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Is journalism clinging to an outdated way of doing things? Yes, but to be fair, so is politics…

September 24, 2012 12:06 pm

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So Guardian journo David Leigh has argued in favour of a £2 per month tax on broadband to help fund struggling newspapers. It’s an absolutely ridiculous idea – making some print journalists seem like a modern day version of the Luddites. It’s a desperate attempt of an industry to try and ignore/avoid the sands of time and keep their outmoded business model struggling along for a bit longer. It’s the equivalent of a tax on cars to help preserve horse-drawn carriages. It’s taxing one industry to prop up another. It’s surely a non-starter, and so far the only other advocate seems to be another Guardian journalist (and even that support outlines most of the criticisms of the plan without addressing many of them). Although I’m sure it’s not the case – the repeated support of this from the Guardian just makes it look like some sort of agreed line handed down from the Scott Trust.

The thing is good quality journalism is vital for our democracy. We wouldn’t know half as much about phone hacking (which has damaged the industry enormously) if it wasn’t for quality print journalism. The 24 hour news environment – including blogs like this one – survives and thrives off the back of quality newspaper and magazine reporting. There has to be a way to adequately monetise huge online audiences for newspapers. Unfortunately no-one has managed that (yet) – but the answer isn’t a broadband broadsheet tax. Newspapers won’t necessarily die as media organisations, but stamping the news on dead trees (which soon become out of date) will certainly become a thing of the past. I love newspapers, and journalism – and I actually quite like the majority of journalists I’ve met in my time (like politicians, they are all treated like the worst of their kind).

But the industry needs to change because the old business model is over, subsidy or no subsidy.

Yet the media aren’t the only ones struggling with an outdated model that will, at some point, collapse from under them, threatening to take the whole show tumbling down into the abyss. Politics is in exactly the same position. The “market share” of politics (i.e. how many people can be bothered to vote) has declined as sharply as anything in the print sector in the past few decades. And voting is both free, and matters immensely. Politics is at least as badly hobbled as the crumbling industry of print news.

Off the top of my head – here are three key ways in which the model we use for politics is outdated and needs to change:

a) Language: “Black Rod”, “Right Honourable Member” – where do you draw the line between grand traditions that should be protected and completely outdated language that excludes all but the most ardent of political nerds? And even this political nerd gets baffled by the intricacies of Erskine May. It’s not how people talk, and it contributes, in a small way, to the perception that politician aren’t real people at all. And while we’re on, not being able to call someone a liar – when they are lying – is as dishonest as the act of lying. Unparliamentary language my arse. Call a spade a spade and a lie and lie.

b) Campaigning: Knock on the door. Ask who they vote for. If it’s Labour they had just gauranteed themselves relentless Election Day pestering. If it’s not Labour they get a mark next to their name and we ignore them – sometimes for months, sometimes forever. It might work for winning elections on low turnouts (it does, I’ve done it), but what kind of way to treat people is this? And at its simplest level politics is about how people treat each other. The way we campaign alienates the public and is unappealing to many activists. Could a little more conversation produce a little more action, as Elvis didn’t say? It could certainly ensure the door gets slammed in fewer faces. And fewer people giving up on voting for good.

c) The Westminster bubble: If the business of politics largely takes place in one confined place, and most MPs live a big chunk of the year in London – is it any surprise our politics is so London-centric? And is this a case for even shorter parliamentary terms and MPs spending more time in their constituencies? Yes. Because parliamentary recess isn’t a holiday – at least for most Labour MPs.

So whilst it’s easy to see how the current model for print media is failing, it’s even clearer that the model for how we do politics in the country is failing even more. And that’s an industry that we can’t ever allow to fold completely and crash in on itself. But something radical needs to change – because we’re already peering over the edge, into the abyss…

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  • http://twitter.com/RF_McCarthy Roger McCarthy

    The most obvious solution to these three problems is an English Parliament elected by PR and sitting somewhere like Birmingham or Manchester or York.

    The Commons and Lords can then continue as a federal parliament with all the mummery they want but the key decisions on health and education and (assuming further devolution) taxation and benefits can get taken in a modern and more genuinely representative assembly.

    PR would also change the doorstep dynamic considerably – although what’s happened to Labour’s vote in formerly impregnable strongholds up in Scotland makes this a careful what you wish for solution.

