Open Mike: Good News

["Open Mike" is the Editorial Page of TOP, in which Yr. Hmbl. Ed. lets his neuroses out to romp in the yard. It usually appears on Wednesdays, and is very often late, and very rarely early.]

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An ecologist once explained a formula for the conservation of wetlands. He said that the loss of the first 30% of wetlands was inconsequential; the environment could absorb, and adapt to, that much loss. The survival of the middle 40% was provisional and could be up for discussion, or taken case-by-case. But the survival of the last 30% was absolutely crucial for the ecology as a whole, essential for a great variety of reasons, and needed to be preserved at all costs.

Hold that thought. We'll circle back around to it.

When the Internet came along and people were able to share pictures, there was a whole new crop of photographers who enthusiastically embraced the new medium, and who showed their work online without restraint. Many of these people weren't fastidious about their pictures being shared. As a consequence, many of these photographers "grew followers" and began to become better known.

Meanwhile, many already established photographers listened to dire warnings that their work would be stolen and misused if they posted it online. Many "name" photographers severely limited the number of their pictures they posted online, and posted only quite small JPEGs, and were strict about their rights and privileges. As a consequence, they weren't known on the Internet and, eventually, a whole generation of photo enthusiasts grew up not knowing who those previously famous photographers were or what their work looked like.

Two examples: there was a photographer who I wanted to publicize. I wanted other people to get a sense of his work and I wanted to discuss his work. But his website (or web "page" as we used to say, since, back then, entire websites sometimes consisted of just the landing page) was rudimentary—only eight pictures were shown, and each one of those was tiny, maybe 300 or 400 pixels wide. When I suggested that his website was outdated and needed to be expanded and enlarged, he explained that he had gotten someone else to make it for him and he didn't care about "all that" either way. He'd drop off his portfolio at museums and work toward gallery shows and try to get his pictures published in art books, but he didn't see any point in sharing his pictures for free on the Internet.

In the other case, I wrote about a photographer and included two quick snaps of his pictures from a book. The snaps were obviously book pages, with distortion from the bend of the paper and flare from the lighting. Soon he contacted me a state of high agitation, demanding that the pictures be removed immediately. Of course I complied—I always comply with takedown requests even if I feel I have a clear right to use the pictures under Fair Use, because we support photographers. He explained that his photographs were his livelihood and that he never, ever allowed them to be posted online under any circumstances, because people would steal his pictures and make prints from the JPEGs that would compete with his own print sales. I didn't point out the technical impossibility of that...it was his business, and his call. That photographer (he's deceased now) was otherwise quite savvy about publicity, and avid for fame. I doubt many younger people have ever heard of him.

Their reasons for doing what they did were sound, but the overall effect was a negative one: they limited their own publicity and effectively "walled off" their work from the online audience. Granted, both those examples are from the late '90s / early 2000s, and not everyone understood then how pervasive the Internet would become. They earned their bones under the old rules, and they don't want to adapt to new conditions. On the other hand, you still see the old attitude in place with some artists—their only online presence is a few small JPEGs at a dealer's site.

Paywalls are walls after all...
I worry now that traditional, established media are now doing a version of the same thing. Again and again I find myself researching stories and coming up against a paywall. It's quite reasonable for a newsgathering entity to want payment for their work, and I do pay for the sites I visit regularly. But often I'm researching, and I simply don't have the budget to pay full subscriptions to get one random article from each of five different outlets, none of which I visit regularly. The default is simply to revert to free sites—which might not be nearly as scrupulous, factual, or ethical.

Good news sometimes appears to me to be ghettoizing itself in much the same way that old-line photographers did.

I suspect that the diminution and decline of our media could be described along the same lines as wetlands: the first 30% we can let go; the middle 40% we can talk about, and pick and choose; but the last 30% are absolutely crucial to functioning Democracies, to civil society, and the informing of a well-educated populace.

Where are we now with media? Well, we're no longer at 100%, that's for sure. We're almost certainly not still as high as 70%; too many good publications and TV and radio stations have gone down (although the tabloids still survive, and those pustular boils on the ass of society sure should go away ahead of a lot of other entities). And yet we're probably not down to the crucial final 30%, either. 

