Finally some good news for photography?

[jamesb84]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2009/nov/25/johnston-press-charging-for-content

Today, one of the UK's largest local and regional publication houses has implemented "paywalls" on 6 of its titles.

Given that an ever increasing number of people feel that online journalism is a free entity and therefore do not feel the need to pay for freelance journalists, photographers or photographs, nor do they feel the need to acknowledge copyright legislation; does this mean that photography will finally have some value attached to it?

I'd like to think it will, and that this may signify a change in approaches to online use of photographs, and the significance of copyright and usage rights.

However, the cynical half of me feels that this could just be a way to line the pockets of the owners (ie. a certain R. Murdoch)...what is everyone's take on this?

[SwitchBlade]

TBH I'd not be surprised if they still tried to get photos for free from photographers. All it is is that they are seeing their money going down as less people buy the paper and read the site for free. An alternate option is to still offer the site for free but make it so awkward to navigate that people buy the paper instead and they don't alienate people by charging.

I remember when papers started moving online they pretty much all charged to view content until they realised that people went elsewhere for their news.

[Nightstalker]

I agree, this is them trying to improve profitability NOT recognise that they need to pay for content or images.

These are not papers that I have ever read but I know that if any of the sites that I do use in the UK and USA start to charge then I will simply go elsewhere.

[amfoto1]

I'm not sure how this translates into good news for photographers...

The Paywall isn't a new idea... It's just the traditional media still trying to figure out a way to make some money online, by selling virtual subscriptions instead of actual ones.

It doesn't mean that the media will pay any more or less for photo submissions... Most likely they'll still try to get all the free submissions they can, and pay as little as possible for those they can't get for free.

As a side note, traditional media subscription fees in nearly all cases have just barely covered the cost of distribution. The real money comes from advertising, which is what ultimately pays for everything else: including pre-press, printing, news gathering, the business office costs and much more.

The real issue is the extreme drop in advertising at all the traditional media. They sell subscriber "eyeballs" to advertisers. And at the same time most have stubbornly adhered to an old, established "one way" pricing scale for their advertising (rates seem to only ever go up, they never come down), even though their subscriber base has been eroding as more and more people learn to find their news online. As subscribers have deserted my local paper, they've doubled their subscription and single copy (news stands and boxes) rates! Hellooooooo!

So, it's a pinch play... Traditional media are delivering less and less each year, yet charging more and more... So advertisers are deserting them in droves for other, less costly methods of marketing. Subscribers are leaving, too.

In the early years of the Internet, the traditional media even tried to be restrictive hoping to counter the coming threat. For example, one newspaper I worked for had a policy they tried to enforce for a while that they wouldn't allow advertisers to put their website URL in their ads! That made advertisiers real happy, you can imagine!

Now this was a company that knew from their own surveys that their annual rate increases had already priced out 85% of the businesses in their marketplace. Each time they raised rates they whittled away a few more of those businesses.

It's not like they weren't warned. We tried to get them to think outside the box and see what was coming way back in the early to mid-1990s. They didn't believe us. They reacted restrictively rather than proactively. They ventured online in a half-assed way, then abandoned their own website "start-ups" after a year or two because they weren't yet finding ways to make them uber profitable. They failed to recognize that this was a matter of survival, learning new ways of doing business. Advertisers we had worked with for many years turned to us for guidance, how to use the Internet, but we couldn't get management to commit to offering products or even establishing basic pricing. One big and very loyal client I worked with waited six months for answers, which I couldn't get for them, before finally going elsewhere to get their needs met.

Tried to form "partnerships" with various groups, that would have been mutually beneficial in the "Brave New World"... But was met with attitude and comments such as, "They need us more than we need them". Well, the traditional media need sure realize they need them now! Oh well, it's a bit too late.

Some traditional media even invested heavily on the side, in other online ventures they didn't understand and didn't realize how speculative those were. Many of those investments simply evaporated in 2000/2001.

Recruitment (employment) advertising and several other types of classifieds are some of the most profitable at newspapers. Monster.com's success was the beginning of the end for recruitment advertising. Craigslist and eBay put a couple more nails in the coffin. No rental/real estate or automotive websites have emerged to dominate nationally or internationally yet... But a lot of smaller, localized sites have taken away most of the print ads in these categories, too.

Overall, the mainstream, traditional media were caught with their virtual trousers down around their ankles and are now reaping their "just rewards" for many decades of very high profitability (above 20% wasn't at all uncommon) and taking heavy advantage of their individual markets.

For the large part, the accountants are running these businesses now, so it's just matter of time and increasing agony along the slow, downward spiral into oblivion. Cost cutting eventually cuts too deep. They have "dumbed down" their staff as far as possible, then laid off most of the experienced ones who remained. They're all about ten or fifteen years too late scrambling trying to "reinvent" themselves into some new, online model.

21 years in the industry....

Wish em luck... Just be sure to get paid in advance for anything you sell them... And cash their checks very promptly!

[EnronRocks]

I don't see where people get the idea that online journalism should have free contributions. The amount of profit news sites make off ad sales is astonishing, and I can't believe people still offer free services to these sites. Although these "paywalls" were put into effect, the already profiting industry will find yet another way to profit from them.