    And the Westminster bubble won’t be burst by giving the MPs more time away from Westminster – do you really imagine that Whig and Tory MPs were better representatives of their constituents in the days of Walpole and the Pitts when Parliament sat for even less of the year and attendance was largely optional? – only a change to the electoral system that removes most safe seats and greatly reduces the patronage power of the government can force a real change.

     

  • Hugh

    Nice try, but the Guardian proposing a tax  to subsidise its continued existence is far too obvious for satire.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1314187826 Dave Clemo

    CAMRA has more members than the Labour Party. Says it all.
    “There are only three types of people: Makers, Takers and Fakers” Robert A Heinlein.
    We need more of the first sort and fewer of the other two

    • Brumanuensis

      Is that you Mitt Romney?

    • Brumanuensis

      Is that you Mitt Romney?

    • Brumanuensis

      Is that you Mitt Romney?

  • therealguyfaux

    Never forget the sage advice of  T. P. O’Neill, American Speaker of the House of Representatives for the Democrats during the Reagan terms of office (and for those few who may not know, that’s the “Prime Minister” equivalent),  who said “All politics is local.”  How can/does what folks are doing in London make any difference to Horace and Doris in East Bogbrush,  Anyshire? If their MP can’t make the case that (s)he is on top of all matters that affect the locals, why should that person remain in Westminster? “Pork Barrel” politics aside, any number of issues national in scope have a microcosmic effect in the constituency, and an MP who will be in the constituency often enough to know HOW, will, through social media, be able to convey such information to those who can be arsed to find out.  It’s not merely the fringe parties who need to rely on getting their message out unfiltered by the large Establishment Media. And that being the case, the media, realising that it will need to address such “direct marketing,” if you will, may have to shift their focus to having more stories online so that readers/voters can do side-by-side comparison, going back and forth between the window showing the reportage and the window of the MP’s side of it. Fishwrap journalism is a buggy-whip industry at best, and probably may always have some niche perhaps, but to be bailed out by a dedicated tax? Yeah right. And PS, don’t knock on doors, put a leaflet (on recycled paper of course) through the letter slot saying, Meet your MP/candidate at such and such time and place; those really interested, who WANT to vote, are a much better audience. Dead trees DO have their uses after all.

  • http://www.robertsharp.co.uk Robert

    I think the way we do politics is also outdated for this new era of coalition government.  I think the Liberal Democrats should be held to account for their role in this Government, but much of the criticism of Nick Clegg reads as if he is the Prime Minister with a Parliamentary majority, not the minor partner in a coalition.  We don’t seem to have the political or journalistic language to deal with the nuance of this kind of political arrangement, and I think the scrutiny of Government suffers as a result.  

  • woolfiesmiff

    Great blog and absolutely correct. However there is a business model for online journalism it just doesn’t involve large media groups. In the same way politics no longer works with large ( but rapidly shrinking) one size fits all left/right parties it will evolve into much smaller groupings. In my area local politics has seen a local independent group form the opposition party in the last two elections. Only missing out by three wards in last election. This is in a Tory area where there is now just 1 labour councillor and 2 Lib Dems. This trend will grow and will also start to affect national politics too.

  • http://twitter.com/youngian67 Ian Young

    Not often talked about is Thursday voting and the race to count and form a government by Friday lunchtime. Why not keep polling stations open over the weekend? 

  • http://twitter.com/youngian67 Ian Young

    Not often talked about is Thursday voting and the race to count and form a government by Friday lunchtime. Why not keep polling stations open over the weekend? 

    • Brumanuensis

      Or perhaps just having polling day on a Saturday?

    • Brumanuensis

      Or perhaps just having polling day on a Saturday?

      • AlanGiles

         I suppose that would work if elections stay in the spring, Brum, but autumn Saturdays? – might be problematic. The nation seems transfixed on Saturdays throughout the dour autumn and winter months, glued to their TV sets to watch ageing and/or defunct “personalities” , and an ancient  “entertainer” compere  strictly come prancing, or self obsessed nobodies emoting on X Factor.

        Not a new phenomena, actually. I clearly remember in 1964 that Thursday evenings episode of “Steptoe and Son” on election day  being switched from it’s 8 p.m. showing till after the polls closed, so as not to detract from people going out to vote. Mind you, they had an excuse in those days – no VTRs!

    • Brumanuensis

      Or perhaps just having polling day on a Saturday?

  • http://twitter.com/youngian67 Ian Young

    Not often talked about is Thursday voting and the race to count and form a government by Friday lunchtime. Why not keep polling stations open over the weekend? 