It would be great if there were some systemic solution, some way for content to be available but supported, and not behind walls. Barring that, it's going to be increasingly important for individual citizens to support the enlightened news media outlets of their choice.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

nextSibling: "There have been attempted solutions and some are ongoing. The keyword is 'micropayments.' The concept is a seamless way to enable you (via your browser) to make small, seamless contributions to content providers as you browse the web. The most promising current example is Brave Micropayments in the Brave browser. Although even they admit we're a long way from widespread adoption."

Geoff Wittig: "I would argue politely but strenuously that here in the U.S. we are rapidly losing that last 30% of our traditional, professionally researched and written published journalism. Wikipedia, Facebook and Twitter are not a valid substitute.

"Not to go all 'get off my lawn,' but I grew up in Buffalo, New York, in the 1960s. At the time Buffalo supported two very well-sourced and well written daily newspapers. One of them was originally edited circa 1870 by a guy named Samuel Langhorne Clemens. (Look him up, kids.) They sported full sections on local news including politics, a business section, and so on. By 1980, both papers were pale shadows of their former selves. In 1982 one closed. The other is down to a small broadsheet, just a ghost really.

"It's even worse than it looks. Print media are far more hospitable to complex ideas and nuance, the lifeblood of democratic societies, than broadcast media. They are simply deeper by nature. Video and on-line media are by contrast great at conveying emotion and outrage—free of context, history, or nuance. This tectonic shift in the media landscape is a large part of our escalating polarization and political rage because video is much better at conveying heat than light.

"The large cities are losing their solitary surviving newspapers left and right. The bedraggled remainders are often entertainment-oriented McPapers."

Clayton: "In Venezuela all reasonably honest newspapers have been eliminated by the government. The good news there is that many of the honest journalists have continued to publish online. I would love to support more of them than I do, but the Venezuelan fiasco also destroyed my bottom line. Important news finds a way."

Eolake Stobblehouse: "Yes, yes, yes, probably, yes, absolutely, I agree, yes, and yes. I’ve been on about these things for over twenty years. I’ve been saying that putting postage stamp-sized pics only online is like a greengrocer pouring gasoline on the wares he puts on the street. I participated in a big micropayment platform years ago, and it worked for me, to a degree. But ultimately it failed. I honestly thought, along with usability guru Jakob Nielsen, that micropayments would be the savior of the commercial web. But people don’t like it. I’d love to pay everybody, but like you say, I simply can’t pay ten dollars to fifty different web sites, each of which I rarely visit."

John Krumm: "For news, I think the world is ready for some kind of reporter-driven, publicly funded independent 'wiki-media.' I would like that. All media has a bias, and I occasionally cancel my NYT subscription because I tire of their centrist-elite bias that you can read in the political and international reporting. Then I resubscribe in a month or two because I feel like I'm missing out. I prefer reading articles from Jacobin magazine, which is a quarterly but publishes free material daily on the internet, and has a great podcast as well (I do pay for the quarterly and podcast). It has a strong left bias, which I prefer. But for good, fact-checked reporting of breaking events and more in depth stories, I think some kind of cooperative Wiki-Media model is past due."

Comments

[Stan B.]

I had a digital subscription at regular price for the NY Times until I could no longer afford it. Then they asked if I could afford... $4 a mo- yeah, I could definitely do that!

I fear losing legitimate, investigative news sources, but I'll probably have to drop the subscription if (when) the price rises substantially. They need to devise other subscription/payment scenarios- perhaps based on amount of usage/articles per month...

[Andrew Molitor]

Music and Cinema solved their piracy problem by developing solutions which made it much more convenient to pay than to not pay. It is absolutely frictionless to watch virtually any movie I want, right now, for a very small fee.

It's not clear that this solution is available to photography, because stealing is just so easy.

News? I dunno. Maybe they could do some sort of bundling service, like a media streaming service, but for news. One modest flat fee, and you get all you can eat from a convenient, well-organized, ad-free, buffet of news.

[PaulW]

Years ago a friend ran a small local newspaper and explained to me that the vast majority of his income came from advertising revenue and not subscriptions. I don't know if this still holds true in the internet age, but it's why I never get offended when I'm peppered with ads while visiting free websites whose content I like. If it takes more ads to keep a good site up, then I'm all for it. Maybe more ads, or optional ads, is the systemic solution you're looking for. BTW, I do NOT work in marketing or advertising!

