Last week, I stood up in front of an audience of 150 travel bloggers to talk about the paywall around The Sunday Times. I sat down 15 minutes later to less than muted applause: the adjective most bloggers used to describe my chat was not brilliant, insightful or helpful. Just 'brave.' Having had a few days to recover and read a few blogs related to #tbcamp10, some reflective thoughts....
How much of the mainly negative reaction was due to the paywall being a Murdoch initiative? A lot I'd venture. But my main contention is that paying for newspaper content is a work in progress across the media - @mailonline said today it will charge for its iPad version and future projects. The Guardian upped its payment on the iPhone app last month. It's not just Murdoch.
Monetizing blogs? A main plank of the evening, myself aside. Considered thoughts from @mrdavidwhitely and @501 holidays addressed this issue and concluded that a skilled writing/original thought profile on blogs has helped bring in other work. You don't necessarily need mainstream media to promote your worth or rely on for exposure.
But be realistic. A lot of journos and bloggers write for ego and self-worth. That's fine. Don't complain about the status quo or payments: enjoy the ride.
Working alone. It's why bloggers attend events such as Darren's blogcamp, for ideas, to socialise and collectively whinge. Just like old school journalists. But I hope the blogcampers also talked about forming co-operatives of, say, rail or cruise bloggers to pool knowledge and leverage outlets. Hunting in packs means being organised and working together.
The post-blogcamp Twitter debate on creating a Fringe around WTM took this point further. A showcase of bloggers creating dynamic content over two or three days is a credible and exciting concept - turn the tables and take your content out there to invited (paying) audiences. Darren/Kevin? Sort it out.
You're one of us now...
ReplyDeleteI think you're right. A lot of the opprobrium will be due to the fact that Dear Uncle Rupert's fingerprints are on the paywall. There are also a few 'everything must be free on the web' fascists out there.
I'd have been just about the only one in there openly applauding the move to put up a paywall - the more we can retrain people to understand that content has value, the better. Alas, I think you need 75% of the papers doing the same thing to make it work properly.
Most of the bile would be saved for the policy of not paying for work that Rupes is expecting people to pay to read. There's a certain level of hypocrisy in that, but I think you did as good a job as possible of explaining the benefits. Interestingly, I reckon there's something in the exclusive club approach with lots of lovely data to present to advertisers wanting to target certain niches.
But you are quite right on the blogger collective approach. People tend to like reading a lot of good content in one place. RSS feeders & Twitter do that to a certain extent. But get five or six of the best writers/ debate-stirrers in the same place, and there's potential. After all, newspapers have done this successfully with columnists for years. There's no reason why the fundamental principles behind it should translate to our brave new world. I suspect coralling a few good bloggers together will be a little like herding cats, however.
This said, if the estimable Mr Murdoch would like to wave a few crisp fiver-shaped balls of wool around, I'm sure those cats would be much more manageable :)
@MrDavidWhitley. Not sure who this @MrDavidWhitely chap of whom you speak is.
And, actually, I suspect the collective format that will work best won't be 5 cruise bloggers getting together - it'll be 1 adventure blogger, 1 rail blogger, 1 cruise blogger, 1 family blogger and 1 travel planning blogger (or something like that) getting together. The variety of content and debates between the different perspectives will be what get the wider audience to drop by more regularly.
ReplyDeleteWelcome to the dark side. To be fair Steve, you did spark more debate than the rest of us combined. I left London with 5 other bloggers and the debate on paid content was still in full flow an hour later.
ReplyDeleteI think you've nailed a point that all bloggers would do well to take on board: if you're serious about making money from your efforts then you can't wait for the mainstream media to pay you - it just isn't going to happen. Once everyone accepts this then the emotion around what the Times is doing/not doing should subside.
So then the co-operative idea starts to look very sensible. A group of well-respected writers getting together and able to approach groups such as AITO, ABTOF and the larger operators to offer a high quality writing service (web copy, blogs, syndicated content).
The group would keep a collective travel schedule, so tour operators/ travel agents would know who was able to provide content from where and when.
The writers would benefit from collective muscle while the tour operators would get reliable access to a high quality of writers and would be able to choose their writer to match their particular requirement (cruise, rail, religious pilgrimage etc)
The challenge is getting enough people to work together on setting up such a group, so that no-one is spending too much time on admin. But the more we talk about the idea, the more it seems to make commercial sense.
Thanks guys. First thought is that while the idea of individuals pooling content makes so much sense, the buyers - Aito, Abtof whoever - also have to be up to speed. Which such august bodies may not be. So it's chiselling, it's contacts and it's belief. And no going around in circles, more sticking to the idea and seeing it through
ReplyDeleteI think there’s also a popular “David & Goliath” image that a lot of people have in mind, picturing the lone blogger battling against the vast Murdoch Empire for the crumbs of online survival. I was surprised at just how emotional the reaction was. In the queue for the toilets, a friend of mine from Belgium asked what the discussion was about. I’d barely begun the ‘p’ of ‘paywall’ when strangers started interrupting and shouting. I never managed to get to the end of the word, let alone anything else. That’s why I said you were brave ;)
ReplyDeleteAs for the co-op idea? That’s food for thought...