  • Brumanuensis

    I’d like to offer a defence of what David Leigh wrote, with the caveat that I understand the objections raised and think that moving towards a paywall system is perhaps a better and more viable alternative.

    …

    Journalism is a public good and a vibrant press similarly is one of the essential components of a free society. We understand the importance of funding a public broadcaster like the BBC, because alongside the proliferation of niche channels, a major national network providing a minimum standard of excellence in public broadcasting [cue righty whingeing about how the BBC stands for 'British Bolshevik Corporation'] is a recognisable public good –  if you want to see what happens in the absence of a well-funded public broadcaster, look at PBS in the United States (although that said it remains the only decent television news you’ll find on a visit to the US).

    I can see obvious practical problems with Leigh’s proposal – disbursement being the main one – but the survival of the press is a serious issue. I would be more comfortable if rather than being disbursed in accordance with market share – which is a classic subsidy for the already well-off – the funds were allocated to assist our already struggling local newspapers, or to set up a series of bursaries for young journalists who wished to enter into the profession, but lacked the means to afford unpaid internships. Perhaps if a newspaper wished to fund a particular project, it could apply for a grant or loan from the fund. And so forth.

    We have to acknowledge that the internet is not a panacea. It’s all very well to point at blogs and talk a lot of quite frankly airy-fairy nonsense about ‘citizen journalists’, etc, but most blogging relies on recirculated content, not generating original content through independent investigating. The problem with paywalls is that they make this nonetheless valuable dissemination of information more complicated, by erecting barriers to its flow – rather like tariffs in relation to trade. 

    As a subscriber to the New York Times and the Financial Times, I am not completely against paywalls, because pragmatically they represent the only way of guaranteeing payment for producing news. And of course, the technological shift away from paper – whilst aesthetically distressing – is a natural corollary of technological progress, much like manuscripts diminished in popularity with the arrival of the printing press. 

    However the real danger remains that people want a free lunch. People who file-share or illegally download music may pontificate about the evils of copyright – and I’m sympathetic to complaints about patents and copyrighting – but their main desire is to get something for free. Understandable, but nonetheless little more than theft*. Similarly, unless we take the question of how journalism will remain reasonably profitable seriously, we are going to have to either accept a collapse in ‘unprofitable’ areas of journalistic effort – e.g. the expenses scandal, phone hacking, etc. – or look at some sort of funding mechanism to enable journalism to survive. Paywalls, as I’ve said, are one alternative, albeit a flawed one in their own way. A public subsidy might be another. The idea isn’t inherently ridiculous.

    *No, don’t bother with the crappy ‘but it’s not really theft because you haven’t stolen the original’ argument that some people come up with. You’ve made unlawful use of another person’s property, much in the same manner as identity theft, which is similarly ‘not really theft’ because ‘you’ haven’t been ‘replaced’, but your personhood has been impersonated for illicit gain, which is a form of fraud and also the appropriation of another person’s identity, i.e. a variety of theft.

  • Brumanuensis

    I’d like to offer a defence of what David Leigh wrote, with the caveat that I understand the objections raised and think that moving towards a paywall system is perhaps a better and more viable alternative.

    …

    Journalism is a public good and a vibrant press similarly is one of the essential components of a free society. We understand the importance of funding a public broadcaster like the BBC, because alongside the proliferation of niche channels, a major national network providing a minimum standard of excellence in public broadcasting [cue righty whingeing about how the BBC stands for 'British Bolshevik Corporation'] is a recognisable public good –  if you want to see what happens in the absence of a well-funded public broadcaster, look at PBS in the United States (although that said it remains the only decent television news you’ll find on a visit to the US).

    I can see obvious practical problems with Leigh’s proposal – disbursement being the main one – but the survival of the press is a serious issue. I would be more comfortable if rather than being disbursed in accordance with market share – which is a classic subsidy for the already well-off – the funds were allocated to assist our already struggling local newspapers, or to set up a series of bursaries for young journalists who wished to enter into the profession, but lacked the means to afford unpaid internships. Perhaps if a newspaper wished to fund a particular project, it could apply for a grant or loan from the fund. And so forth.

    We have to acknowledge that the internet is not a panacea. It’s all very well to point at blogs and talk a lot of quite frankly airy-fairy nonsense about ‘citizen journalists’, etc, but most blogging relies on recirculated content, not generating original content through independent investigating. The problem with paywalls is that they make this nonetheless valuable dissemination of information more complicated, by erecting barriers to its flow – rather like tariffs in relation to trade. 

