the newspaper business. With free content available online, people are dropping daily subscriptions and newsstand sales are declining. The only way for newspapers to remain profitable is through advertising revenue in the print and online editions.
The problem with this business model, however, is that it leaves newsrooms beholden to advertising interests instead of readers. And, if the economy goes into a tailspin, precipitous drops in advertising can quickly lead to ruin.Isaacson says the way to save the news business is to move to a paradigm where newspapers go completely digital and readers pay directly for online content. For example, a web surfer who wants to read an individual story online can pay a nickel – or pay a larger fee for a weekly e-subscription.
The main obstacle is creating technology that makes reading e-news as pleasurable as the newspaper experience. Within a few years, however, new technology will make this possible, with several products scheduled to hit the market.
If mainstream newspapers are having a difficult time, it should be no surprise that gay and lesbian publications are disappearing faster than a rabbit at a magic show. There is a long list of venerable GLBT publications that have recently vanished.
Earlier this month, Gay City News reported, “the investment fund that owns the Washington Blade, the Southern Voice, Genre magazine, and other gay publications has been forced into receivership by the federal Small Business Administration (SBA), which will sell the fund’s assets and distribute the proceeds to investors.”
When the technology reaches fruition, the GLBT media should embrace Isaacson’s model. The gay community’s top reporters do a superior job covering the news and offer in-depth analysis that can’t be duplicated. I am willing to bet that people will pay for such content.
The question is, will the publications themselves actually survive or will the GLBT media become a collection of enterprising freelance reporters who sell by the story? While most items would not bring a large bounty, there would likely be a couple of breaking stories that would pay the bills. For example, a blockbuster story with 250,000 downloads at a nickel per purchase would yield $12,500.
Of course, new technology would also have to make it more difficult to cut and paste more than one paragraph per story. And, much like cameras that take pictures of those that run red lights, an electronic surveillance system that imposed small penalties – perhaps a dollar per infraction – would have to be developed. There would always be ways to get around the system. But, one would hope that enough people would have the decency to pay for good reporting to make it work.
GLBT bloggers should also welcome changes where they would actually get paid for their labor. It is disgraceful that some of our leading lights are posting during lunch breaks at their day jobs. Given their influence and size of their audiences, it is absurd that they have not reaped enough wealth to blog full-time.
Fans may balk, but they must realize they are also getting shortchanged. Imagine how much better most blogs would be if the writers had another 8-10 hours a day to conduct research? The products would be infinitely superior and be of greater value. Ultimately, the axiom, “you get what you pay for” rings true.
People must also realize that the status quo will soon lead to burnout among the best bloggers. Without a financial incentive commensurate with their work, don’t be surprised when your favorite bloggers choose relationships over readership. If you don’t pay, many will fade away – which would be a great loss to the GLBT community.
In order for this business model to work, the leading bloggers, gossip sites and journalists will have to create a new type of union – where they jump off the cliff all at once. There would also be an initial loss of readers, but who cares? The writer would still make more money by retaining a subset of paying readers. And, many of the dissenters would come back when they realized the true value of a product they once viewed as their birthright.
On a similar note, the continued improvement of E-book technology may save the GLBT publishing industry. On March 29, the legendary Oscar Wilde bookstore will close in Greenwich Village, citing economic trouble. This follows the demise of the famed bookstore Crossroads Market in Dallas.
With few venues to sell books and fewer publishers, it is a tough time for gay authors. While the major retailers have GLBT sections, rarely do these books receive prime shelf space. E-books may be a way to cut out the middleman, save on printing costs and let gay authors sell directly to the reading public. Best of all, no more hand cramps from book signings!
The article in Time Magazine showed that the very concept of a magazine was a relic beyond its time. In the end, the tumultuous changes forced by the recession may be what resuscitates and revolutionizes the GLBT publishing industry.
Counterpoint:
As a small community there is always a market for our media, particularly in urban centers where many people grab a paper to read on the train/bus/etc.
Oscar Wilde was dying at the dawn of broadband, most of their business came from tourists, who can now just buy online.
The LGBT “community” in NYC has not patronized Oscar Wilde in a long long time.
As for our “national” magazines, I happen to work with several gay men ranging in age from 21 to 48 (and not in a bar/club/restaurant) and more than half of them don’t read the Advocate, Genre, OUT, etc in print OR online.
I hope you are wrong about the future of gay papers. I publish a small monthly alternative lifestyle tabloid in Bellingham Washington. It has a readership of arround 4000 and is supported entirely through advertising. It’s available in 57 outlets in a two county area. (from Everett to the Canadian border a 60 mile radius) I haven’t seen a drop in advertisers yet but that may be because the rates are very low and no one makes a living from the profits. (I bring in about $400.00 over cost) Underground papers like The Betty Pages may be all that can survive our changing economy. It would be nice to grow large though, and I am not going to stop the effort.
Betty Desire
I won’t pay a nickel for a story. What I would do is pay some voluntary fee to a particular reporter whose work I felt had earned it in the past year.
Wow.
This is a monumental moment!
No religion bashing? No dreary gloomy bs?
What have you done with Wayne Besen?
I think someone must have gotten laid last night.