[David Dyer-Bennet]

When even MAJOR cities often have only one or two newspapers, I'm afraid we're well into eating the last 30%.

[Trevor Small]

A "pay per click" model perhaps? Few cents at a time?

[John Shriver]

The paywall problem is because the credit card companies (Visa, MasterCard, Amex) have done everything in their power to prevent an efficient and effective micropayment system, such that you could easily pay for one article at a reasonable price.

[Robert Roaldi]

In the old days, libraries would subscribe to newspapers and magazines and you did research by going there. Funny that the concept hasn't translated to the interweb in some useful manner. I have no idea how but it seems to me that online library subscriptions might be a model worth looking at. I've given this all of 2 minutes thought that's probably what it's worth.

We had better fix this soon, because it's a cesspool out there.

Something akin to that is happening in online streaming services. You might have to subscribe to several of them to get access to the shows you'd like. An aggregator would be a useful service but at the moment they're all acting a little proprietary. In the early days of movies, did the studios maintain their own theatres in which you could only see their own branded films?

It may all be moot soon. Disney will own all of it.

[Moose]

Staying away from swamps and journalism:

"Their reasons for doing what they did were sound, but the overall effect was a negative one: they limited their own publicity and effectively "walled off" their work from the online audience."

Are you writing about about money, or about fame?

Success seems to be measured by "better known", and the losers are "previously famous".

And yet, one of these losers would ". . . drop off his portfolio at museums and work toward gallery shows and try to get his pictures published in art books"

And the other, ". . . explained that his photographs were his livelihood . . ."

May I assume that they made their livings from photography?

Do we know if those who '"grew followers" and began to become better known.', make a living at it?

I'm not saying you are wrong about any of what you say, but I am suggesting that you may have confabulated two related, but separate subjects.

I have no dog in this altercation. I am sure that I am a good enough photographer to make money at it. I have no doubt that professional photography is a business, and quite unlike my amateur status, where I shoot what I want and present it as I like.

I also suspect that fame is a seriously mixed blessing I can live without.

"Fame and Fortune" have always struck me as poor bedfellows. You take Fame, I'll take Fortune.

[Thomas Mc Cann]

I share your frustration. Surely it would not be beyond the capabilities of those news papers to allow one buy one issue only

[Stephen J]

"I suspect that the diminution and decline of our media could be described along the same lines as wetlands: the first 30% we can let go; the middle 40% we can talk about, and pick and choose; but the last 30% are absolutely crucial to functioning Democracies, to civil society, and the informing of a well-educated populace."

I think that all of it is vital, the bit you didn't mention is the shared history and competence that is also known as "maintenance".

Here in England a couple of years back, there were massive areas of wetland that were flooded to the point of destruction during heavy and persistent rain.

How could this be? There were old stories, but it was otherwise unheard of.

Then we discover that a government quango (that is an undemocratic government decision maker), has decided that it is more qualified to manage those wetlands than the farmers and landowners, who have been learning from previous generations since the Dutch sent us some experts in the 1200's.

And the floods were an inevitable result, those wetlands are no longer what they were.

Ignorance is bliss.

[Bob G.]

Mike,
A thoughtful and appropriate essay. Are we about to enter the dark ages of truth, approaching that last 30%?

[s.wolters]

This reminds me of a PetaPixel interview with Tina Barney five years ago. The complete interview is worth reading, but at two thirds of the article, under the picture of children with an American flag PP asked her about her website. She answered that she had nothing to do with it and that some pictures in it were not even hers. According to Barney: ”…one is a Larry Sultan, one would be Phillip Lorca-Dicorcia.”
https://petapixel.com/2015/09/01/an-interview-with-photographer-tina-barney/

[Ilkka]

I have been working in the paper industry most of my life. Traditional newspapers and magazines were paid by advertising. The cost of paper alone was more than the subscription price. Printing and distribution were expensive as well, leaving nothing for content. Except advertisements. Big circulation and big readership = lots of advertising, lot of good content and lot of readers wanting that good content. When free news started to come available from the World Wide Web, newspapers tried in vain to hold on to their old model and charge money for subscriptions. They lost readers, lost advertisers and became smaller and less interesting, losing even more readers. Only now some are starting to realise that the answer is the same as before, get the money from advertisements. And now you don’t even need to pay for the paper, printing and distribution, and your market is world-wide.