    As a subscriber to the New York Times and the Financial Times, I am not completely against paywalls, because pragmatically they represent the only way of guaranteeing payment for producing news. And of course, the technological shift away from paper – whilst aesthetically distressing – is a natural corollary of technological progress, much like manuscripts diminished in popularity with the arrival of the printing press. 

    However the real danger remains that people want a free lunch. People who file-share or illegally download music may pontificate about the evils of copyright – and I’m sympathetic to complaints about patents and copyrighting – but their main desire is to get something for free. Understandable, but nonetheless little more than theft*. Similarly, unless we take the question of how journalism will remain reasonably profitable seriously, we are going to have to either accept a collapse in ‘unprofitable’ areas of journalistic effort – e.g. the expenses scandal, phone hacking, etc. – or look at some sort of funding mechanism to enable journalism to survive. Paywalls, as I’ve said, are one alternative, albeit a flawed one in their own way. A public subsidy might be another. The idea isn’t inherently ridiculous.

    *No, don’t bother with the crappy ‘but it’s not really theft because you haven’t stolen the original’ argument that some people come up with. You’ve made unlawful use of another person’s property, much in the same manner as identity theft, which is similarly ‘not really theft’ because ‘you’ haven’t been ‘replaced’, but your personhood has been impersonated for illicit gain, which is a form of fraud and also the appropriation of another person’s identity, i.e. a variety of theft.

  • Brumanuensis

    I’d like to offer a defence of what David Leigh wrote, with the caveat that I understand the objections raised and think that moving towards a paywall system is perhaps a better and more viable alternative.

    …

    Journalism is a public good and a vibrant press similarly is one of the essential components of a free society. We understand the importance of funding a public broadcaster like the BBC, because alongside the proliferation of niche channels, a major national network providing a minimum standard of excellence in public broadcasting [cue righty whingeing about how the BBC stands for 'British Bolshevik Corporation'] is a recognisable public good –  if you want to see what happens in the absence of a well-funded public broadcaster, look at PBS in the United States (although that said it remains the only decent television news you’ll find on a visit to the US).

    I can see obvious practical problems with Leigh’s proposal – disbursement being the main one – but the survival of the press is a serious issue. I would be more comfortable if rather than being disbursed in accordance with market share – which is a classic subsidy for the already well-off – the funds were allocated to assist our already struggling local newspapers, or to set up a series of bursaries for young journalists who wished to enter into the profession, but lacked the means to afford unpaid internships. Perhaps if a newspaper wished to fund a particular project, it could apply for a grant or loan from the fund. And so forth.

    We have to acknowledge that the internet is not a panacea. It’s all very well to point at blogs and talk a lot of quite frankly airy-fairy nonsense about ‘citizen journalists’, etc, but most blogging relies on recirculated content, not generating original content through independent investigating. The problem with paywalls is that they make this nonetheless valuable dissemination of information more complicated, by erecting barriers to its flow – rather like tariffs in relation to trade. 

    As a subscriber to the New York Times and the Financial Times, I am not completely against paywalls, because pragmatically they represent the only way of guaranteeing payment for producing news. And of course, the technological shift away from paper – whilst aesthetically distressing – is a natural corollary of technological progress, much like manuscripts diminished in popularity with the arrival of the printing press. 

    However the real danger remains that people want a free lunch. People who file-share or illegally download music may pontificate about the evils of copyright – and I’m sympathetic to complaints about patents and copyrighting – but their main desire is to get something for free. Understandable, but nonetheless little more than theft*. Similarly, unless we take the question of how journalism will remain reasonably profitable seriously, we are going to have to either accept a collapse in ‘unprofitable’ areas of journalistic effort – e.g. the expenses scandal, phone hacking, etc. – or look at some sort of funding mechanism to enable journalism to survive. Paywalls, as I’ve said, are one alternative, albeit a flawed one in their own way. A public subsidy might be another. The idea isn’t inherently ridiculous.

    *No, don’t bother with the crappy ‘but it’s not really theft because you haven’t stolen the original’ argument that some people come up with. You’ve made unlawful use of another person’s property, much in the same manner as identity theft, which is similarly ‘not really theft’ because ‘you’ haven’t been ‘replaced’, but your personhood has been impersonated for illicit gain, which is a form of fraud and also the appropriation of another person’s identity, i.e. a variety of theft.

  • blokefromkent

    political parties AND newspapers finished?

    Don’t get our hopes up …

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