There goes my free lunch Besen but as one of your readers ya got my nickel at least in theory though I’m not sold yet. I might ask you to sign a contract that says you won’t charge me a quarter next week.
I guess I’m afraid of controlling the web. Sometimes good intentions grow into monsters.
As a news junky but a non-subscriber to papers and most magazines I would allow myself to be nibbled to death by nickel-a-story bites only if without $ incentive there will be less dependable news. Or if I had no access otherwise.
I’m a long-time public radio “subscriber” and don’t like how ads have slipped in to pay the bills. But it’s partially because there are many non-paying listeners. If our public radio station played only to paid subscribers would they have less audience and less educational effect? You say who cares if you lose some readers.
Another take–with all these camera phones and bloggers the world is often watching when it wasn’t with a professional media machine that could or politically would not be everyplace. Would unionizing prevent our little eyes from showing what we see and think? Would inflation or demand because of popularity raise the cost per article? There’s something to be said for the dedication and motive of the unpaid. Fresh ideas often come from the non-pros. I know they aren’t just cranking for the $ or because they are playing to what I want to hear. There’s also something to be said for a professional, educated, dependable, organization able to send reporters to glean news from wherever. I just don’t want to end of with a few bags of wind like AM radio or a “star” system where the voices all start sounding alike.
My home page is a collection of favored news sites of online magazines and newspapers. I don’t want to lose any of them so I understand the concept of the need for a pay as you consume system. I’d like to see some discussion about articles, news, byline availability based on site subscription. One of my online sources still publishes paper (about $60/year) and the last I looked had an article-limited/free edition online. It’s an expensive weekly I pick up at the library. I would subscribe to the full edition online if the cost was much less and I think many others would too. So in this case some kind of pay as I read deal might be just right for me. There must be some example of websites that already use this pay per hit consumption to tell us how it’s working.
There are environmental reasons not to subscribe to magazines and newspapers-paper and pollution.
Poverty of the often invisible underclass limits book consumption besides the surfeit of other entertainments out there.
We’re in the midst of a possibly fabulous consciousness change that also may be a change in how things are consumed and paid for. It feels like a dangerous time when poor decisions, perhaps well intended, might undermine that growth.
Say it ain’t so!
Perhaps if gay magazines like Genre and Out focused more on relevant news stories, rather than on the perfectly chiseled eye-candy of the fetish-ized boy-toys, they would get more loyal readers who’d be willing to pay a subscription bill. Not to mention the ridiculous fashion layouts that focus solely on EXTREMELY expensive labels like Versace, Cavalli, Dolce & Gabanna etc. and $40 underwear???! Give us a break!
Most magazines aimed at gay men have become catalogs, just like magazines for straight women, which do nothing but try and convince us that we need expensive clothes, the perfect body, butt implants, a year round tan and flawless skin in order to be worthy.
Heaven forbid that we focus on anything other than muscles, sex and expensive clothes. Oh, and expensive property.
I agree with Wayne on this one. I would even pay a subscription to 365gay.com if it provided meaningful content and more indepth analysis.
Talk about nickel and dimeing you to death.
Why would I pay for a subscription to a gay print media source when the most interesting article is about who may or may not be sleeping with. On the off chance they cover something interesting or important I can usually get better (read: less biased) coverage from mainstream media for free. I’ll start paying for news when journalists stop trying to tell me what to think and just present the facts.
I visit 365gay.com at least four times today. It has provided me with information that I usually don’t find anywhere else on the web. Thank you…
Alex H Said “said” it right. Maybe if the gay news media actually focused on news, i would pay to read it. The current gay media is 99% focused on selling that $40 pair of underwear that will only fit 1% of the LGBT market. It’s great eye candy, but I can still get my fill of that out at a club.
Suppose you are a very small neighborhood based GLBT business. Up until recently, you’ve advertised in the local “gay rag” and been sure to reach your target local market.
What sort of online experience is going to provide you with that exposure to that particular market, just in your city or your neighborhood, to GLBT people? Even if I were to glance at 2 or 3 pages of 365gay.com a week, and a couple of visits to gay blogs per day, they would not provide the same exposure for the hundreds of advertisers who are contained in one single print copy of a big-city GLBT paper. (I’m thinking of when I read the Washington Blade in the 80s-90s or San Diego’s Gay and Lesbian Times in the 90s-00s.)
Losing the local GLBT media is a loss for your local businesses, and your neighborhood, too.
I just looked into the price of e-books (I am running out of shelves for my books and wondered whether some of my collection could go electronic). The prices quoted on Amazon are OUTRAGEOUS for something I already own on paper (averaging 6 or 7 dollars per title). Six or seven bucks for the privilege of downloading a pile of electrons??? So if you think 5 cents per article is inexpensive, think again. I’ll pay for content, but I won’t pay at a rate that imagines that its creator has a right to anything more than a living. And as someone recently pointed out in a debate about copyright: most artists today are not struggling with piracy; they are struggling with obscurity. Charging me ANY amount to learn about those obscure artists’ works (print, photo, music, etc) on a website will just guarantee that I dont’ go there. I’m sorry that traditional media are in trouble, but it’s really not my problem.