[Bill Tyler]

"content to be available but supported, and not behind walls" That's what online ads accomplish for companies like Facebook and Google. You pay for an excellent search engine by exposing yourself to ads. That's the old model used by TV. You also pay by allowing some gathering of personal information that helps the advertisers be more effective in showing you ads you're likely to respond to. The loss of privacy involved is a cost to you, but it supports the otherwise free content and services. There's another model that's been proposed, but doesn't seem to have gained much traction: micropayments. You might not want to pay for a subscription to a site, but might well be willing to pay a few cents for access to a specific article. I'd be really happy if the micropayment model were more prevalent, but I don't control the web.

[Michael Matthews]

There is such a solution. It’s called a library. Obsolete idea to many minds, but they still exist. Subscriptions to periodicals, neatly shelved or filed and available for use at no charge. Knowledgeable assistance from skilled reference staff (at no charge) in sorting through the available deluge of information to find sources most on-target and credible.

Many of the larger, well-funded ones provide remote access, online, to extensive databases of paid periodicals including specialized publications which never would have been made available in print locally because of high cost and low-to-no demand.

Marvelous idea, libraries. The trend in many places has been to shut them down as unnecessary, a waste of taxpayers’ money.

[Roger Bradbury]

A certain photography magazine of very long standing has, I regret to say, gone downhill in recent years. It's boring to read, and most photos are printed at no more than 6 x 4 inches, often at only half those dimensions. The cover photo might as well not be there, covered as it is with text in an effort to make you pick up the magazine. Years ago the cover photo was what first tempted me to pick up this photo magazine.

Their website is no longer a place I can rely on to get news from, and to read most of the equipment reviews and articles I have to join their mailing list. I see no advantage in that.

A photo magazine should make a reader want to grab their camera and take some photos, or at least plan to try something new. This can't be done with photos printed too small to be appreciated, and dull uninspiring text.

There are advantages and disadvantages to both print and digital, but they don't capitalise on either. I think the magazine will be gone within five years. It will be a real shame.

[Richard Parkin]

There are still some traditional newspapers without a paywall. The Guardian is entirely free (some fairly unobtrusive ads) though you can donate any amount or subscribe (which removes the ads) and has U.K., US, Australian and International editions:
https://www.theguardian.com/

[J]

Not quite wiki-news but close enough https://theconversation.com/global

And https://www.propublica.org/

[Michael Matthews]

Another way to cross the paywall barrier (in addition to libraries, mentioned above) is to use the freelancer’s low cost version of Lexis/Nexis for searching periodicals. It costs $19.95 a month, sold only on an annual contract, but gives you the same service as that enjoyed by reporters for the New York Times — minus the legal search and public documents of Lexis.

For a freelancer needing broad reach research it should be invaluable. Take my Patreon contribution and that of nine other equally miserly benefactors and subscribe to it. See if it fits.

The subscription is available not through Lexis/Nexis directly, but via a nonprofit to be found at expertaccess.org. And yes, I confirmed with Lexis/Nexis that it is legit.

[Dennis Mook]

To employ a formerly overused phrase, the media has gone and continues to go through a huge paradigm shift. The problem is that no one yet knows what the new paradigm will be!

[Kenneth Tanaka]

Art Sinsabaugh's ginormous banquet camera is the most impressive such gadget I've ever seen!

Art Sinsabaugh's camera

Personally, I've no interest in using any camera that's too large to carry over my shoulder, that might catch fire, or that might be attacked by insects.

[Greg]

Many good comments. Amazon (AWS) seems to have micro-payments down. I pay $0.60 to host some scans there.

Local newspapers had their place. But did everyone benefit? Discrimination against minorities and women flourished. In whose interest did those local newspapers work? Priests raped children for decades. What did the local papers do about that? Redlining prevented a generation or two of minorities from accumulating wealth. Ah, the good old days when they knew their place!

I don't know why I'm writing since nothing I've written has ever been posted on your site.

Greg

[See, you shouldn't say things like that last, because I have records at my fingertips. Actually, you have submitted 168 comments to TOP, and all save eight have been published--and several that weren't published were simply private asides, for example on June 14, 2017, when you informed me that a link wasn't working. Several of your comments have been "Featured Comments," for example on the post "God Bless Us Every One" from Dec. 22, 2010. --Mike]