‘A living, breathing allegory of want’: paywall journalism and Wile E. Coyote

The Financial Times’ Digital Media & Broadcasting Conference held in London today has shed renewed light on the question of whether, and how, the public should pay for online journalism.

The conference’s main output so far seems to have been (t)witterings about ‘smartness’ and ‘dynamism’, the likening of Google to the very air we breathe, and that old favourite, the need to keep moving forward in an ever-changing world (I’m looking at you, Arthur Sulzberger Jr.).

I enjoy laughing at business badinage as much as the next layperson, but there does seem to be a worrisome lack of substance beneath all this patter, which mainly comes out of the fact that - what do you know? - none of these digital media fellas can predict the future.   They can’t say what their companies will do as time goes on, because they can’t predict the way technology will turn, and the market turn with it.

The paywall journalism issue and its attendant instabilities are an example of what I would now like to dub the Roadrunner school of cultural development. Publishers’ belated realisation that free online newspapers are not profitable (…) reminds me very much of those cartoons where Roadrunner charges off the end of a cliff and scoots along in the sky, only borne aloft by the conviction that he still has ground under him - plunging downwards when he realises he does not.

It’s going to be hard for publishers to turn around mid-air, now, and get onto the solid ground of charging for things they didn’t before: for better or worse, that wily coyote the reading public has got a taste for free news.  Would we have cared if paywalls had been a natural, original part of our online news experience?  Probably not.

Wile E. Coyote himself, it turns out, was based on Mark Twain’s description of the coyote in Roughing It as ‘a living, breathing, allegory of want.  He is always hungry.’  The public, too, is always hungry, and publishers will need a lot more than thin air, or hot air, to satisfy it if there is to be any real future for digital media.

That’s all folks!

posted by Roberta

Posted 2 years ago 3 notes

Notes:

  1. grindsports reblogged this from gnomeonline
  2. schayerczwu160438 reblogged this from gnomeonline
  3. gnomeonline posted this

About:

A gnome is:

a) a maxim which imparts knowledge, often taught to the young
b) a legendary dwarf

gnome online is:

Ossie Froggatt-Smith works 9-5 as an editor and sometimes a journalist. He studied Byzantium and still thinks about it all the time. He manages gnome.

Edward Randell is a journalist. He sings in Paris with the Voice Messengers, and has written for the TLS and Jazzwise. He edits gnome.

Roberta Klimt spends a lot of time at the British Library, so much that she gets paid for it. She blogs and writes at gnome and the Oxford Left Review. She also studies medieval Italian literature.

Andrew Naughtie studies sociology. He lives in Bristol, but is moving to Chicago, Illinois! He blogs and writes at gnome.





At gnome, we get together with people and promote non-fiction writing because we think that:

a) young non-fiction writing is v v under-appreciated
b) writers are discouraged by brutal subs and celebrities

If you would like to:

a) suggest some useful links/blogs/events to gnome
b) write a non-fiction essay to be produced by gnome

we would love to hear it.

Submit by clicking submit, or get in touch, by emailing gnome [dot] magazine [at] googlemail [dot] com.

Following:

Tumblr Staff